Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part IV: Themes

Yes, the film has themes! And they tie into each other! The film isn’t just throwing things to a wall and seeing what sticks. What a pleasant surprise.

Major Mira Killian, throughout the film, constantly asks herself whether she is a real human or not. At times, she doesn’t feel much like a person. There is a scene that can be found in the trailer, where the Major is having her arm repaired by Dr. Ouelet, who scolds Major Mira Killian that she needs to be more careful, but the Major tells the doctor that maybe next time the doctor can make her better. Major Mira Killian’s artificial body is an important source of conflict in regards to how she feels about her personhood.

There’s this lovely scene where the Major is all confused after finding out about Project 2571 and she is trying to find herself, where she goes looking around what I assume is some sort of red light district. There, she finds Lia. Major Mira Killian asks Lia whether she is human (she is). This tells us something subtle, both about the world, and about one of the many reasons the Major feels inhuman: The line between robots and cyborgs has become so blurred in this world that one cannot know at first sight whether it’s a robot or not. Sharp-eyed viewers might remember the robot bodyguards at the business meeting between the Hanka Robotics rep and the President of the African Federation; they looked like human bodyguards until they were shot out all to hell and slumped on the floor.

Lia, once they are in a private room, asks the Major what is she — the Major’s answer? She doesn’t know. Lia has fake eyelashes and something that I assume to be some sort of synthetic skin that covers her mouth and nose areas, possibly to enhance sensations (I have no idea.) It speaks volumes about the internal conflict the Major is facing that she asks Lia to take all of that off, and then, and only then, does the Major gives into a kiss for the human contact she craves. It’s a lovely character study, and something which the film doesn’t explore to its full potential.

Best character moment.

Also, it’s a reference to her manga character, where her sexual preferences are ‘anything that moves’, and there are several lesbian encounters depicted.

The theme of personhood and humanity is really important to her character arch. However, the film never disputes the fact that she is human, there’s no sense of narrative stakes in regards to her arch. Never at any time does the audience questions whether the Major is human, so her conflict over that is just to give her some emotional growth in the film, given that she is an uber badass so we know she’ll eventually prevail in the action scenes over her opponents.

(Side note: The film starts and ends with bookends. At the beginning, the Major is on top of a building at night, waiting for orders, and decides to go inside in spite of Chief Aramaki’s orders. At the end, the Major on top of a building in daylight, waiting for orders, and gets Chief Aramaki’s permission to throw herself into battle. But this time the Major is sure of who she is as a person; it can be said nighttime and daylight during this scenes reflect her inner turmoil.)

This leads us neatly into another major theme in the film. The reason why humans and robots cannot be easily told apart is transhumanism. Transhumanism is a philosophy that can be succinctly described as humanity taking the reigns of our own evolution via technology in order to overcome human limitations. In an unusual fashion for a Hollywood cyberpunk film, this film is not explicitly anti-transhumanist. I can rattle off a bunch of films where transhumanism doesn’t exactly come out on top, such as Transcendence (2014), Blade Runner (1982), Surrogates (2004), and so on and so forth, but this is the first time I’ve come across a film where transhumanism is presented featuring not only its ugliness but all of its potential.

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment:
Check out those super-efficient robot-hands.

On one hand, with all the brain-hacking going around, that’s clearly a huge inconvenience. The possibility that our memories might become even more subjective and unreal is terrifying. This is pointed out to us in three instances: The garbage collector who gets brain-hacked into a family life so beautiful that he simply cannot deal with the fact that all of it is fake so he kills himself, the way Kuze and the Major have both been wiped out of memories to the point it drives Kuze mad and in a search for them, and the fact that none of the memories present in the head of the Major at the beginning of the film are hers save for the hallucinations Dr. Ouelet is hard at work to suppress.

