Ghost in the Shell

A plump human brain, sapped of all emo­tion and sen­ti­ment, is metic­u­lous­ly low­ered into a sleek, volup­tuous shell that hap­pens to be in the form of Amer­i­can actress Scar­lett Johans­son. Mem­o­ries of hap­pi­er times, of com­plex human rela­tions, rip­pling sen­sa­tions of plea­sure and pain, have been sup­pressed so this dour, Cyborg foot­sol­dier can oper­ate as a robot weapon with the added bonus of moral sentience.

At points, you might see this cen­tral con­ceit as a metaphor for Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell, a retool­ing of Mamoru Oshii’s clas­sic 1995 ani­mé. Yet as the min­utes slow­ly tick by and the chron­ic tedi­um sets in, it becomes clear that this is more like one of the ear­ly pro­to­types that went bananas and start­ed pop­ping off rounds at mem­bers of the pub­lic. There is a cer­tain poet­ry, though, to the idea that this is a film which ques­tions the exis­tence of an inner soul, and which is itself about as soul­ful as a defec­tive Game Boy.

No amount of whis­pered, mean­ing­ful mono­logue can hood­wink the view­er into believ­ing that this movie is any­thing more than an shape­ly, emp­ty ves­sel with delu­sions of exis­ten­tial sci-fi grandeur. Johans­son scowls for all she’s worth as Major, a hot-head­ed gov­ern­ment agent on the hunt for a ser­i­al killer who appears to be tar­get­ing the good folk at Han­ka Robot­ics, par­tic­u­lar­ly those involved in the cyber­net­ics pro­gramme that bought her into being. The company’s cen­tral defence is some­thing called a Spi­der Tank, which is a tank in the shape of a spi­der, and noth­ing more than that.

Filler shots of bustling cityscapes feel cribbed from Blade Run­ner and Win­dows 95 screen­savers. Gigan­tic female effi­gies, pro­ject­ed as sky­scraper-sized holo­grams, beam with eerie smiles and their pres­ence is some­how meant to cut through all the blue-grey futuro bleak­ness. But like so much in the film, this ends up being noth­ing more than dec­o­ra­tion, a hint towards the ker­nel of an idea.

Ghost in the Shell is a come-sit-on-my-knee les­son which states that all the lav­ish, wannabe eye-pop­ping pro­duc­tion design in the world don’t mean squat if you’ve got no char­ac­ters, no sto­ry, no action and no faith in the audi­ence to take up the thread of your weak dra­ma. This is a film in which peo­ple tell you that they are going to a place to do a thing, and then they go to a place and do a thing. Even the open­ing title cards which explain the time and set­ting are word­ed in a way that is at best banal and at worst incoherent.

The most notable aspect of the film is the out­rage it has caused among those who feel the role of Major has been ​“white­washed”, with a white West­ern actor tak­ing a part that was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten as Japan­ese. Although the sto­ry takes place in what seems like a futur­is­tic ver­sion of Tokyo, it’s actu­al­ly now a cosy, anony­mous melt­ing pot of eth­nic­i­ties and accents, infer­ring per­haps the world has become a post-racial utopia where the stig­ma of skin colour, cus­tom and lan­guage have been all but erased.

The real ques­tion, how­ev­er, is whether the film deserves to be dis­cussed on such seri­ous polit­i­cal terms, con­sid­er­ing its own intel­lec­tu­al ambi­tions are so lim­it­ed. The sheer scale of the enter­prise, and the fact that it has been made to con­nect with a mass audi­ence, are the only rea­sons it should be engaged with on that lev­el, even if its insid­i­ous pro­mo­tion of stars over diver­si­ty does noth­ing to actu­al­ly enhance the expe­ri­ence of the film. Sanders has the chance to com­ment on his choice to switch the eth­nic­i­ties, but he sheep­ish­ly opts to hide any pol­i­tics between the edits.

Yes, it’s kin­da cool that you’ve got ​“Beat” Takeshi Kitano with a bizarre tri­an­gu­lar per­ox­ide hair­cut and a six-shoot­er as Major’s badass men­tor, and he gets by far the best line in the film. And Juli­ette Binoche, as one of the chief sci­en­tists at Han­ka, takes her role of philo­soph­i­cal guide more seri­ous­ly than she per­haps need­ed to. Oth­er­wise, this movie is all flash and no func­tion. Lux­u­ri­ate in the wan visu­al daz­zle if that’s your thing, but oth­er­wise remain mind­ful of the irony that you’re watch­ing a film about the spir­i­tu­al aspects of brain func­tions with yours firm­ly set to sleep.