Yesterday I watched the new Ghost in the shell movie. I know that a real purists wouldn't have done it - a purist like @vermillionfox - and it was a disappointment just the same, even though I hadn't put up too great expectations.

So I thought that it might be a good opportunity to run over what the Ghost in the Shell franchise actually is. And why a bad reboot (Why make a film that is already made?) not should discourage you from exploring the real Ghost in the Shell oeuvre!

A cyborg is being created. From the original 1989 Manga.

Ghost in the Shell - the manga

In 1989, five years after the ground-breaking novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, Shirō Masamune created the first episodes in a Cyberpunk serial that was to spawn many exiting artworks in the years after. The manga was centred around Major Motoko - a female cyborg and her team - working for the secret government agency section 9.

The frontpage of my English version

The manga contains a fine mixture of slapstick, violence, solemnity, fan service and an obsessive attention to detail (something I recognise from myself). Especially the technical aspects of a society of augmented humans is interesting and imaginative.

Why build a boring, unsexy cyborg?

The manga is made up of small finished episodes and only slowly does it get the story together that was to be the basis for the most famous of all the Ghost in the shell successors: The 1995 anime by Oshii Mamoru.

Ghost in the Shell - the film

This was my first encounter with the Ghost in the Shell serials and to me, even though I love the manga, this is the greatest among them. Already the opening, with the simple and fantastic soundtrack by Kawai Kenji, blew me away together with every body else I knew back then.

The film is extremely slow paced, has a very complex story that makes the second or third watching the ones where you get it. The themes are mainly philosophical, and the technical nerdery that was commenced in the manga is taken to an new level in the film. There are action-scenes, but also many long almost motionless talking scenes.

But the Ghost in the Shell movie is one of the most if not the most important film of the nineties!

The film is one big existential question mirrored in the possibility of a human without an organic body. The director Oshii Mamoru uses all the many instruments an animated film makes possible in trying to get closer to the solemn and frustrated cyber-warrior, Major Motoko. But only in the genius ending are we getting close enough to understand what a body actually might mean to a human.

No fanservice in the film. The body of Major Motoko is subject to intense study, but this time only as a way to get closer to the ontological problems of the protagonist.

Ghost in the Shell - the media franchise

After the enormous success of Oshii's film, more films and tv-series was created. I think that none of them reaches the original film, but how could they? I mean... the best film of the nineties! (not that the competition was that big - it would have had a harder time in the eighties.) The ones I have seen are are entertaining and good if you can bear with the early 3d-effects - Yoko Kanno composed a very interesting opening for the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex from 2002.

Ghost in the Shell - the live action reboot

Why are we seeing so many old films remade these years? - smells awfully much as a Hollywood creative crisis. One of them is called Ghost in the shell and tries to go in the footsteps of all this and fails. They do not even dare to use the original and fantastic ending of Oshii's film. It has very fine cgi-effects and if it does add something it is the nastiness of it all, But I would rather have seen Oshii directing it.

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There is nothing sadder than a puppet without a ghost!