With all the controversy surrounding Ghost In The Shell casting highest-grossing actress Scarlett Johansson as a white, Americanized version of the Major in order to get funding, at least it’s looking more and more like Paramount is serious about replicating the source material in live action form in most respects. The first trailer was a unique visual feast which did have some notes of the previous animated adaptations, even though the film is reportedly based on the Masamune Shirow manga rather than any other adaptation.
Perhaps director Rupert Sanders changed his mind about taking cues from only the original manga, however, because IGN has shared the opening two minutes of Ghost In The Shell, and they are an homage to the 1995 anime’s iconic opening credits, the “Shelling Sequence” which creates a robotic avatar to house Scarlett Johansson’s brain (not to be confused with this robotic Scarlett Johansson). Paramount even brought back the original composer, Kenji Kawai, to perform a new composition of the theme song on drums.
The clip was screen during a press event in Japan where reporters were allowed to film, so the quality isn’t the highest definition, and the final version in theaters may be different, but this does give a good indication of what Sanders and cinematographer Jess Hall are going for. Here’s the possibly-NSFW opening sequence from the anime for comparison:
Ghost In The Shell opens March 31st, 2017.
(Via Screen Rant)
