 They created me, but they cannot control me." So Paramount Pictures decided to adapt arguably one of the most popular Japanese animations of all time, Ghost in the Shell. Is it any good? Let's find out. My name is Brandon Keith-Avery and this is just my opinion. Just got home from seeing the new rebooted adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. This film originally came out as a Japanese animation in 1995 by director Mamoru Oshii. I've heard about it all my life, never seen it, but heard about it all my life. Like I said before, this is possibly one of the most popular Japanese animations of all time. If you hear someone mention Japanese animation, Ghost in the Shell may come up in the conversation. Like I said, I haven't seen this before. The original, I did want to see it before I saw the new rebooted movie with Scarlett Johansson, but I watched like the first 10 minutes of it and fell asleep. Not because it was boring, just because I was tired and had other things to do and needed to go to sleep. But I will say that I did enjoy that first 10 minutes and the first 10 minutes of this new movie was pretty much exactly the same frame by frame. So if you're one of those purists that's worried about that they give it a true adaptation from the first 10 minutes that I saw from the animation they did. But anyway, besides that, like I was saying before, if you didn't know, there has been a lot of controversy with the casting of this film. Being because the main character, Major Scarlett Johansson is the Ghost in the Shell is White. And this is a Japanese animation. Many people thought that this was whitewashing and that they should have cast an Asian, blah blah this, blah blah that, and you know, people are some people in the comments section and form boards talking about how they're going to boycott it and whatnot. And, you know, after seeing the animation, even the cover, the not trying to sound ignorant here, but the main character doesn't seem look Asian to me. It really didn't bother me. Sometimes I do get really frustrated when Hollywood does whitewashing, especially with black films or black people, for that matter. But I'm not going to dive into that now. But the casting really didn't bother me. I really didn't care about it. Scarlett Johansson, she's a popular actress. She's one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood today. So, you know, with a foreign film like this, they want to bring over to America. It makes sense to get a familiar face to put in the main prominent role. I mean, it's all about them dollars. You know, that's all it is. Scarlett Johansson, she fills seats apparently. That movie Lucy did very, very well. I think like over $500 million worldwide. And so, you know, the casting didn't bother me. As far as her being in the casting herself, I mean, she did a great job. The thing is, you know, Scarlett Johansson is not just some world, you know, rounded, phenomenal actress. I mean, she's popular, but she's not, you know, winning Golden Globes and Oscars. I'm not hating on her. I do enjoy her on screen, not just as Black Widow in the MCU, but in other movies that she's been in as well. But, you know, I'm not going to just say that she's the best actress. She did a great job here, but I'll bring it up because she's essentially playing a ghost in a shell, a robot. And before I even, let me just stop for a second and just talk about the plot itself. And this is in the future. It says in the synopsis and the description in the plot synopsis that this is a near future. But my take of this, this doesn't look, you know, if they were doing some things that they were doing in this movie, you know, in the real world, you know, everybody alive right now, are you watching this video? We are going to be dead and gone 50 years from now. Maybe, but, you know, I'm not looking forward to it. And I'll talk about that a little bit later in this review, which is non spoilers. I should have mentioned at the beginning. But anyway, the plot of the movie is that this is the distant future in my opinion. And everything in the future is just robotic. And there's technology everywhere, souped up to the highest degree, like 70. I think they said like, just about 73% of the whole world is just, you know, done with the old ways. And they're into robotics now, and not just into robotics, but human enhancement, you know, just cybernetics. And, you know, if your hand gets hurt or chopped off, hey, you can put another, you know, robotic hand on there. And, you know, for me, you know, stepping out of the movie, my own personal take my own personal pain. I'm fine with that to an extent. But at the same time, you have, I think you have to draw a line somewhere because, you know, humanity is important. And we don't just want robots, you know, taking over the place. And you know, just how there are some groups of people in the world that are just power hungry and greed and just want to take over and rule. You know, you have that in every movie just about. And you have that here. And people are always just trying to take it to the next level. And they just want the perfect tie in with the human being and a robot. And apparently, or allegedly, that's what they leave Scarlett, Scarlett Johansson's character to believe major that she's possibly one of the first ones. But she is a human brain in a near perfected robot body, kind of like a cyborg to follow orders. And to