Yahoo News First reviews drop for Ghost in the Shell
The first reviews for the Ghost in the Shell live-action adaptation have landed and they might surprise you.
With the casting of Scarlett Johansson as Major leading to accusations of whitewashing, hopes among fans of the iconic anime were likely not that high, but it seems Rupert Sanders has delivered a movie worthy of the original... although they're not all positive.
We've rounded up some of the early reactions below.
"Purists may not want to hear it, but she's ideal at the conceptual side of the role. The unusual disconnect between Johansson's intelligence and her coolly dispassionate looks has been exploited before, most brilliantly in Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin. Here she is both ghost and shell – a pair of soulful eyes, welling with memory and confusion, stranded inside a gorgeously supple action figure.
"For Johansson, this could easily be a franchise in the making, her own futuristic, post-human equivalent of a John Wick or Bourne. It needs the embrace of a willing audience first, but with trappings this glintingly cool and seductive, it's hard to see how the offer can be refused."
"The original film managed to be both violent and philosophical, putting the viewer in an uneasy place and pushing us to ponder the future of humanity in an increasingly computerised world - a world that would have a huge influence on the Wachowskis' magnum opus, all the way down to the cable ports in the back of each character's head.
"Here we get a taste of that ambience, but it feels more like a backdrop than the crux of the story, which boils down to yet another good vs evil scenario where no mystery is left unsolved and conflicts are tied up in an all-too Hollywood way."
"Spectacularly honouring the spirit and aesthetic of Mamoru Oshii's beloved animated adaptations without resorting wholly to slavish cosplay, this is smart, hard-lacquered entertainment that may just trump the original films for galloping storytelling momentum and sheer, coruscating visual excitement - even if a measure of their eerie, melancholic spirit hasn't quite carried over to the immaculate new carapace."
"The film is not without its superficial pleasures, and non-devotees might soak up some of its stimuli for future repurposing as profile photos, or as the backdrop to a club night. Sanders is becoming increasingly adept at framing the kind of images any 14-year-old would deem cool (Scar-Jo in slo-mo, erupting through plate glass in latex!), which should ensure smooth progress in the modern movie business.
"Yet whatever philosophical nuggets were lurking amid Oshii's tangled plotting, they surely merited closer consideration by a filmmaker who wasn't trading in gloss, and doesn't merely regard human beings as elements of design."
"Bathed in violent neon colors and augmented by the fanciest 3D money can buy, every frame of Ghost in the Shell feels worked over to the max, but in the best possible way. What inventive verve the former ad-man Sanders (who's only on his second feature length film, after 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman) lacks, he makes up for in his focus and work ethic, in his dedication to recreating the idiosyncratic anime world and making it sing in live-action."
Ghost in the Shell is released in UK cinemas tomorrow (March 30) and US cinemas on Friday (March 31).
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