The Hollywood whitewashing controversy casts a huge shadow on Rupert Sanders’ (Snow White and the Huntsman) 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%
An Opinion or Two 