Amid all the movie news arriving, between Cannes and CinemaCon, it’s easy to overlook cool stuff. Fortunately, Ghost In the Shell has come out of hiding, announcing that filming begins today, and revealing Scarlett Johansson’s look for the movie.
Ghost In the Shell, for those who weren’t watching anime in the late ’90s, follows the Major (Johansson), a cyborg living in 2029 hunting the Puppet Master, a superhacker who can exploit the various future technologies. Needless to say, the Puppet Master turns out to be far more than just some kid in a Guy Fawkes mask. The title refers to the idea of humans inhabiting cybernetic bodies. Watching it now, it might feel a little familiar, especially as The Matrix borrowed a bunch of concepts from it, but it was something new back in 1995. And the movie appears, at least so far, to be faithful to the anime.
Despite what some will insist, a live-action version is a good idea for a number of reasons. Despite the acclaim the original anime got, it was often more interested in talking about its themes than exploring the implications of them, a side effect of being based on a manga with a similar taste for philosophical discussions, and leaving a live-action adaptation room to do something else with the concept. That said, they are some fascinating concepts, not the least of which is the question of what it means to be human when you can effortlessly switch between bodies. But we’ll have to wait and see just where they go with the idea; currently it’s on the schedule for March 31, 2017.
(Via The Playlist)
