Title: Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Director: Kazuchika Kise, Kazuya Nomura
Starring: Maaya Sakamoto, Ken’ichirô Matsuda, Ikkyu Juku
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins

What It Is: Taking place in the year 2027, and in a world where cyborgs now living with humanity there lives a zero model cyborg by the name of Motoko Kusanagi. Major as she is known to her crew of tech-enhanced borgs must figure out who planned the secret meeting that took out the Prime Minister of Japan. In addition, her long time friend Kurutsu died along with the Prime Minister…or did she?

What We Think: There’re a lot of words that don’t lead to anything. A lot of the scenes in this film are so stuffed with exposition you feel there’s little room for anything else. There’s a difference between hiding your exposition within the story and what this film does which is moving away from the narrative in order to fill the gaps. This can sometimes be a problem with Anime or Manga products. They want to too often over tell their story. Overall that story is so chock full o nonsense you might get lost. There’s a story about Major’s friend Kurutsu, and then a doppelganger that confuses the audience all the more unless you’re truly intent on your monitoring of the events.

Our Grade: C-, It fails to grasps the audience and instead focuses on the cold machine like World it is set in. There isn’t anything for the audience to gravitate towards. Sure the character of Major Kusanagi is going to be familiar to any fans of the 1980’s cyber-punk original. I wish it had followed that story and continuity more so than it does the newer television version. Sure it had the feel, and sure the new look was interesting but I’m going to give only a slight recommendation and it’ll be mostly aimed towards fans of the most recent television incarnation of this.