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Statements posted on this blog represent the views of individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Law Science & Innovation (which does not take positions on policy issues) or of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law or Arizona State University.

Allenby’s Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell Redivivus

A movie review by LSI Faculty Fellow, Brad Allenby

The most important thing to accept up front about the Ghost in the Shell movie is that it is not the same as the anime original. The original took the relationship between humans and emerging technologies as a serious and interesting speculative domain, and wove anime around it; the movie takes CGI and action, and drags in anything deeper as pretty much an afterthought. The original was atmospheric and Japanese, with the ambiguity and subtlety radiated by the best anime; the movie is slick and futuristic, with most of its ambiguity involving large caliber weapons. The anime cityscape was brilliant in its urban post-modernist cyberpunk feel; the cityscape of the movie is loud, brash, interesting, but somehow sterile. The movie essentially takes a meditation in E minor and replays it in C – nothing wrong with the key of C, but it isn’t gonna give you the same brooding angst. And, although some of the movie’s video images – mysterious airplanes from alleyways, for example – are direct copy from the anime, it is better to think of the movie as a jazzy variation on a theme, not just playing Bach on a piano rather than a harpsichord.

So the movie doesn’t lead one to ponder the relationship between the human and technology in the same way the anime does – which, since it is a major movie and undoubtedly fairly expensive to film, is not what you should have expected anyway. Thinking in lieu of horsepower, explosions, or guns, lots of guns, isn’t really how you recoup your investment in a major American film. But nonetheless the movie does manage to speak to technological themes, and not just in the obvious ways – omniscient cyber, city of holographs, too much information wash, cool tech, lost solipsistic souls isolated in their own infofeeds.

Most importantly, it takes sides in the ever-present clash of civilizations regarding the relationship between technology and humanity. Many Westerners, especially post-moderns and emo leftist romantics, visualize the world as a constant war between humanity and technology; the Frankenstein mythos is their guiding star. But the Japanese and others view technology and the human as co-evolutionary branches of spirit, and the easy integration which both the anime and the film portray is the anti-Frankenstein (it is also, to judge by the multitudes glued to their mobile phones, the more realistic). The evil in both the anime and the film comes not from technology, but from the human, and it is resolved not by technology, but by the human. The ideas are still there, just harder to find under a glossy and distracting shell.

But really: stop being a snobbish purist for a moment, allow yourself to enjoy the film for what it is, and you’ll have a good time. Scarlet Johansson is, of course, good, which is what you expect. Casting is excellent if somewhat puzzling: in some places Japanese is spoken, and of course the story comes from Japanese sources and takes place in a Japanese environment, but the characters are mostly anglicized (when they aren’t wearing black masks and playing with major weapon systems). And the special effects, and fairly continuous action, are state of the art. If it is a different and less noir city than in the original, it is certainly one of the more interesting visions of a future city I’ve seen in a while, and managed to be repellant and somehow bland at the same time. And after you’re through enjoying the movie, check out the anime version. You’ll be glad you did both of them.

Grade: A-