The lead characters of Batou and Major especially are made inscrutable in the way that Oshii animates their eyes: The former’s are constantly covered, and the latter’s are almost always wide and blank.
Nearly every one of his characters is emotionally detached, keeping the aforementioned concepts from feeling pretentious and the characters’ explorations of them cloying. The director can’t help but construct set pieces, comprised of thrilling choreography and a punctuating soundtrack that simply define Scarlett Johansson’s character as an intimidating force to be reckoned with.Įven while both films’ design work and style impressively display Ghost in the Shell’s intellectual concepts, the aspect of Oshii’s that elevates it most over Sanders’ is the emotional current with which he surrounds them. Here, Sanders’ aim seems to be quite different. From there, however, as the character blatantly disregards her own body, unfazed by ogling eyes and destructive bullets, the pedestal on which we’ve placed our bodies begins to fall. If every part of our natural shell can be altered and synthetically replaced, then that which defines beauty and identity must go deeper. Both versions open with a near-nude Major, instantly making us aware of how much we obsess over our own shells not only are they a measure of our beauty, but a mark of our identity. Even while the live-action version, to keep its PG-13 rating, opts to clothe the lead character of Major in a skintight suit, the intention and effect is quite nearly the same. While on the subject of the shell, the use of nudity in both films cannot be overlooked. The design is admittedly cool to look at, but also stunts the same sort of musings.
Unlike with Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch or Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman, however, every ounce of Oshii’s stylization is used to serve his story and its themes, instead of the other way around. His visual flair, even more than dialogue, is what communicates the film’s cerebral and philosophical ideas.īy designing the humans’ and cyborgs‘ bodies/shells to be indistinguishable from one another, for example, the filmmaker is visually asking, “Are then their souls/ghosts indistinguishable?” It’s a shame, then, that the design for a pivotal character like Kuze, from Sanders’ film, as compared to the Puppet Master in Oshii’s, is made to look so cybernetic. Even those who’ve not seen the original film will likely recognize a number of its striking visuals, many of which have been repurposed in such films as The Matrix and Dark City: a moody, intricately designed cyberpunk Hong Kong a nude, gun-wielding policewoman line after line of green tinted computer code. And those who have watched the entire anime know that every one of its 82 minutes is stuffed with enough additional detail to make even Terry Gilliam envious.
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