IT’S going to be hard for the new ‘Ghost in the Shell’ movie to live up to the critical acclaim of its 1995 predecessor, but with Scarlett Johansson at the helm and a budget of $120 million behind her, Dreamworks is hoping they at least have a box office hit on their hands.
The original story is based on a Japanese manga comic that morphed into the 1995 anime movie which proved to be so popular that a petition with some 100,000 signatures was sent to the producers of the remake asking them not to cast Johansson in the lead role. But Dreamworks stuck to their guns and the decision looks to have paid off.
The film is set in a futuristic ‘international world’ of an Asian persuasion, where Major (Johansson) is the first of her kind: a human saved and cyber-enhanced to become a perfect soldier.
When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people’s minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it.
And as she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to: her life wasn’t saved, it was stolen.
The first thing to say about this movie is that it looks amazing on the big screen, the bigger the better in fact, so catch it on IMAX if you can. Watch it on a TV or laptop and you will lose the sheer scale and colour of what is an oriental feast for the eyes.
Stylistically it’s reminiscent of ‘Blade Runner’ and may have stolen a march on that particular sequel which comes out later this year.
The director, Rupert Sanders, has done a fine job and Johansson is solid as usual, so much so that you forget she’s not Japanese.
The story is one we’ve seen before (a human trapped inside a robot’s body) and the questions raised (such as, do robots have feelings?) are familiar.
But this film is all about the spectacle and we have to say it’s pretty spectacular. We score it a visually inspiring, 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Paul O’Rourke