There’s also the fact that personhood is becoming even more convoluted and arbitrary. Kuze doesn’t feel the need to live out as a human, he invites the Major to upload her ghost into the neural network he created, to evolve and leave those humans behind, but Major Mira Killian feels that the physical world is the world for her. So does that make Kuze less of a person? Clearly, no; although a villain, his suffering is distintly human, a ‘disposable’ runaway once named Hideo who has been robbed of his own self. As pointed out when discussing personhood, it’s becoming very difficult to tell apart humans and machines; although, there seems to be an in-universe consensus that, in the case of full-body cyborgs such as the Major, the fact that she has a ghost, a brain, is what makes her human, as Batou points out to her after the robo-geisha fight scene (which makes the Major mad because, to her, that is a poor consolation when she cannot ascertain for herself that there is indeed a brain doing the thinking.)

But there is also so much potential, so much convenience. The way Section 9 can communicate with each other without talking, the incredible strength in the Major’s cybernetic body, as well as a host of other, more mundane things. One of the first things we learn about humanity in the film’s world is that humanity increasingly looks at their bodies as something you can just upgrade with a better part born out of human ingenuity. The instance in which this is most clear is also when we meet face to face the rest of Major Mira Killlian’s co-workers; there’s Ishikawa (Lasarus Ratuere), who the others are egging on to showing them if he has gotten another improved body part, and he shows all of them a belly scar — he has gotten a new liver. Now he can party all night, baby! And this is not presented as a bad thing, it’s just something that happens. Or the little girl who can sing French; imagine how incredible would be to be able to learn a new language just like that.

I suppose that, narratively, we are meant to take a more negative view of transhumanism since the story nudges us that way. When we learn about the Major’s true identity, it turns out Motoko spent some of her time being what would be the equivalent of a Luddite in this film; she used to spray-paint protest slogans about the way we were losing our soul to cybernetics. But aside from this bit, I don’t feel as if body modification is presented as bad. It’s just a feature of the setting, something everyone does; maybe a necessity by this point.

Which takes us to consent. This is the third major theme the film deals with. While the Major having a fake body, and people having high-tech body parts are not presented as bad things, what is presented as unequivocally wrong is whether they consented to those modifications.

The reason Kuze is a villain, is that he not only is on a killing rampage, but that he’s violating people’s very minds. Dr. Ouelet has to die to be redeemed, because she messed with Kuze’s and the Major’s minds, as well as those of 97 other people! You should already feel uneasy about the iffy conception this world has of consent from the business meeting between the Hanka Robotics rep and the President of the African Federation, for the daughter of the Hanka rep has been modded. Obviously such a young child cannot understand the extent of the, perhaps irreversible, modification she was being subjected to. Was she even asked about it? Probably not.

Every time there is a mod explicitly presented as positive, is because those people consented to it. Like how Batou upgrades his eyes and then he comments that he will finally have eyes as good as the Major’s, Ishikawa’s new liver. The fact that Togusa doesn’t want to get modded is treated as old-fashioned, but not bad; charming in a way akin to the way Aramaki prizes his Magnum. And the most monstruous villainy is that of Cutter’s, who, in service of power and profit, utterly disregards the bodily integrity of those society has deemed as disposable in pursuit of his goals. The Major has to give her consent in order to have her mind messed about. Or at least that’s what she thinks. The most bone-chilling event in the film is when the Major is repeating, like a mantra, ‘my name is Major Mira Killian and I do not consent to this data deletion’, to which Dr. Ouelet replies, ‘we never really needed your consent’.

The themes tie into each other. They weren’t chosen at random.

Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part III: Setting

We really need to talk about future Japan, because it’s fascinating. The film has several things present from the manga and the anime films, as it is to be expected, but the filmmakers infused the setting with its own originality.

That right there is a cool video showing what I’m talking about. It compares some filming locations in Hong Kong with the film. The work they did is astonishing.

While some people might be annoyed by the fact that no characters other than some Japanese background extras and Chief Aramaki seem to speak actual Japanese on-screen, I’m actually not all that bothered by it. The film establishes a possible reason for this at the outset. When the Hanka Robotics rep that gets brain-hacked and the President of the African Federation are having a business meeting, the Hanka rep plays a recording of a child singing in French. It’s his daughter, and he tells the President of the African Federation that in the time that it took his daughter learn Au claire de la lune (a French folk song), she learned the entirety of the French language. Done.

