The Hollywood whitewashing controversy casts a huge shadow on Rupert Sanders’ adaptation of Shirow Masamune’s classic Japanese Manga. And understandably so. Casting Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Lost in Translation) as lead in a story and setting so overtly futuristically Asian (an amalgam of Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai) makes absolutely no sense.
Advanced cyber enhancement in a world of technology has made Johansson the perfect killing machine: she’s there to rid the world of criminals and terrorists. But glitches and flashbacks are causing problems.
Ghost in the Shell looks stunning – effects, music, design. But content is sadly hit-and-miss, overly reliant on the heavy computer-generated imagery telling a heard-it-all-before storyline.
Rating: 35%
Director: Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman)
Writer: Jamie Moss (Street Kings), William Wheeler (Queen of Katwe, The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Ehren Kruger (Reindeer Games, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) – based on the comic by Shirow Masamune
Main cast: Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Lost in Translation), Pilou Asbæk (A War, Hijacking), Takeshi Kitano (Fireworks, Battle Royale)
An Opinion or Two 