Is there a Ghost in the New Shell? The 2017 Ghost in the Shell - Live Action Remake - Movie Review - 2026, March 14-20

This review contains spoilers for the 1995 animated movie Ghost in the Shell, the 2004 animated sequel film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, the animation TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the TV series sequel movie Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society, and the 2017 live action movie (also titled Ghost in the Shell). It is recommended that you at least watch the original 1995 animation movie before reading this review, and ideally Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence as well. Watching the 2017 Remake is also recommended for context, but consider this review directed at people with some familiarty with Ghost in the Shell as a series, who might be biased against the remake. This review is also designed to be readable to people with no familiarity with any of it, and work as context and a pitch for the series, but it's inevitably full of spoilers. If you happen to be reading this and are a fan of the 2017 movie, this review might come across as harsh in places. Sorry, I had to make the cut somewhere. If you can't tell, I'm walking a bit of a conceptual tightrope here, and that's not even getting into the controversies and fan ire this movie generated. Anyway, let's begin the deep dive.

The 2017 live action Ghost in the Shell film starts immersively, featuring the logos of Paramount: A Viacom Company, Dreamworks SKG, Reliance Entertainment (a Chinese production company), Shanghai Film Group, and a final Chinese production group, Hua Hua Media. This really sells you on the idea that we've entered the realm of corporate cyberpunk dystopia, and a blending of Eastern and Western sensibilities into a new mono-aesthetic.
Sarcasm aside, I've noticed quite a lot of the stuff I tend to like is a the meeting of the aesthetic senses of the East and West. Ghost in the Shell (2017) is a Chinese/American production, with some thoroughly Hollywood sensibilities, shot in Hong Kong, directed by English film director Rupert Sanders, featuring some well known Western and Japanese actors, adapting a thouroughly Japanese story.

As a quick aside on the issue of the meeting of Eastern and Western sensibilities producing compelling art, especially sci-fi, it is well known that one of the primary influences on Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress". And indeed, the original Star Wars film is an almost comically beat-for-beat recreation of the plot of The Hidden Fortress. Lesser known is the possibility of the influence of Kurosawa's film Dersu Uzala, released in 1975, which featured a shot of main characters looking towards a red horizon to see a sunset, with the sun and moon in the same frame. It is speculated that this is the inspiration behind Star Wars' iconic twin sunset imagery.
The Halo series, one of the most All American sci-fi epics, is actually directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, both thematically and in imagery, with it's main character the cyberneic soldier "Master Chief" being conceptualized as a cybernetic "Shell" inhabited by the "Ghost" of the player, puppeting him through the game controller. His AI companion "Cortana" is depicted as a hologram with the form of a naked woman, whose would-be-lewdness is tempered by her robotic features. This is inspired by Ghost in the Shell's main character, the cybernetic Major Motoko who often finds herself similarly stylized.
The original 1995 Ghost in the Shell animation seems to take heavy cues from Ridley Scott's Bladerunner; which itself was set in a heavily easternized Los Angeles, where Chinese and Japanese are common languages, and Geishas are featured on giant flourescent billboard advertisements.
The Wachowski siblings cite Ghost in the Shell as a direct inspiration for The Matrix. This can be seen not only in the use of green computer command-line text in Ghost in the Shell's opening titles (which influenced the look of The Matrix's streaming green computer code motif), but also in Ghost in the Shell's themes of distrusting one's sense of reality, and the possibility that "reality" for Ghost in the Shell's cyborg citizens could be computer generated. You could also argue The Matrix is a translation of the exaggerated martial arts battles of anime into live action.
Great artists truly do steal, and if Star Wars lifted wholesale from Kurosawa's movies to the point of borderline plagirism, 1979's Gundam lifted heavily from Star Wars, riffing on the idea of a subtextual "Axis vs. Allies" conflict: its original run featuring futuristic villains who style themselves as aristocrats and send soldiers into battle in giant mechs that borrow the features of Nazi German uniforms: its protagonists featuring a scrappy multicultural cast piloting giant robots in red-white-and-blue, and championing democratic values. It borrowed Laser Swords and the intrusion of psychic phenomena into the tension of battle, while adding mechs, a certain Japanese sense of style, and a very Eastern theme of compassion on the battlefield, to synthesize something new and original.
Really, this kind of thing happens all the time in art. The current of art is like a conversation, with witting creators conversing back and forth with each other. Responding to and riffing on each other's ideas. This is one of the reasons I find it harder to be offended by 2017's live action Ghost in the Shell than persnickety Western fandom groups seemed to be. I'll touch on this film's controversies later.

