‘Ghost in the Shell’ Review Roundup: Whitewashing Aside, Critics Love Scarlett Johansson

Johansson and the film’s visuals are a hit, but critics say it’s no match for the original

While critics praised director Rupert Sanders and his team for turning the gorgeous visuals of Oshii’s film into a dark yet vibrant CGI cyberscape, most said the remake fails to successfully adapt the original’s ambiguous plot and complex themes about artificial intelligence.

[...] what about Scarlett Johansson, who has been dogged with claims of “whitewashing” for taking a role in an Asian enterprise?

There are close parallels to her performance in ‘Under The Skin,’ where she played a predatory alien in a human form of limited functionality, and also shades of the super-woman Lucy, not to mention Black Widow from the Marvel movies (though there she was a different kind of programmed killing machine).

Despite casting one of the worlds most desirable women and encasing her in a nude body suit, this is a remarkably sexless enterprise.Plus the cardboard cutout characters are dwarfed by the locations and the drama is lost in the scrambled action sequences.

‘Ghost In The Shell’ might not stack up plot-wise but what it does reinforce is Scarlett Johansson’s status as one of the great stars of her era; an actress with the presence, glamour and personality to hold together even the most outlandish and bizarre of blockbusters.

‘Ghost in the Shell’ is a come-sit-on-my-knee lesson which states that all the lavish, wannabe eye-popping production design in the world don’t mean squat if you’ve got no characters, no story, no action and no faith in the audience to take up the thread of your weak drama.