Ghost In The Shell, 2017

Anybody see the new GITS?
If you saw it, what did you think?


The 1995 animated film had an interesting idea: Humanity accidentally becoming God-- creating life from our technology, i.e., a self aware being with its own individual thoughts, wants, and desires (the Puppet Master). I had seen this kind of idea even used in the schlock American horror film, "Demon Seed" (which seemed only to want to abuse Julie Christie), but "Ghost In The Shell", 1995, took a more thoughtful look.

This 2017 movie's plot is a sub-par rip-off of "RoboCop". An evil company tries to take away a person's humanity, and turn that person into a product. However, our technology is not able to crush the human soul, and the person is able to reclaim their humanity. But new GITS didn't work this very well, because in the film almost everyone is very supportive of the Major's personhood. Only one man, Cutter, wanted to treat her as less than human.

It was probably because Juliette Binoche was in this movie; part way through, my mind just wandered, and I thought about her 1993 film, "Blue". In "Blue" there is a scene in a swimming pool where the audience feels the heroine's depression surrounding her, holding her dissociated from her life, making her want to die. But, “Blue” is a masterpiece, and, I wasn't getting any of that from this movie.

The movie features several of the most memorable scenes from the 1995 animated film done in live action, but the redone scenes seemed truncated, the flow of the movie wasn't very good, and the plot seemed confused.


P.S., When I first heard of the live action GITS film, I didn't think it mattered to the story that the lead actress was or wasn't Asian, but when this film went out of its way to tell me that the Major is a Japanese teenager stuck in Scarlett Johansson body... then it does seem a bit odd that she isn't Japanese.