Ghost in the Shell (2017)

I recently went to see Ghost in the Shell (the 2017 movie). While it wasn't as bad as reviews have been making it out to be, it certainly could have been a whole lot better.

As I've said previously, I'm a big fan of the Ghost in the Shell franchise. Which made it difficult to see this kind of movie without preconceptions - I have all sorts of assumptions about the characters and world rolling around in my head. And the movie didn't make it easy to disconnect, as it went out of the way to throw in all kinds of references to the original movie, SAC series, etc. But I did do my best.

If I think of this movie as the origin story for a human-android hybrid in a cyberpunk world (trying to ignore previous incarnations of the franchise), then it's not terrible, but not good either. The plot, revolving mostly around the Major's self-discovery, is adequate but doesn't have a lot of depth to it (to be fair, that's not uncommon in an origin-style film). The writing is just downright poor, I'm afraid. They do too much "tell, not show" - for example, the entire opening sequence showing the prosthetic body creation and then explanation by the doctor fell flat for me. Why not have that information be revealed naturally as the story goes along instead of just laid out in unimpressive dialog? The action is merely adequate as well - some of it is interesting (I enjoyed the last big fight, for example), but also there are some cringe-worthy slow-motion shots that probably spiked the CGI budget for no good reason.

Then there are all those Ghost in the Shell franchise references. They are absolutely everywhere, from the Major dropping off a building and disappearing (twice) to a chain-smoking technician to Batou's dog. It felt to me as if someone took a big handful of iconic components from all the franchise properties and said "Use as many of these as possible, whether they make sense or not." Some of it does fit in without disrupting the flow of the film, but other parts just make no sense. Even the name (or title?) "Major" is never really explained and just seems out of place.

For me, the constant references jarred me out of this new version of the franchise by reminding me of the older works (and the contrast between the two). The feeling is doubled when they made changes that seemed to have no purpose. For example: Aramaki is out in the field on his own near the end, and using a revolver. Why not have Togusa there with him and using that gun, as in pretty much all the other versions? It's not like Togusa had anything else to do at that point in the story.

The casting is worth a mention here, since it's gotten a good amount of negative attention. This is a Japanese series and there are a lot of white faces in the cast, most notably Scarlett Johansson in the lead role. That didn't bother me too much, since the whole premise of the movie is that she's not in her original body. The city that they are in is pretty clearly Asian but with a very cosmopolitan feel, so it doesn't seem out of place that there are non-Asian people roaming around without causing comment. Still, it seems like an unnecessary controversy since I'm sure there are plenty of actors of Asian descent that could have performed just as well. I wish the producers would have taken a different direction from the beginning.

This Ghost in the Shell movie had a lot of potential, but squandered it with poor writing and way too many incongruous franchise references. I'm guessing we won't see any follow-up to this particular version, which is probably just as well. A great live-action movie is possible for this franchise, but to get there someday they'll need to start over from scratch.

Ghost in the Shell: Arise - Alternative Architecture

I've been a Ghost in the Shell franchise fan since I first saw the original movie back in the late '90s. Production I.G.'s Stand Alone Complex TV series and the Solid State Society film were excellent. So I certainly wasn't going to miss the latest series, Arise.

Arise has been released in pieces over the last couple of years. First there were four hour-long films, released across 2013 and 2014. I didn't go out of my way to track those down immediately, though, since I knew that eventually there would either be a compilation, or at least a package deal to get them all at once.

Enter Arise - Alternative Architecture, a repackaging of the four Arise films into half-hour TV episodes, plus an additional 2-episode extension of the story. I was able to pick up the series from Amazon Video streaming for $30. I usually wait until things I want to watch are available on a video streaming service (Netflix, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime streaming, etc), but I make an exception for Ghost in the Shell. I own all the other movies and series already and see no reason why Arise shouldn't join them. (It's the first I bought in the cloud rather than on a physical DVD, which is nice - one less thing to keep track of.)

The story for Arise takes place earlier than the other parts of the franchise. In the others, Major Motoko Kusanagi is part of Public Security Section 9, leading a team under the direction of Section Chief Aramaki. Arise starts earlier, when the Major is still in the Army, and goes through how she leaves the Army, works with Aramaki, and forms the rest of the team.

For some reason, the Alternative Architecture version of Arise chose to jump around in that timeline. The first two episodes actually show the whole Section 9 group together, then later episodes jump back to show how they got there, and finally the last two episodes continue where the first two left off. It was a little confusing at first, though it was easy enough to straighten out by taking a quick look at how this compared to the order of the four Arise films.

Not that confusion is any great surprise with any Ghost in the Shell series. I usually have to watch two or three times to catch most of what is going on. Every story takes place on multiple levels, usually including high-level politics, relationships in the team, and impacts on the individual characters. All of this against a background of some shadowy mastermind, whose ties to the crimes being investigated in each individual story arc are only gradually revealed. Arise is no exception to this formula.

One consequence of working in the earlier time-frame is that the Major is a more interesting character, in my humble opinion. In the movies and Stand Alone Complex story-line, she was portrayed as being at the top of her game, highly experienced and in command of a crack cyber-warfare unit. In Arise, we see her alone and vulnerable right from the beginning, and she has to work her way into that position at the top. She's still basically a superhero, but one that we see grow into the role, rather than starting out that way.

Production I.G. has already created the next installment, a movie that continues the Arise story, but it's only released in Japan at this point. When a version is available here in the USA, I'll probably go back and watch the whole series again beforehand to catch stuff I missed the first time.