After some opening text asserting the sci-fi premises (it's a world full of cyborgs), and informing us of the intentions of the antagonistic Hanka Robotics (a corporation invented for this version of the Ghost in the Shell universe, as opposed to the original's "Megatech") to create a full-body military cyborg that combines the best of man and machine by inserting a human brain into a robotic "Shell" (hey wait a minute, isn't this also the premise of 1987's Robocop?); The film opens with some shots of a comatose Japanese girl being conveyed on a gurney by ominous Hanka medical personel. Some unfortunately artless voiceover informs us that "Brain Function Normal" and "Robotic Skeleton prepared and waiting for brain insertion".

What follows is the opening credits over a re-creation of the 1995 original Ghost in the Shell's gorgeous surrealistic and purely visual sequence depicting the creation of Major Motoko's robotic body. A robotic skeleton floats weightlessly through strange corridors, intercut with artificial nerve endings stretching to embrace organic brain synapses, as humanoid facial structure panels encase the brain tissue. It's haunting, deliberately paced imagery, somewhat comparable to the works of director Chris Cunningham and the likes of his robotic sci-fi themed MTV music videos; like his video for the band Autechre's 1995 song "Second Bad Vibel" or for Bjork's 1999 song "All is Full of Love". The body floats, defying gravity, up into a red amniotic gel, then rises through a milky substance spread across the surface of the gel. The milk coats the body. It hovers in place, covered in the dripping liquid, which hardens, giving the impression of carved marble, and peels away with the texture of ashes on a breeze, revealing it has deposited a layer of synthetic flesh on robotic bones.
The score in this sequence borrows from Kenji Kawai's original 1995 soundtrack, particularly the choral element, and while it's not quite as powerful or melodic the original, it's suitibly moody.

Now, let's approach the elephant in the room: cautiously and without startling it.
Arguments about whether or not this 2017 opening sequence (or the entire movie itself) lives up to the 1995 original aside, just taken at face value, this is an ok reinterpretation of the sequence and it is cool to look at. There are generally two attitudes you can take towards this sort of thing: "It's shitty remake and a betrayal of the original artistic intent" or "Hey cool ... more cool stuff." When it comes to this film, I fall somewhere between the two.

There is a constant debate on the internet among fandom groups surrounding this kind of thing. Classic videogames in particular are the target for remakes, with frankly usually shoddily done updates to visuals and art styles, but in higher graphical fidelity, which often disappoint fans of the original work while seeming to please people who've never encountered the originals. This has calcified into a prevailing attitude that original works are "Soulful" and remakes are "Soulless". I fully understand and frankly would agree with anyone who said to me they prefer the hand painted cel animation of the original film. I do generally prefer the side of "soul" in the soul/soulless debate. I am biased towards original works of art over modernized remakes. There is an argument you can make that there is certainly something lazy about capitalizing on imagery that was pioneered by daring artists years before (though that argument might be in opposition to the assertion that "the current of art is a conversation", which responds to and builds on the past). The 1995 film is a visual masterpiece, a real work of art, and I don't think I would ever think to call the 2017 Ghost in the Shell remake a "masterpiece" by any means, or on any level. I'll say up front, it's quite flawed.

