You can watch Ghost in the Shell online, for free, here.Here's the Wikipedia page.
Hello, old friend. It's been a while.
Shall we say around, I dunno, 10 years? Maybe more. Still, that music
gets me right in the pit of my stomach and my heart is in my mouth
for the first scene.
This film is exactly to my tastes: the
animation style, the storyline, the themes, the fight scenes, the
weaponry... So many things fall just right in all the right places to
make a flawless piece of cinema that I haven't watched in far too
long.
Kusanagi (I know, a FEMALE protagonist!
In the 90's! Revolutionary, right?) is a cyborg and the leader of an
assault team for Public Security Section 9. She gets naked pretty
quick, and is unclothed various times throughout the film, but this
is not always pretty, especially nearer the end. There's a hacker on
the loose known only as 'The Puppetmaster' because of his particular
taste for 'ghost hacking' various people, in particular politicians,
and it's up to Kusanagi and her team to bring him down. Only things
get complicated pretty quickly when all the leads they have turn out
to have been people who have been ghost hacked by the guy. They get
lucky and find him though, so it's all ok, only he's not really a he,
he's sort of a sentient computer mind... and he wants to get jiggy
with Kusanagi's mind. Mind you, she isn't exactly saying no, so
various government departments are involved in stealing the body he
is trapped in, and she hunts him down so she can see what's going on
in there, which involves her fighting a tank on her own and almost
dying FOREVER until Batou (her colleague – pretty sure he has a
thing for her, he looks away when she gets naked and has the decency
to cover her mutilated body later on) blows it the hell up with an
RPG. So Kusanagi and the Puppetmaster have some 'alone time' and then
everyone gets blown up, only they don't really and it's all pretty
cool, but she isn't the original Kusanagi any more. The end.
It's a great work of sci-fi, no doubt
about it. The themes of identity and gender running through the movie
are unmissable, whole scenes and monologues are dedicated to drawing
the viewers' attention to it. I mean, why would a cyborg go diving?
Anyway, it's always nice to be reminded that it isn't what's on the
outside that counts. The animation is gorgeous, wonderfully dark and
detailed; considering how cutting edge it was when it was first
released, there are still few things around now that can touch it in
terms of animation quality, and indeed overall. The soundtrack
deserves a nod too, without it the film would be missing something
important. There is one piece of music that rears its head throughout
that is some of the creepiest, most haunting stuff I have ever heard,
and yet it is SO GOOD. And SO RECOGNISABLE. Just awesome.
Should anyone watch this movie?: Hell
yeah. It's a given. Even if you aren't an anime fan, this is entirely
worth it for everything it stands for. Forget the Matrix, or any of
the Terminator films, this, THIS, is what the future holds. And you
should be scared. Let's not forget this is only 15 years
away...
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