follow demands and to be at the wheel of some power hungry nut that wants to, you know, rule over everyone and be ahead and whatnot. So that's, you know, basically the synopsis. She's a weapon. You know, she's just doing what she's told. And in the role, she's a robot. So she doesn't have much personality. So that's, you know, going back, that's why I was talking about Scarlett Johansson. I mean, you know, her performance was fine in this movie. But, you know, there was no, there wasn't any personality to the character and her character's name was major. She looked cool and, you know, kicked a lot of ass and, you know, was doing this and doing that. But as far as a personality is concerned, you know, just playing a stoic robot. I mean, I guess she knocked that out the park, but I don't know how hard that would be. I'm not an actor myself. But it was still cool and I enjoyed it. When she's going throughout the movie, trying to engage with people is very clear that she does not have any emotional connections with anyone. She just can't engage with other humans like they can engage with others. She just doesn't have that connection. She still has some humanity in her. I mean, the only thing in human about her is her brain, but she doesn't connect with people. And that's also a gripe with the movie that I have a dislike and I'll say that is with the same way that she was not able to connect with anyone in the movie, other than her partners or boss, I was not able to connect with her character as well. She was still entertaining on screen. But to be honest with you, whether she lived or died in this movie, I'm not going to spoil it for you. I just didn't care. Either outcome, you know, was okay. There was a few moments to where, you know, you know, she may have been erased or destroyed. And you know, I would I wasn't sitting like, Oh my God, are you going to get out of there? I mean, I just didn't care. I'm not saying that I was bored. I did. I'm not saying that I did not like her character. I did, but I just did not care for her character at all. If that makes sense. Another there's only two more other standout characters to me and they really just don't stand out. They really just only get the screen time. And I don't know how to pronounce this guy's name. Paluas Bake. I don't know. He's the guy with the robot eyes and in the trailers. I'm always seeing the one because I want to stay away from trailers in this movie. He pulls out the gun and super slow more to bar and doom, doom, doom. And it's doing that action right there. And he was cool. That was called Johansson's character. That was major character. That was our partner. And he was a cool partner. You know, I liked him. And the last guy that stood out is a Japanese character. What, what, what is his name? I wrote it down because I thought I wrote it down. Well, I guess I didn't. His real name was the, his name in the movie was our Maki. And he was just cool. You know, he was just one of the guys to just sit back. You know, he was very slow to speak, quick to listen. And I like that. He's old school. You know, he's not going to, you could tell he's already been in the trenches. He's already fought the fuck. You know, he's still anxious to somebody, but you just not going to talk crap to this guy. You know, without him saying something back. And, you know, he would just cool and collect the whole time. And, you know, somebody tried to talk some shit to him once. He's just like, look, I understand where you coming from. But don't talk to me like that. I don't answer to you or your organization. I answer to this person. Now I'm not going to go off. We can continue to work together because we can do some things that's going to benefit both of us. But don't come at me like that again. Now he didn't say that whole thing, but, you know, in my world, that's how I took it. And I like that. I mean, even if you try to kill the guy, you better make sure you kill the guy. Hey, man, don't send no rabbits to kill no Fox. I am a Fox and I am not to be F with. And he would just cool with it. And I was just like, Hey, you know, and, you know, kind of when something like that was going on, everybody in the movie was cheering, you know, and other than that, something else that I just liked about the movie just was the technology and how everything advanced. I mean, there were holograms and images and the all these types of illusions and camouflage all around. And I'm just like, man, if we really lived in a world like, you know, they were living in this in this movie today, it would be very interesting and also very scary because, you know, there are going to be people out there that take all of this technology and all these gadgets and abuse it, you know, and explore it for their own personal greedy gain and whatnot. But I mean, it was just really cool seeing Tokyo, Japan or I don't know if this was Tokyo, you know, from how everything looked and surrounds it did look like it was in Japan. And they just kind of took things to another level. I really love the camouflage suit, you know, one character, you know, was trying to hide around doing nefarious things nefarious things with the camouflage jacket. Scarlett Johansson's character, she's a robot and she kind of had this camouflage thing going on and that was just kind of cool. And, you know, I really did connect with her character. I liked the character, didn't care for her character, but