However, this idea that remakes are inherently soulless is questionable to me. In 1982, John Carpenter's The Thing hit theaters: a remake of the 1951 sci-fi B movie "The Thing from Another World". John Carpenter's movie is considered a classic, and the original is virtually forgotten.
Now, this was a case where John Carpenter had a passionate love for that original 1951 movie and the short story it was based on, so he was able to translate that love into a remake of an older film: and his remake became a titanic classic of 80's horror.
By raising this comparison I by no means mean to suggest 2017's "Ghost in the Shell" remake is some kind of soulful homage to its predecessor. I feel, as I am about to show some degree of sympathy to the 2017 movie, I must reiterate to fans of Ghost in the Shell that the original 1995 film is superior. I'm not here to convince you otherwise, and it seems most people still rightfully prefer the original. The 2017 film is not very popular.
I do, however, wish to suggest that this version might not quite be so soulless as people would seem to think. I will assert that it does have its own merits.

As a counterpoint to John Carpenter's having created one of the only known soulful remakes that far surpasses its source material, John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) was given a prequel in 2011, also titled The Thing, which is about as blunt and soulless an imposter as you can get.

So after the opening montage, we're introduced to a Dr. Oulette, portrayed by French actress Juliette Binoche, who is speaking to the freshly recreated Motoko Kusanagi ... or ... rather ... "Mira Killian" ... as played by Scarlett Johansson. Yes, this film opted to re-name Ghost in the Shell's iconic main character. And not without an interesting reason either. From a meta-textual angle, this film plays with the idea of remakes in an interesting way.
Dr. Oulette describes a terrorist attack which crippled Mira's body, necessitating the transferrence of her brain to her new robotic shell (provided by Hanka robotics and the Government in exchange for Mira's being forcibly conscripted into her new life as a cyborg soldier, in a clandestine government crimefighting organization called Section 9).
Dr. Oulette then gives us some horribly clunky dialogue, that spells out one of the themes of Ghost in the Shell with traumatically blunt force.
"We made you a new body. A synthetic shell ... but your mind, your soul, your 'ghost', it's still in there..."
Honestly every time I hear these lines my eyes roll back in their sockets at light speed. This is one of the biggest problems with the film.

That said; I don't think the occasional blunt-force dialogue is a problem I can blame on the writers. Have you noticed that the dialogue in Hollywood movies has gotten a lot dumber, gradually, since at least the 00's? This might be a result of Hollywood's dealings with China, which has strict standards about what can be depicted related to topics such as politics, philosophy, and the occult. Since Hollywood started pushing into the Chinese market in the late 00's, scripts in mainstream Hollywood movies have not only been curtailed in their themes and subject matter to appease Chinese censorship guidelines, they've trended towards a simplicity that can be easily translated into multiple languages. Thus, nuance is lost. This might be at least one of many factors contributing to the dumbing down of Hollywood movie scripts: What sells in China is more universal.
Or perhaps the simplest and cruelest explanation is the right one: Hollywood simply no longer has talent in its employ. Solving the former would be a matter of negotiation, and the latter would require a restructuring of how Hollywood does its business. At any rate, you never get anything quite in this particular style of mind numbing dialogue from the Japanese productions.

Immediately after that blunt-force-trauma theme dump, we get another one. Dr. Oulette speaks to the CEO of Hanka Robotics, "Mr. Cutter" (geez, talk about a direct name), portrayed by a stoic Peter Ferdinando. We're hit with some truly cliche' dialogue that also reiterates what was already communicated to us minutes prior in the pre-credits introductory text. "A machine can't lead, it can only follow orders. A machine can't imagine, or care, or intuit, but a human mind in a cybernetic frame ... Mira can do all those things, and more..."
Mr. Cutter is established as one-dimensionally evil, because he wants to treat "first of her kind" full-body cyborg Mira as a weapon, as his tool, and Dr. Oulette is established as the sympathetic one, wanting to treat Mira as an evolutionary step for humanity. Of course, she's on Mr. Cutter's payroll so she has to tow the line. It's cliche' as hell, but that's what we're working with.
You know it's not even the fact of the cliche' that's the problem, it's that the cliche's are presented in a cliche' way; this is something you can only truly sense when you watch the film.

