When Rupert Sanders’ live-action Ghost in the Shell premiered in 2017, it entered theaters wearing the husk of a classic. With Scarlett Johansson as Major and visuals directly lifted from Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime masterpiece, the film seemed determined to emulate greatness. But while it succeeded in capturing the aesthetic of cyberpunk, it struggled to deliver the existential weight of its source. Beneath its shimmering surface, something vital was missing — the ghost itself.
In this post, I’ll explore how the 2017 Ghost in the Shell becomes a commentary not just on identity, but on the hollowing out of art in the age of franchise filmmaking, cultural appropriation, and techno-nihilism.
I. Ghost, Shell, and the Death of Ambiguity
The anime's title is not metaphorical — it refers to a literal dualism: the ghost (the soul, or consciousness) housed inside the shell (a fully cybernetic body). In the original, Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cybernetic government agent who begins to question whether her ghost is truly hers, or a digital construct — and whether individuality survives in a fully networked world.
The 2017 film drastically simplifies this concept. Major Mira Killian is told her memories are fake; her real identity, Motoko Kusanagi, has been buried. The mystery becomes personal, not philosophical — a standard Hollywood plotline of amnesia, betrayal, and revenge. In its attempt to answer the question "Who am I?" definitively, the film ironically erases the ambiguity that gave the original its power.
“I know who I am,” she says in the final act — a sentiment that undermines the very essence of Ghost in the Shell, a story that originally ends with the transcendence of self.
II. The Cybernetic Gaze: Surveillance, Control, and Alienation
Visually, Ghost in the Shell (2017) is a marvel. Its cityscape is a love letter to neon-noir dystopia — towers gleam with holograms, geisha-bots unfold like nightmarish origami, and cybernetic enhancements blur the line between flesh and machine.
But this visual style isn’t just decoration. It reflects a world of total surveillance and commodified identity. In this society, individuality is constantly mediated by data, advertising, and control — and Major’s synthetic body is the ultimate expression of that.
Despite being the most advanced cybernetic being ever made, she has no autonomy. Her creators own her, direct her, and erase her past. In this way, the film (perhaps unintentionally) presents cyborg existence as the endpoint of capitalist commodification: your body is a product, your memories are curated, and your emotions are retrofitted to fit the narrative given to you.
III. The Invisibility of Race and the Problem of the White Shell
Much of the controversy around the film centered on Scarlett Johansson’s casting. Major, a character deeply tied to Japanese identity and philosophy, is played by a white woman. This becomes even more troubling when the film reveals that Major's original identity was that of a Japanese woman — her mind transplanted into a white, synthetic body.
This narrative device, intended as a justification, becomes a dystopian metaphor of racial erasure: a Japanese woman literally overwritten by a Western image.
The film thus unintentionally dramatizes cultural appropriation, using a Japanese soul in a Westernized shell to tell a story that visually mimics the original, but spiritually misunderstands it. It’s an apt metaphor for the film itself.
IV. The Feminist Body and Posthuman Paradox
Johansson’s performance is deliberately stiff, her movements robotic and devoid of warmth. Some critics called this bad acting; others read it as a performance of inhumanity. But this awkwardness can be viewed through a cyberfeminist lens.
Major’s body is hyper-sexualized by design (see: the thermoptic suit), but her character resists sexualization. She does not flirt, does not seduce — her body is a tool, not a lure. This dissonance reveals the tension between embodiment and agency. Major may be the most powerful being in her world, but she lacks ownership of her own body. She is literally manufactured — a theme with powerful resonance for feminist critiques of how women’s bodies are treated in both fiction and reality.
V. Memory, Trauma, and the Illusion of Emotion
“Your memories are fake, but your emotions are real,” Dr. Ouelet tells Major. This phrase is the film’s emotional thesis — but it’s also deeply disturbing. It suggests that emotional experience is more important than truth, that the illusion is enough.
This aligns closely with capitalist postmodernism, where authenticity is irrelevant so long as the experience "feels real." In this context, even trauma becomes a product — a story to make a weapon more obedient, more human-seeming, more marketable.
VI. Simulacra and the Missing Ghost
The 2017 film replicates several scenes from the anime nearly frame-for-frame: the water fight, the opening dive, the puppet-master interrogation. But without the surrounding philosophical framework, these moments become hollow. They look right, but feel wrong.
This is the essence of Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum — a copy without an original. The film has the shape of Ghost in the Shell, but lacks its essence. It’s not adaptation — it’s simulation.
What Remains in the Shell
In the end, Ghost in the Shell (2017) is both a cautionary tale and a symptom of its own critique. It is about a soul stolen and overwritten, a body colonized by power. Its flaws mirror its themes: identity stripped of history, aesthetics stripped of meaning, and philosophy reduced to spectacle.
Yet, perhaps in this failure lies a strange success. The film becomes a self-referential artifact — a ghostless shell mimicking life. It makes us yearn for the depth of the original, forcing us to ask: What is lost when we commodify identity, art, and even the soul?
And that, in its own distorted way, is a question worth asking.
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