Clearly the daughter has the latest language implant tech, unlike our adult characters who each speak in their respective languages — nonetheless they can still understand each other. Yes, I know; this is a lazy way of not including too many foreign languages in order to, in a business exec’s mind, not to alienate the US audience and so on, but at least it’s supported by the setting itself. And it’s not an something paraded in front of us, either.

Major Mira Killian has fake memories in her brain, implanted by Dr. Ouelet as ‘motivation’ to fight terrorists with Section 9. You see, the story goes that she came into Japan in a refugee boat that was blown up by a terrorist attack. The damage was so bad that she lost almost all of her body. Leaving aside the fact that this revelation that comes near the climax, while a surprise, it’s already substantiated by the poor garbage truck driver that had fake memories hacked into him by Kuze. It should tell us something about the setting that the Major finds it plausible that she came in a refugee boat.

The Japan in the film is more ethnically diverse than today’s Japan; many ethnicities can be seen in the background. There’s a particular shot that shows this best; what better way to convey the changing face of the film’s Japan than by doing a close up of a Black Buddhist? It plays with the stereotype, even though, in the real world there are Buddhists who are black, it’s not what is usually pictured when we hear the word ‘Buddhism’.

I like the symmetry in the shot, too.

Today’s Japan is a nation that’s estimated to be 98,5% ethnically Japanese; it’s a fairly homogeneous country. Clearly, as the film’s cyberpunk world emerged, in typical cyberpunk fashion, other nations buckled under the power of megacorps and destabilized, causing an influx of refugees.

A lot of cyberpunk works would be set inside of one of this megacorp-run nations, or in another sort of dystopia. Something that has always made the Ghost in the Shell franchise unique is that, in contrast to other works, in future Japan the rule of law still pervades hard, as pointed out in the first confrontation between Cutter and Chief Aramaki — Aramaki immediately dismisses the notion that the Prime Minister would take Cutter’s word over his own. Which makes it extra brilliant, in a way, that the live-action adaptation updates future Japan to be more ethnically diverse, because of course refugees would strive to go to the most stable nation possible in times of strife. It’s kind of a subtle nod to the situation we are living in right now in the world.

That’s not to say there aren’t any shady buisness deals or anything. Major Mira Killian and Batou at some point shoot up some sort of yakuza underground club, not to mention the whole of the unethical experiments tied to Project 2571, the one that resulted in the creation of the Major. There’s also a scene where some shady trafficker, when Batou and the Major are on the way to the marketplace, attempts to sell the Major some black-market body parts or something.

In general the street scenes are amazing.
Look at the background details.

I don’t know where to put this, but the film thinks itself very clever when it turns out that, before the Major, there has been other 98 people that have been experimented on to become full-body cyborgs and weapons useful to the Major. So this makes Major Mira Killian the 99th test subject, a human-machine dream combination, working at Section 9.

I told you future Japan was fascinating.


Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part II: Aesthetics

I can’t find a better word that encompasses set design, cinematography and so on, therefore ‘aesthetics’ will have to do.

Do any readers remember how in my write-up about the film preview I waxed on about how the influence of Transformers and TRON: Legacy had ruined sci-fi flicks’ colour palettes? Yes, I rescind that criticism in regards to this film. I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong. To cut a long story short, while I had already seen both Ghost in the Shell anime films by Mamoru Oshii’s by the time I saw the film preview at the cinema, I could not remember at the time much about Ghost in the Shell: Innocence; the second anime film.

Because of this I didn’t catch on to the fact that the live-action film’s colour palette is modeled on Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, rather than on the first anime film. A friend I went with to the cinema when I saw the live-action film was the one who pointed it out to me, so I looked up and skimmed through the second film. I saw both anime films about six years ago; that’s over a quarter of my life, so cut me some slack here.

Anyway, I still maintain the whole look of the film is very washed out, the colour palette is drab, and the only really vibrant colour that pops out is green — something most evident when Chief Aramaki and Cutter have their final face-off at Cutter’s office. The film would be much improved visually if they just did away with the filters. there is too much blue. Me no likey. You can watch this video about some of the work New Zealand VFX studio WETA did on the film, and see for yourself how much better the pre-processed scenes look:

Still, I have quibbles with the special effects in this film. At some points they don’t look real. The intro of the film, where they make the body of the Major, can be labelled as CGI from a mile away. And some effects from the fight scenes don’t look quite right. Major Mira Killian’s body sometimes looks nude, or sometimes looks as if it has a flesh-coloured skin-tight armor (which is actually the intended effect.) There’s a particular stunt in the final fight scene against the mecha controlled by Cutter where the Major runs up some debris, which looks really cartoony, and it was way too evident that Scarlett was using stunt wires.