Next we're flying over a futuristic Hong Kong cityscape, bombarded with audio advertisments for fictional businesses and dystopian propaganda audio clips, and what seems (at first glance) to be holographic imagery overlaid over the buildings, dancing between the city blocks. It's reminiscent of similar cyberpunk cityscapes: I was reminded of Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and its "Rouge' City" sequence, which had a similar visual quality, of holograms interspersed between Skyscrapers. Now ... this is not something ever overtly stated in the film, and I've never seen anyone else point this out, but at some point when I had initially watched this film many years back, I was struck by the idea that these holograms we see do not seem to be "projected" from anywhere. They're not classic sci-fi holograms being beamed from some kind of light source, they're merely overlaid over the environment. This struck me as an odd, interesting, and understated choice, and then I realized "Hey, we might be seeing things from the perspective of a Cyborg". The issue of digital illusions was present in the original film. Of course The Matrix took this concept and ran with it: taking place entirely in a digitally generated reality. It had dawned on me that the reality we see in this 2017 version of Ghost in the Shell might be meant to be a blending of the "real" and "Augmented Reality" elements; ie. the CGI hologram overlays might be "AR" advertisements projected by businesses that pay for the ad-space, directly into the minds of cyborgs, in the universe of this film.

The idea of living in a world where PSAs and advertisements are forcibly overlaid over the average person's perception of reality is nightmarish, and it's one of the nearly countless reasons you'll never catch me sympathizing with transhumanists, ideas that we should merge our bodies with mind altering digital/electric technology, or the idea that becoming cyborgs is in any way a viable future for humanity (I might be sypmathetic to Dune's Anti-AI stance, when it comes to visions of the future); but here it does serve for a very interesting visual fantasy.
Honestly, it looks quite cool. It's a visual feature used throughout the film, and used less cynically than I'm making it sound. None of the hologram advertisements are real-world product placement (although there is the prominent use of a Honda motorcycle in the movie). The hologram effect is used purely aesthetically in many sequences, like to accentuate an upcoming bar fight.

The camera zooms up to Major Mira standing on a rooftop, and we get a re-creation of the original Optical Camoflauge roof dive sequence. There's more dialogue (cliche', but better written) about what cyborgs can and can't do, from soon-to-be hapless victims of a terrorist attack, enjoying a dinner in a high-end penthouse. There's some forced conflict between Major Mira and special unit Section 9 Chief Aramaki, portrayed by the iconic Japanese actor (and filmmaker, comedian, and TV host) Takeshi Kitano, commonly known by his nickname "Beat" Takeshi. Beat Takeshi is particularly known for his crime and gangster movies, which have recieved worldwide recognition. He brings a wonderful presence to the role, sometimes in spite of the heavyhanded script, but by and large he's great in this, and especially in a later sequence where the spotlight is his to steal. The Major wants to move in to prevent the terrorist attack, but Chief Aramaki tells her no. She goes in anyway, performing the iconic dive from the rooftop. The recreation is serviceable but largely unremarkable.
There's also no real reason for this initial conflict of wills between Aramaki and the Major, except to call back to it at the end of the film, and have Aramaki approve of her initiative in a similar circumstance. I guess you've gotta show character growth somehow...

The scene progresses, ominous cyborg gangsters approach the penthouse, but the real terrorists are revealed to be the Geisha bots, serving the dinner guests. They look incredible frankly. They're depicted with a blend of CGI and practical effects. The way they move is great. They pop their joints out of their sockets and crawl around on the floor like spiders. It's incredible imagery, which can't exactly be found in any of the previous Ghost in the Shell movies or shows. This is some originality the 2017 movie can claim as its own, and I'm willing to praise it.
In the course of the sequence we're also introduced to a spooky hacker in a hooded robe, puppeteering the Geishas.
Sharp eyed viewers familiar with the 2004 sequel to the original Ghost in the shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, might recognize the way the geisha bots open their mechanical faces is similar to the rampaging android in the opening sequence of Innocence.
As the victimized androids in Innocence are portrayed sympathetically, the use of the uncanny valley effect of the android revealing it's springs and wires is somewhat emotionally effective, both on the levels of horror and tragedy, in that film.

