Based on the manga and anime expectations for this big budget hollywood outing were understandably high. Did it succeed?

Well … yes and no. The originals are highly regarded, so the expectations were always going to be there. It didn’t help that the casting of Johansson as protagonist Motoko Kusanagi kicked of claims of whitewashing and diluting the stories Japanese heritage. The originals have the space (as a manga and TV series) to develop character and explore the themes which a hollywood film is never going to do, and hollywood will always simplify for a mainstream audience and be limited by the film’s running time. So I would argue that it’s best to take the film ‘as is’ on it’s own merits. Though I can’t see why casting a Japanese actress would have been a problem.

And it so nearly succeeds. As an action movie it plays Johansson really well who provides the required combination of muscle and introspection required, there are some excellent scenes with quality CGI. Where it fails is in the plotting. At the start it feels a bit wobbly in trying to establish the characters and issues, something that is survived by knowing the originals, but then becomes a too simplistic find-the-baddie in the final acts. And it would have strengthened the film to have more on the concept of what it means to “be human” which is arguably the whole ghost in the shell theme.

Still, its a more than watchable film. Kusanagi (“the Major”) is a unique full cyborg - completely artificial except for the brain - and is part of a shadowy government organisation fighting increasingly high tech terrorists the latest of which seems to have found a way to literally hack humans (many of who by now have cyborg implants) into doing his will. As section 9 work to uncover the terrorist, Kusanagi realises that she may not have been told the truth about her own origins.

P.S. If you ever get into an argument about cyborgs, put your money on Motoko Kusanagi. The character is seriously badass. She would have hacked Arnie Terminators CPU and ripped his arms off before he’d utter a single “hasta la vista”. Fast, smart and near invisible.