Speaking of action scenes, my enthusiasm for the first action set piece featuring the robo-geishas has been dampened somewhat upon further reflection because it turns out it’s a problematic scene, but I still can gush about gorgeous it is. I talked in the article about the preview how it seemed a great update on the theme of a Japanese tea salon, and so on.

Now I want to talk more about the robo-geishas themselves. It didn’t hit me until I skimmed through Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, however, the robo-geishas are a fusion between the Hadaly model that goes amok in that film for reasons that’d be spoileriffic, and the karakuri ningyō, a type of traditional Japanese automata mostly sold as luxury items from the Edo period onwards. It bears saying that Japanese automata are also featured in Ghost in the Shell: Innocence when Batou and Togusa go visit uber-hacker Kim, albeit in a very low-key way. If anybody watched the video on the work WETA did for the film, then one would have seen a lot about the robo-geishas, the artistry of their costumes, the faces, everything. I would like people to compare and contrast with the surprisingly complex movements of these Japanese dolls:

Amazing, isn’t it? And I like that. I like that the filmmakers did not only lean on the anime films but looked to the original sources of inspiration in order to make a more immersive experience. It’s reinventing the material.

The city in general, was clearly meant to evoke Tokyo. The city is never named inside of the film specifically, but the ambience, the ads, apartment buildings, everything just screams ‘Tokyo!’ There were tons of Japanese writing everywhere. The holographic ads that were pervasive throughout the cityscape and storefronts really add to the ambience. They were just so full of life, advertising different products, fitness; and they featured lots of (presumably) Japanese people just modelling around.

(Side note: In keeping with the multi-cultural approach, there is even an ad featuring a woman in a niqab in the background on top of a building! And one with a Buddhist monk. The buildings were also appropriately oppressive and industrial-looking, ideal for a steampunk setting.)

There was nary a plant in sight, which contributed to the artificial feeling of the whole city and how it has changed. In the blocks of the heavily residential areas there was a lot of garbage, giving off an air of overpopulation.

Another scene I really liked is when Major Mira Killian has to accompany Batou through a street market, and Batou picks up bones for his dog. They managed to blend seamlessly the future with the streetmarket. In my country there are several streetmarkets and I felt transported into that. I can really see how this vision of the future the film presents to me could become reality. The holo ads were ubiquitous, and ‘hung’ in the same way banners would or how paper ads would be plastered to the stalls. There were even some people bickering in the background at the various stalls and sellers. Why was this scene so brief? It’s literally one of the best things ever.

Having said all that, the Ghost in the Shell anime films didn’t shy away from colour in their urban settings, unlike this live-action adaptation. It’s as if the producers feared if the reds and yellows looked too bright, somebody might confuse this film with a happy film, somehow.

Look at all the pretty colours in the anime films.

The soundtrack is nothing much to write home about except for some sort of bell rings in certain moments that, to my ears, echoed Kenji Kawai’s Making of a Cyborg, an OST from the Ghost in the Shell anime film. I suggest you go listen to it, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Also, Making of a Cyborg makes an appearance for the film’s credits, so it’s a nice homage.

A lot of the heavy duty machinery, such as the robot that fights Major Mira Killian in the climax, are just the models from the anime films and the mangas updated to look believable in the live-action adaptation. It’s good work, although nothing particularly original. Also, to give credit where credit is due, all the extras were either appropriately outfitted to the setting or had some post-production done over them so they looked like another one of the faceless individuals amongst the cybernetically-augmented masses.

I’m not too happy with the editing, though. In several of the fight scenes, after a while it just looks messy. There’s a fight scene where Major is electroshocked by Kuze in dark light conditions, and it cannot be appreciated in full effect because of the filters and the confusing editing. The idea is cool; its execution, not so much.