Alas, in the 2017 film, as a geisha bot pleads for its life as Mira approaches it with a drawn pistol, any sympathy you might start to feel for it is undercut by the hacker speaking through it, delivering another clunky line, before the horror sting happens.
"Collaborate with Hanka robotics and be destroyed."
Okay. The line functions to move the story along, but it's so artlessly done. It's a frustrating problem when I feel like I could take 10-20 minutes and edit up a better, tighter script. Sure, I'm just a member of the peanut gallery, and these kinds of productions have a lot of oversight, and a lot of factors go into what actually ends up in the final product; but it's frustrating. It could be better. If you didn't catch that Hanka robotics were the bad guys, we're hammering it home again.
The scene moves along and we're introduced to Section 9 operative Batou, played by Danish actor Pilou Asbæk. Batou is another iconic character from the series, and Pilou's interpretation is more personable than usual, but it works for me. Praise should go to the costume and makeup work: he looks the part (especially later in the film when he's given his iconic cybernetic eyes).

The issue of digital illusions and false perceptions is raised in the next scene, when Major Mira hallucinates a glitching cat. Pixel glitches are a fascinating visual phenomenon. You very rarely ever see them now. Maybe you'll see one if you drop your phone and your screen cracks, or if a video feed on an airport TV monitor is corrputed, if you hold a magnet to your computer screen, or if you manage to open a corrupted image file, but for the most part they have been all-but curtailed by improvements in our technology. The next time you do see a glitchy screen, value the experience. It's a rare kind of beauty you don't see every day.
Pixelation glitches as a motif is another visual choice the 2017 Ghost in the Shell film can call its own, and it's an apt addition to the source material: a way to visually indicate reality bursting through curated digital illusion.

The Major is briefed on the results of an investigation into the terrorist attack, at Section 9. Here we meet Togusa, portrayed by Singaporean actor Chin Han. Kind of a shame we don't get more Togusa in this movie. In his few scenes, Chin Han is solid. Togusa as a fully human character, no cyber enhancements, provides a nice foil to the rest of Section 9, and Togusa episodes of the Stand Alone Complex anime tend to be enjoyable lone gumshoe detective stories. Ah well.
The hacker is identified as a man named "Kuze'".
So, a funny bit of detail here, this character was written in such a way that he'd probably just be a decently interesting antagonist to non Ghost in the Shell fans, but for GitS fans, he's designed to throw them for a total loop.
Kuze' is the name of the main antagonist of the Stand Alone Complex show's second season, to which the 2017 character bears little relation besides his white hair. Later on in the film he's revealed to have "created a network from human minds", which is a central plot point of the Stand Alone Complex sequel movie called Solid State Society. Kuze's remote puppeteering crimes mirror both the plot of the original film, and in some ways the antics of The Laughing Man hacker in Stand Alone Complex's first season. On top of it all Kuze', and Mira herself, mirror the sad plight of the antagonstic androids of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence - although I suppose I should touch on that when we get to it.
But this is another one of the reasons I find myself kinda liking this film. Despite its numerous small problems and overall more conventional Hollywood feel, at least some of the people working on the production were Ghost in the Shell fans. You don't get a character so intentionally crafted to play with hardcore fan expectations this way without someone caring.
You could argue that this level of care is merely cynical and explotative of the source material, but I don't have it in me to be that cynic.

Dovetailing this point, after establishing Batou's love of dogs and particular fondness for a stray Basset hound named Gabriel (both nodding to Batou's dog of the same name in Innocence, and, what seems to be, a well meant nod to Mamoru Oshii, director of the original movie and of Innocence), we head to Hanka Robotics headquarters, where one of the geisha bots is being autopsied by a Dr. Dahlin, played by Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca. As I write this it's becoming a bit of a refrain, but with the exception of Scarlett Johansson (and more on this later), I've got to applaud this movie for its choice of actors to suit their roles. The autopsy scene is in some key ways a re-creation of the autopsy of the rampant android in the opening of GitS 2: Innocence, and Anamaria Marinca bears a decent resemblance to that film's Dr. Haraway, while at the same time portraying a distinct character who serves a different function in the story. I point out this scene in particular, because (besides dropping the literary reference laden dialogue of its comparable scene in Innocence) there is quite a lot of attention given to re-creating scenes and aspects of GitS 2: Innocence in this film. Again, this suggests that people working on this film not only respected the source material (at the very least enough to cram this movie full of re-creations and references to nearly every major piece of GitS media); I get the sense director Rupert Sanders respects Mamoru Oshii and at least on some level meant to pay him respect by giving homage. Western fans of Mamoru Oshii might be squinting their eyes with incredulity at reading this, but I'll save my point on this for the end of the review.

