Update November 2019: Now two years later I re-watched this movie, this time on BluRay, and enjoyed it, most of it seemed new, the visuals and sound track are great and the futuristic story is interesting. It is somewhat discouraging to see the many praising "10" reviews or equally the many "1" or "2" reviews saying this movie is trash. Neither extreme is accurate, the movie is well-made and entertaining for anyone with a mind open to being entertained.
Original 2017 comments: My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. I have been seeing trailers for this movie for a time now and have been anxious to see it, plus I have been a Scarlett Johansson fan since her 1998 role in "The Horse Whisperer."
In the way of background, back in the late 1980s and the 1990s a series of books were published in Japan, Ghost in the Shell, known in Japan as Mobile Armored Riot Police. The "ghost" refers to the soul that people have and "the shell" refers to taking a person's surviving brain, with soul, and transplanting it into a sophisticated robot "shell".
Set in the future, in an unnamed Japanese city, in this movie Scarlett Johansson is introduced to us as "Major" and she works for the fictional counter-cyber-terrorist organization Public Security Section 9. We later find out her full name is Major Motoko Kusanagi.
As the movie opens we see Major on what looks like an operating table, she is having difficulty processing who she is and where she is. She is told that of her family she is the lone survivor of a boat disaster and they were able to save her brain and "ghost" and she now has a new "shell" of a body. She simply assumes they are finding a way to save her.
However later she finds out she has been deceived, she is part of a broader experimental program to create agents like her. Yet she is a special agent to fight cyber crime. I enjoyed the movie for the Sci-Fi aspects of it but the movie isn't always easy to follow and is filled with guns and shootings, too much big guns and shooting, as it seems most movies like this have these days. The characterizations are well done as well as the visuals and sounds.
Original 2017 comments: My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. I have been seeing trailers for this movie for a time now and have been anxious to see it, plus I have been a Scarlett Johansson fan since her 1998 role in "The Horse Whisperer."
In the way of background, back in the late 1980s and the 1990s a series of books were published in Japan, Ghost in the Shell, known in Japan as Mobile Armored Riot Police. The "ghost" refers to the soul that people have and "the shell" refers to taking a person's surviving brain, with soul, and transplanting it into a sophisticated robot "shell".
Set in the future, in an unnamed Japanese city, in this movie Scarlett Johansson is introduced to us as "Major" and she works for the fictional counter-cyber-terrorist organization Public Security Section 9. We later find out her full name is Major Motoko Kusanagi.
As the movie opens we see Major on what looks like an operating table, she is having difficulty processing who she is and where she is. She is told that of her family she is the lone survivor of a boat disaster and they were able to save her brain and "ghost" and she now has a new "shell" of a body. She simply assumes they are finding a way to save her.
However later she finds out she has been deceived, she is part of a broader experimental program to create agents like her. Yet she is a special agent to fight cyber crime. I enjoyed the movie for the Sci-Fi aspects of it but the movie isn't always easy to follow and is filled with guns and shootings, too much big guns and shooting, as it seems most movies like this have these days. The characterizations are well done as well as the visuals and sounds.