No. No, it patently cannot. Despite the borrowed motifs, visual cues and supporting characters - ghosts of the previous incarnation - this is a plodding, uninspired and artless cinematic slog.
Scarlett Johansson plays Major, a slim and slinky robocop whose brain is transferred into a synthetic shell after an ostensible terrorist bombing in the opening moments. Reborn, in a trippy and arresting early sequence, as a machine with a human soul, Major goes to work as an agent for counter-terrorism initiative Section 9, investigating hacking crimes - which, in a megacity filled with cybernetically-enhanced humans, is serious business.
While responding to the assassination of a scientist working for Hanka Robotics - the shadowy corporation that designed Killian herself - she crosses paths with an imposing and messianic foe who leads her on a journey to uncover the truth of her creation and the meaning behind the “glitches” she has been experiencing in her consciousness.
Draw a Venn diagram of Blade Runner (the original and the sequel), Total Recall, Ex Machina, The Fifth Element, The Bourne Identity, and, of course, Robocop - and in that brown, undifferentiated mess where they all meet you will find this iteration of Ghost in the Shell.
It is derivative, borrowing all of its visual, audial and thematic identity from elsewhere. In fact, add the Matrix to that diagram. And John Wick, from which it unsuccessfully attempts to lift the measured, balletic gunplay.
It is artless, with a plot that flails from one narrative cliche to the next like a drowning sailor grasping for passing driftwood. Shadowy corporation with a hidden agenda? Check. CEO wanting to use a scientific breakthrough for military purposes? Check. Protagonist with amnesia? Antagonist who is the only one who can reveal the truth of the protagonist’s backstory? Antagonist with a plan that involves initially being captured? Protagonist framed for murder and forced to go rogue to reveal conspiracy? Check, check, check, check.
I imagine the screenwriters, like Major's creators, sewing the script together from existing pieces they had leftover from a million other projects. The result is that the story as a whole doesn’t hold together, it looks just about like a story if you don’t pay it too much attention, if you don’t watch it move - but as soon as you peer closely the cracks start to show. Plot points are taken up then unceremoniously dumped a few minutes later, and logic is left squarely at the door.
Here’s an example: the initial terrorist attack that introduces us to Major's unit and role. After an establishing shot swooping through a neo-noir cityscape at night (you know, neon billboards, holographic advertisements, gilded towers of darkened glass), we come to Major, stood resolutely on a rooftop, “On site, awaiting instructions.”
Her unit commander, a taciturn Takeshi Kitano (playing against type, ahem) orders her to “Review and report.” Major scans the building and finds there’s a Hanka scientist meeting a foreign dignitary, and that the meeting is being hacked.
But… but… If she only just found this out then what was she doing “on site” in the first place? What was her mission? Go to a random rooftop and start listening and see if there’s any craic?
Anyway, having luckily stumbled upon a potential crime, she stands and listens until terrorists break into the meeting below and start shooting. She asks on comms where her back-up is - two minutes out - and decides that is too long, and starts prepping her dive suit. The commander orders her to stop - I have no idea why, it just makes good drama when your protagonist disobeys orders - and Major leaps from the roof, and somehow through the window of the meeting room far below, and takes out the terrorists.
Some of the terrorists are men in black suits who break into the room, but some are the robot geisha who the Hanka scientist was (I think) showing off to the dignitary. In fact the men in black suits were robots as well. And the robots were hacked remotely and forced to become killers.
Major and her squadmates, who arrive as Major is finishing up with the last killer robot, don’t actually achieve anything - the scientist is killed, the hacker has done what he wanted - but the film plays it as if they’ve just saved the day.
To keep the engine of the plot in motion Major then discovers that she can meld her consciousness with one of the damaged geisha to attempt to learn who hacked into it. She is again ordered to refrain - it’s too dangerous - but she again disobeys and plugs herself in and dives into the robot’s primitive mind.
But uh oh - turns out the hacker has laid traps for her (exactly as was presumed), and she starts to be swallowed by a virus code. Her squadmate, watching her body fitting and squirming, like how Trinity watched Neo when he was plugged into the Matrix, starts yelling that they need to find a way to get her out, that she’s going to be lost, yada yada blah blah. Finally, right as Major is about to die, her squadmate leaps and yanks out the cable connecting her to the robot, and she wakes up, gasping.
So… umm. If pulling the plug out could have fixed everything all along then where was the tension?
But never mind that, because Major, gulping down air, visibly shaken, proclaims that she now knows where to find the hacker.
And that’s exciting, so now we’re off for another action scene (because obviously it’s a trap, and the hacker knows they’re coming) … and we just bound on in this way, a pinball bashed from here to there, no depth or meaning to any of it, just flashing lights and loud noises and distracting visuals.
… It’s late at night as I write this, and I’m exhausted, so perhaps I'm being harsher on Ghost in the Shell than it deserves. It’s not egregious. It does look slick and impressive, although maximalist, and lacking focus. It has a decent pace to it, and Scarlett Johansson, although undeniably a case of whitewashed casting to make the Japanese original more appealing for Western audiences, puts in a decent performance as the confused and isolated woman turned into a walking weapon.
But then don’t the antagonists of the narrative do to her character exactly what director Rupert Sanders, along with all the writers and producers, do to her, the actor, in this film? Take someone whole and real and complex and turn her into a skintight catsuit, an object for salacious shots, a sexualised walking weapon? That the filmmakers pay lip service to a plot in which such actions are called out as reprehensible in no way assuages this - in fact it is simply them having their cake and eating it too. They do the same with the whitewashing, baking a reason for it into the plot, as if the demands of the story called for a Caucasian actress, and not the concerns of money-hungry studio executives.
This could have been an interesting film, using the stylistic trappings of the original to explore themes of body autonomy, sexual objectification and shifting cultural identity. Or it could have stuck with the original’s meditations on the dehumanising effects of the encroachment of technology into the sphere of the soul.
As it is it does neither, instead choosing to fall back on worn Hollywood tropes to tell what is at heart a bland and uninteresting story. The dialogue is flat, expositional, and frequently asinine. Characters are underdeveloped. The plot is riddled with holes.
Less an acrobatic cyborg leaping into action, then, and more one of these hapless fellas. Time to call for a robot exorcist, methinks.
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