Batou and the Major continue their investigation into Kuze'. The trail leads them to a nightclub. At this point the film is really becoming a feast for the eyes in the key of cyberpunk, and pushing into its own original territory. The nightclub sequence is well directed, and this is a point where the use of incidental holograms in the backgrounds stood out to me as particularly visually interesting. At the end of the sequence, it's suggested Kuze' has some ability to intrude into the major's perception of reality. A glitch that could either be down to the surfacing of Major Mira's repressed memories, or her having attempted a failed counter-hack against Kuze' in an earlier sequence. Batou's eyes are injured in an explosion and in the following scenes he's recovering at Hanka Robotics, having had his eyes replaced with tactical telescopic, night-vision, and x-ray equipped cameras. There's a cute joke where we're shown his perspective as he zooms in to look at a female technician. We're not shown anything obscene, but it seems implied that he's testing the camera's X-Ray capabilities: ie. peeping at her undergarments. The classic joke about what any boy would do with Superman's X-Ray vision. In 2017, mainstream movies weren't really capable of getting away with much admission of that universal human experience, lewdness. Things have been prudish since the 2010's and have only gotten more prudish since. To me this is a strange and pathologically unhealthy feature of the state of modern culture, so it's nice to see, even if it's completely subtextual and understated, that this movie has a little red blood in its veins.

In direct contrast to this understated cheeky joke, there is a remarkably tender moment where Major Mira decides to seek out a prostitute, played by British actress and daughter of Ghanan immigrants, Adwoa Aboah, evidently in an effort to understand some difference between herself and natural humanity. In a short, mostly wordless scene, Mira simply touches the young woman's face. This moment stands out to me as a highlight of the film. It's subtle and what little dialogue there is is well written and performed. The scene is a standout.

Skipping over the mostly flawless but largely unremarkable and slightly disappointing re-creation of the classic sequence from the 1995 original, where the Major and Batou chase an unwitting criminal accomplice to Kuze' (unwitting because his mind is hacked and his memories overwritten), what follows is ... well ... a really remarkably good scene. Section 9 raids an illegal cybernetics modding den. There is some more original imagery in this sequence, including a room filled with monks sitting in a circle, with wires extending from their necks, rising into a light pouring from the ceiling. Dialogue in this scene seems to suggests Kuze' is some kind of entity resulting from the synthesis of this human-mind-generated network. This is kind of an interesting reversal of the human mind network and its function in Solid State Society, or a riff on the origins of The Puppet Master from the original film. Of course, soon it will be revealed that there is a wrinkle on this scenario that renders it moot. Kuze' is not actually a phantom generated by the collective unconcious. I applaud the film for approaching such an interesting idea though, even if it does nothing with it.

...Or does it? This "Kuze'" entity is a master hacker after all. A glitch bursting through curated digital reality. Can we really trust anything that comes after Major Mira's systems have been compromised?

There's a short, visually striking hand to hand combat sequence involving flickering bursts of light from cattle prods, barely illuminating a black hallway. It was at this point in my first viewing back in 2017 that I started to realize, more than merely being a rote rehashing of imagery pioneered by other artists, this movie has artistic intent of its own. It starts to show during this sequence.