Next week, Part III!

Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.

Ghost in the Shell Film Analysis Part I: Live-action vs. Anime Canon

I’m sure you noticed that in my film review I didn’t complain about the Major acting out of character. It’s because that is not a criticism I’m not interested in making, and I’m going to explain why.

It’s tempting to compare the Major to how she behaved in the anime films. Scarlett’s Major is very much her own character. It is  tradition in the Ghost in the Shell franchise that they offer their own interpretation of the characters in every incarnation.

The Major’s character in the anime films is quite different from how she is in the manga – especially in the beginning –and from how she is in the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and yet again from how she is in Ghost in the Shell: Arise. Just to get into the oldest characterizations, the manga and anime films: In the original manga by Shirow Masamune, at the beginning, the Major is a hard-drinking woman who likes to party and who is a total bitch, but she becomes more ponderous and introspective after her fight with the Puppet Master; whereas in Mamoru Oshii’s films she is philosophical and mature from the outset.

The red-head with her legs spread and her boobs censored?
Our manga hero, ladies and gentlemen.

The manga can be legally bought here, translated into English and published by Dark Horse.

That said, the Hollywood action flick gets inspiration from the anime films. In fact, it draws almost exclusively from them, while carving out its own narrative.

That’s a good place to start, with the narrative. You see, in the anime films, the narrative is slow-paced; they don’t repeat anything and expects the audience to figure things out for themselves and, if you haven’t been paying attention, one might find oneself very confused as how usually happens with Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, the continuation of the original Ghost in the Shell anime film. This Hollywood film is a lot more in-your-face, and tries to repeat things the audience might find relevant for later. However, the live-action film is not intellectually insulting, it has some subtlety in it — colour me shocked, for real! Clearly, it expects that the audiences have brains and wants them to use them.

As for characters, the film introduces some reworkings and tries to build on the canon. Dr. Ouelet is one such invention; never in any of the prior incarnations of the Ghost in the Shell story do we find out exactly how Major acquired her cyborg body and who gave it to her. Cutter is another one. Major herself, in the manga and anime mediums, has origins shrouded in mystery, since they’re not actually all that important to the ultimate questions the story grapples with; ‘what is existence?’ and ‘is she alive?’ Dr. Dahlin (Anamaria Marinca), the specialist from Hanka Robotics that assists Batou and Major in the forensics investigation of the first killing, is quite obviously inspired in Dr. Haraway, Section 9’s forensics specialist in Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

There is an interesting twist to Batou himself; in all his prior incarnations he had already had his cybernetic eyes, whereas in the live-action film he acquires them during the film’s run, which is fairly significant because it ties into the film’s themes. Tragically, there is a bunch of under-utilized characters in the live-action film, such as the mostly-muggle Togusa (Chin Han), the understated badassery of Chief Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) and fellow Section 9 team member Ladriya (Danusia Samal), and whom I presume is a sex worker called Lia (Adwoa Aboah). I have to make a note of the fact that Togusa being mostly unaugmented is important for Major in the Ghost in the Shell anime film, whereas in the live-action film Togusa just exists to be contrasted to other augmented characters. On the other hand, Chief Aramaki in the anime films and the live-action incarnation seems to be of similar disposition. I really like him as a character, and if he were real, I’d really like him as a person.

I don’t recall if it’s ever mentioned in Mamoru Oshii’s films, but in the manga the corporation that provides and cares for the augmentations and artifical bodies of the people in Section 9 is called Megatech. Hanka Robotics fills that role. I believe the name change was done because, in the 90s, ‘Megatech’ was just a low-key name for a megacorp of a cyberpunk world, whereas in 2017 it’s a clichéd name that today’s genre-savvy audiences are going to find cheesy. This film does not want to be cheesy. So there has been some changes made in service of better translating the film to modern audiences. Note that this is not a consideration for Western audiences in general, just a capitulation to the awareness of genre tropes in today’s audiences.

Overall, I think the changes have been in favour of the narrative… for the most part.

Stay tuned for Part II!

Rosario is an early-twenties, outspoken woman, who likes to burrow between piles of books, and store miscellaneous trivia in her head.