Nothing human is alien. Review of Ghost in the Shell
Perhaps more and more Hollywood directors are now practicing remakes. The turn came for the anime too - after several years of work on the script, the film adaptation of the legendary "Ghost in the Shell" by Mamoru Oshii, based on the equally famous manga by Masamune Shiro, was officially taken into circulation. Having gone through the millstones of simplification, the game version was unable to sit on two chairs - to please both fans of the original and fans of superhero blockbusters. And if the first could be bribed by the impeccably recreated scenes from the anime, then the second at the very start of the tape at the box office found a cartoon about a baby in a suit more suitable for relaxing in front of a wide screen. Is it time to announce the failure of a promising project with the robotic Scarlett Johansson against the backdrop of futuristic Asian landscapes?Each viewer will have their own answer to this question. Despite the fact that the team of the film tried to please all its potential audience, Ghost in the Shell lacked that semantic content to satisfy the audience, without which it is impossible to imagine either a darkly philosophical anime or an easier-to-read manga ... Apparently, the picture will not please the studio DreamWorks and Paramount with the launch of a new fantastic superhero franchise. Even to a viewer who is not familiar with the original, the plot about the loss and acquisition of identity through memory, about the conspiracy of corporations and the fragility of human freedom in the world of high technologies and computerized consciousness will seem too predictable.  It is the pictures of the gloomy and at the same time attractive future that are worth seeing "The Ghost" in IMAX or 3D formats. The largest company in its business Weta Workshop has created such special effects that after a few minutes the reality of cyberpunk seems to be something natural and taken for granted. And although fans of the genre have long been difficult to surprise with something, the local futuristic images, if not breathtaking, will surely pass a chill on the skin. Holographic neon signs, all kinds of implants, improvements and sophisticated technologies combined with poverty and ruins - all this entangles the unnamed city, where a major of the special department fights digital crime. The creators of the picture themselves called the coexistence of hi-tech with retro cars and old automatic machines retro-futurism.  That is why all claims to the nationality of Johansson seem inappropriate - in the world of the future this category simply ceases to exist as self-determination. And yet the writers decided to justify themselves to anime fans and rewrite the history of the miracle cyborg Motoko Kusanagi , which in the film, for obvious reasons, even has a Western name - Mira Killian . By the way, besides an American of Danish and Jewish origin Scarlett , a Japanese, a French, a Singaporean and a Dane starred in the film. And for the cyberpunk universe, which united and at the same time divided humanity technologies, this seems quite logical. At the same time, the Asian flavor has not disappeared from the game version: in addition to frightening geisha robots and neon figures, the charming Takeshi Kitano is responsible for the east here. Is he, as usual, in its place - this time in the role of the chief of the main character and the head of the whole department of the charismatic Aramaki . Kitano seems to have come out of an anime, reminding the audience of the origins of the film: due to the fact that the Japanese actor and director does not speak English well, he speaks Japanese throughout the film, and his subordinates understand it with the help of special implants.  In their places, however, all the other actors are the controversial villain Michael Pitt, diluting the atmosphere with the partner of Mira Batu played by Johan Philip Asbeck, the elegant doctor Uele , played by Juliette Binoche. There was no need to doubt Scarlett Johansson , who perfectly knows how to portray alienation and inanimate. With all this, the film itself simply lacks semantic content and novelty. Inspired by samples of the genre, Ghost with its visual sophistication looks nothing more than a tribute to cyberpunk. The film cannot be called a remake - it is rather a mix of several parts of the original anime. The terrorist hacker Kujo migrated from the Lonely Syndrome series, the geisha robot from Innocence, and the film itself is teeming with references to episodes of the feature film Hosea . To be honest to the end, these are the brightest scenes of "The Ghost" - the jumps of a naked heroine from a skyscraper, a fight with a hacked cyborg, her hobby for scuba diving, battle on the water ... The rest of the action is not particularly experienced in cinematography Rupert Sanders diluted with action, chases and fights, during which the major - a cyborg with a human brain - reveals the secrets of his creation and the past, re-realizing the human in himself.  True, the new Motoko was almost deprived of philosophical reflections and immersion in his high-tech consciousness. That is why lovers of the works of Philip K. Dick and film adaptations based on them, the search for the heroine Johansson for identity in their cyber heart will seem almost predictable to a yawn. By the way, the scriptwriters of the tape left the conflict in this moment too, from the very beginning turning the heroine from a murder weapon and the main killer of the ninth department into an almost law-abiding cyborg, and in the end so completely into a fighter for justice.  Most likely, you will forget the twists and turns of "Ghost in the Shell" a couple of days after visiting the cinema, however, you will not want to strongly scold its creators. You just have to accept the fact that this is an oriental cyberpunk in Hollywood guise, and not be surprised at the cliched dichotomy of good and evil and typical plot moves. Although both the original story and the philosophy of cyberpunk itself have little black and white colors in their palette, it is to them that the new film gravitates. This is a bold and visually perfect attempt to celebrate yet another humanist and superman. Here are just the material Masamune Shiro , which once turned the world upside down, was inappropriate for such a simplified and pretentious plot, but still it was not possible to sit on two chairs. The Topic of Article: Nothing human is alien. Review of Ghost in the Shell. |