Major Mira is captured by Kuze', who reveals himself to be her predecessor. A full-body cyborg created by Hanka Robotics, a human mind transplanted into his cybernetic shell, memories erased, and discarded when he could not be controlled. He claims he's since spent his time building a network from which he's achieved a kind of immortality, a network to which can upload his mind from his decaying cybernetic body, and he's been hunting down and killing the Hanka scientists and doctors who created him since. Mira is attached to Dr. Oulette, his next target, and she accuses Kuze' of being a murderer, but she seems to know deep down in her suppressed but "obviously real" memories that he's telling the truth; that she's also a victim and creation of Hanka experiments.
This scene is very compelling to me. Kuze' is played arrestingly by actor Micheal Pitt, who conveys equal parts unhinged insanity, and yet compellingly sympathetic sincerity.
His movements are strange and robotic, his lines are mixed with a digitzed stutter ... there are interesting choices in the scene like his removing and studying a piece of the Major's face, invoking both the likes of Hamlet's skull and the Phantom of the Opera's mask, or when the Major is released and shoots him, how he slides backwards as if defying gravity. This scene contains one of my favorite lines in the movie "It was self defense ... D-D-D-Defense of SELF!", delivered with a stutter as Kuze' beats his crumbling chest cavity to get the words out.

Look.
Let me level with you.
Here's a trick you can try; if you can watch a movie with the sound turned off and it's still intriguing and compelling, on the strength of its visuals alone, the filmmakers might be doing their job right. It'll be impossible to truly convey this in a written review, and it's not true of the entire movie, but for the most part, this movie passes this "sound off" test, and this scene is one of the film's best.

I'll carry on as if we can believe what Kuze' tells Mira. That's what the film does, even though, given the premises established, there's a very real possibility everything following this point is, for Mira, a totally false reality.

Mira interrogates Dr. Oulette and discovers that at least 98 children had been kidnapped by Hanka, dissected alive, and discarded as failures in their efforts to create a full-body cyborg. Mira being the only successful (read: controllable) case. This is an interesting riff on Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, in which Batou, helped by the Major as a ghost from within the net, investigating the attacks by dysfunctional androids, discovers they were created by scanning and "dubbing" the ghosts of kidnapped children.
So Ghost in the Shell 2017 takes that idea, and makes the Major investigate the crimes committed against her and the other children in Hanka's experiments. Well, okay. Maybe this isn't totally an original idea, since "unwilling cyborg investigates his own murder" is also the plot of Robocop, but frankly, even if it's been done before, it's done well here, and there is another original twist on it towards the end.
Mira is disappointed in Dr. Oulette, but Dr. Oulette sympathizes with her, and points her in the direction of her past. The all-but-moustache twirling evil CEO Mr. Cutter then murders Dr. Oulette, and informs Chief Aramaki and the rest of Section 9 that Mira has been hacked by Kuze' and will be hunted down by Hanka security forces.

Mira follows the lead given to her by Dr. Oulette, and arrives at an aparment where she meets an elderly Japanese woman. The woman feels an instant familiarity with Mira, invites her into the aparment, and offers her some tea. In the earlier scene where Mira had sought out a prostitute, the woman asks her the question "What are you?". A question which Mira can't answer.
In this scene, the elderly woman asks Mira "Who?"
The woman is Mira's mother, recognizing the soul of her daughter from inside the shell.

There's a lot to unpack here.
First of all, this scene is well written, and acting-wise this is the best scene in the film. To be blunt, it goes a long way towards justifying the film's existence. Mira's mother is played by Japanese actress Kaori Momoi. She speaks to Mira in pained, somewhat broken English, and yet in spite, or maybe entirely because of this, her performance is powerful. There is skill on display in this scene. There is a deeply sympathetic sense that this woman is trying to reach out to her daughter through both a language barrier, and the layers of machinery that disguise her.
She speaks to Mira about memories of her daughter, Motoko. She is Motoko Kusanagi.

Of course this is the name of Ghost in the Shell's true protagonist.
So here the film, from the angle of meta-text, is asserting its recognition that this version of Ghost in the Shell, with Scarlett Johansson in the leading role and the trappings of its Hollywood origins, is aware that it is a remake, and a kind of tragic one at that. It knows it's not the original Ghost in the Shell. This is not the original Major. Scarlett Johansson's character is the creation and assertion of a comically evil corporation.