her character was still pretty cool, pretty badass and knew how to shoot some folks in the face and to break arms and kick and jump off buildings. And, you know, that was all cool. I really didn't enjoy that. I appreciate it. All of that. It was, you know, very nice. It kind of reminded me of minority important ways, but just more advanced, you know, as far as all the action is concerned, the action was sprinkled in here and there, just the brown everywhere. There was not, you know, not too long went by without any action and it was cool. It wasn't mind blowing. You know, I wasn't at the edge of my seat and my jaw wasn't, you know, at the ground. It was kind of cool action stuff you've seen before has some slow mo scenes, but just in a different setting. And what was kind of frustrating was they never just went, you know, full steam ahead with the action. You know, you will have your scenes where they're trying to develop the plot and develop the story and give you good dialogue and, you know, kind of let you know what's going on in the path to, like I said, help the story out. And then you get some action and it starts out so good and it just revs up the engines and then it just kind of plateaus and you're like, oh, okay, that's it. It was just, I don't want to say anti-climactic, but that's the only thing that I can think of at the moment. You know, there were just never any dull moments, but there was never any moments that just popped out of the screen. We thought, oh my God, that was freaking amazing. It was just nothing like that, you know, but, you know, I still did enjoy the movie. And other than that, the only thing that I really just didn't care for is there really was no true villain, no true antagonist. And when the villain so-called was finally revealed, it was just kind of like, you know, okay, that's it. You know, you're kind of bland and you're just another corporate guy, another corporate puppet that, you know, we've seen 50,000 times before. You know, so it just, it would have been nice if Scarlett, you know, she's a robot, an advanced robot. It's not a vulnerable, I mean, you can destroy her. She acts like a human, but she is much more hard to kill, much more difficult to kill than a human. So, and she was against another threat that was on her level or better that kind of would have been fine. Kind of how, well, I don't want to spoil that movie, but the villain or antagonist was just kind of plain Jane. And, you know, like I said, you know, when the final battle or showdown was going off, yeah, I will say it was just kind of anti-climatic. You know, but that does not mean that I did not have a great time. Well, no, that does mean I didn't have a great time because I didn't have a great time. I had a good time. You know, I mean, I liked the intro, how they kind of showed how the robots were made, the score of the movie was beautiful. It didn't pop like Steve Jablonski or Hans Zimmer or anything like that. But it did kind of remind me of the soundtrack from that movie Tron that came out, the rebooted Tron that came out. It was in 2010, 11 or 12. And that soundtrack was, I was trying to say the Beastie Boys. Hell no, they didn't do that. I forgot, let me know in the comments, but it kind of reminded me of that, but that that score was better. But, you know, I mean, it was cool. You know, I'm not, you know, raving about this. This movie is definitely not for everyone. You know, maybe it'll make a lot of the box office, but I honestly can't see them making a sequel to this movie. I mean, they could, if it makes a lot of money, they're going to. But if they do, I'll see it. But I'm not excited about it. I don't care as I really just didn't care for major, her character. She was a nice character, but there was just no emotional connection that I had with major Scarlett Johansson's character, the ghost in the shell, the human brain in the robotic body. That's pretty much it. If I had to rate this movie out of one out of 10, man, what do I want to give this? I'm going to give a ghost in the shell. Now, I'm going to give it a 7 out of 10, a 7 out of 10. I was going to say 6.5 because of the lack of emotion that I had. The, you know, the connectivity just was absent from me to most of the characters. But they did do a lot of nice things with the technology and I don't want to go into it too much. Some of it is kind of like the Matrix in a way, but they're not copying, but I'm going to give this movie a 7 out of 10. So have you seen ghosts in the shell yet? Do you want to see it? Have I turned you off? Have I turned you on? Do you agree with me or do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section below. Let's get this conversation going and keep it flowing. If you liked this video, go ahead and give me the thumbs up. And if you didn't like this video, that's fine. Just leave me a comment below why and still give me the thumbs up. Since you're watching me on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe right now to the channel. So you can get all the content that I have to provide and hit me up on our social media too. You can follow me there. You go to the website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and all that good stuff. So guys, I just want to thank you again for tuning in for my opinion slash review of ghost in the shell. And before you go, don't forget that my name is Brandon Keith Avery. And that's just my opinion. Peace.