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Ghost in the Shell: Just the shell of a movie.

 

By most conventions, Ghost in the Shell should be a bad movie. It is a woefully predictable film littered with clichés, minimal plot progression, awful dialogue, and horrible pacing. However, despite all this, it is thoroughly enjoyable, and technically brilliant. While it is not entirely explicit about it,the film presents legitimate concerns about society and technological progression.

Ghost in the Shell, based on a 1995 film of the same name, follows Major (Scarlett Johannson), the first human to be given a fully robotic body, designed to be the perfect soldier in the fight against terrorism. Set in a future world where everyone is cybernetically enhanced, where limbs can be replaced, and brains can be hacked; the film follows Major’s fight against crime and journey of self discovery.

Starting with the good: visually, this film is stunning. As the opening shots pan over a heavily CGI laden Hong Kong you are immediately immersed in the unnamed futuristic city in which the film is set. The Blade Runner-esque, cyberpunk cityscape is a visual delight, with giant holographic ads towering over skyscrapers and neon lights shining on every surface.

The robots and cyborgs in the film, made through a combination of CGI and animatronics from the brilliant Weta Workshops (Lord of the Rings, Avatar) are hauntingly realistic and beautifully designed. The visual implementation of cybernetic enhancements such as electronic eyes, limbs, and organs is anything but subtle with some characters occasionally pulling half of their faces off to reveal electronic implants underneath, but it matches the over the top aesthetic of the film.

As much as the movie is a treat on the eyes, it is the same for the ears, and features incredible sound design, with a pumping electronic soundtrack from the renowned Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan).

The film is well produced in a technical sense, it is only when the characters open their mouths that the movie starts to falter. You could count on your hands the number of times Scarlett Johansson has a line longer than 5 words, and on just one hand the times they were at all emotionally impactful. The plot is entirely predictable and rife with sci-fi tropes. The pacing was far from smooth, with any emotional scene cut too short, and attempts at tension reading as cringe worthy.

Luckily, as stilted as the dialogue is, it’s minimal, and this leaves the incredibly choreographed action scenes to carry the story, leading to a surprisingly entertaining, yet hollow experience.

This film also presents some legitimate concerns about the proliferation of an interconnected world. Where everything in our world from dishwashers to toasters to cars are now internet capable, they are also incredibly vulnerable, which has been exposed in a number of high profile hacks recently. These insecure devices act as a gateway to your normally secure home network and allow hackers to access any device on the network. In the film a hacker uses this technique to access a persons brain and the result is not pretty.

While this technology may seem far off the consequences of insecure devices are already affecting us and if we fail to secure our devices now the consequences in the future could be disastrous. Unfortunately, these concerns are far too subtly represented in the film to have any meaningful impact on an audience.

Ghost in the Shell is a beautiful, and entertaining ride, yet fails to deliver any depth or provoke thought. It tries to be smart but only comes across as awkward.

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