‘Ghost in the Shell’: Don’t Be Fooled By This Utterly Generic B-Movie

Ghost in the Shell is a film that begins and ends with Scarlett Johansson, practically nude, jumping backwards off a tall building for reasons that I can’t pretend to understand. Everything in between is superfluous.

This Rupert Sanders-directed Hollywood remake of what I’m told is a “classic manga franchise” is so utterly vapid and generic in every way, a hastily-polished conveyer belt of sci-fi clichés, that I can’t be bothered to experience a reaction to it. It didn’t move me one inch: towards anger, towards awe, towards inspiration.

It merely existed for a merciful 106 minutes, the occasional bright colour or familiar face awakening me from a coma of disinterest and resignation; resignation that this is what accounts for a ‘major release’ (pardon the pun) in tinseltown these days.

This film is so B-picture through-and-through, yet has been sold as an A-release due to Johansson’s increasing popularity and the expense of the visual effects work. In reality, Ghost in the Shell is no more significant a product than an Underworld or Resident Evil instalment: female-led action franchises with respectable fanbases, but ultimately films I don’t ever intend to watch. The illusion that Ghost is worth something more is certainly aided by the presence of Juliette Binoche and Michael Pitt, actors who you’d unlikely see in a Resident Evil, but neither makes an impact in their few respective scenes.

Had Ghost engaged me enough to provoke a reaction, that reaction would likely have involved arched-eyebrow curiosity as to whom considered it appropriate to, firstly, cast Johansson in place of a Japanese actress and, more embarrassingly, attempt to justify it with a plot-twist that’s almost comically misjudged and simply reeks of cultural appropriation. But, again, I don’t think Ghost in the Shell is worth the effort it would take to complain.