'Ghost in the Shell' Gets Mixed Reviews Over Scarlett Johansson's Acting, Loss of 'Original Spirit'
"Ghost in the Shell" launches to cinemas everywhere this weekend, starting March 31. The westernized live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga classic by Masamune Shirow has been greeted with mixed reviews, praising the visuals of the movie on one hand while lamenting how little of the original source material's subversive spirit remained in this Hollywood remake.
The 2017 remake of "Ghost in the Shell," based on the manga series of the same name and borrowing much from the 90s anime adaptation by Mamoru Oshii, was released yesterday to theaters for its first weekend at the box office. The film has received an overall lukewarm reception from critics, earning a Metacritic score of 53, according to the review consensus site. This score, based on reviews from 39 critics from established news and media outlets, is deemed "mixed or average" as described by the site's rating system description.
Variety has compiled reviews from critics from noted news and media outlets, and in summary, the reviews point to the movie's visuals and details as orchestrated by director Rupert Sanders and the sheer box-office draw of Scarlett Johansson as the strong points of the live-action adaptation.
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Critics from Rolling Stone and Polygon, among others, agree that the main issue with "Ghost in the Shell" is the writing, in which under the gloss and lights of the colorful cyberpunk aesthetic and anime scene recreations of the remake, little remains of the eerie atmosphere of the original material. A running theme among the critics that do not hold a favorable impression of "Ghost in the Shell" is how the westernized remake has ultimately resulted in a movie tooled for financial and commercial considerations, that it is "all shell, no ghost."
Rolling Stone has summarized the overall criticism of the film as a cult classic that's been scrubbed and sanitized to be an inoffensive big-budget flick for a global audience. "Ghost in the Shell" director Rupert Sanders is there to "finish a job and make it look sleek," and apparently, not much beyond that.