Mr. Cutter's one dimensionality seems to be self depreciation on the part of the studios and producers involved. This meta angle doesn't exactly excuse or justify the moments in which the movie is just a stale remake, but it is a subtext within the movie, and that's worth noting. The producers involved probably knew they weren't exactly wanted by fans of Ghost in the Shell, but they were still trying to make some entertainment anyway; and perhaps I find this somewhat admirable.
They managed to pull off this scene. The scene where Mira meets her mother. If it didn't exist in the context of a movie that rotely re-hashes the iconic imagery of the first film, people might call a live-action Ghost in the Shell movie great, because of this scene.
 
Now I need to address the issue of Scarlett Johansson.
When Ghost in the Shell (2017) was announced, it was quickly leveled with assertions that Major Motoko's character was "whitewashed" by the choice of casting. This is in spite of Major Motoko being a robot, and some of her notable features being her manufactured body and silver eyes. I say Scarlett Johansson is pretty okay in the film. It's not exactly my favorite take on the Major, she's a little cold here in ways that can feel out of character with the rest of the Major's depictions, but Johansson brings a good physical performance to the action scenes, and has a few moments, like this tragically bitter-sweet family reunion, where her performance is effective.

Is she perfect casting? No.

...But I can't pretend I'd know how I'd like to cast the Major in a live action film. Honestly she simply might not be a character totally suited to live action: a best fit for the mediums from which she originated. Is Scarlett Johansson an awful casting choice? No. Is she badly cast because she's not Japanese? No. The sorts of people who claim otherwise are usually more interested in petty political tribalism than the quality of the art at hand.
And let's keep our feet on the ground: we are actually talking about the live action remake of a cartoon about robots for the teen and young adult audiences here. The original Ghost in the Shell is a work of art; but it is pop art.

In the face of its whitewashing criticisms, Major Mira, within the film, is overtly on the plot level a Japanese girl who had been re-created into a cyborg played by Caucasian/actress Scarlett Johansson, by an evil corporation. Not to jump ahead in the story, but Hanka CEO Mr. Cutter, seemingly a meta-textual stand-in for the film's producers, gets his comeuppance. He's killed by Japanese actor Beat Takeshi, and his corpse falls into a pool of water, which is of course a symbolic image.

So, if you wanted to be un-charitable, you could say Hollywood, at that point in 2017 a frankly struggling or even dying media industry, wanted to cynically capitalize on a beloved anime classic, remake it with their stamp, put in a big star like Scarlett Johansson, and greedily profit. Perhaps in some evil boardroom somewhere, a bunch of capitalist fat cats were puffing cigars and plotting under the banner of the Illuminati; and thus the 2017 remake was concieved.
But, if you wanted to be charitable, and perhaps naive, you could say, like Scarlett Johansson and Kaori Momoi working together across a language barrier to create something new, this project was a collaborative effort between the East and West to create.

This scene, in which Major Mira is recognized by her mother, is unique to the 2017 Ghost in the Shell remake. It's the strongest argument in its favor. Try to see it with unclouded eyes.

We've spent enough time on it (read: I've spent more than enough hours and brainpower writing and re-writing this section trying to polish it to my satisfaction, and still not feeling like I've succeeded), so let's move on.

We get Beat Takeshi's big moment. Mr. Cutter sics Hanka security forces on Section 9 to try and prevent them from informing the government at large of Hanka's crimes. Beat Takeshi makes great use of his briefcase and revolver. It's hard to dislike anything about this scene. Pretty fun. He looks like he's having fun, and that's fun to watch.

Major Motoko heads to the film's climax in "The Lawless Zone", where she and other runaways, children eventually rounded up for Hanka's experiments, used to hide out.
It's here that she remembers Kuze' had been her boyfriend, a boy named Hideo (by the way, at this point in the movie we're re-creating the spider tank scene, but the way it's done is almost totally uninteresting compared to the original, so I'll not even bother to describe it). Call me a sucker for this kind of thing, but I do like that the film reveals Kuze' to be Motoko's love interest. I guess I'm just a romantic. There's an angle from which you could say the story of this movie is about Kuze'/Hideo trying to save Mira/Motoko from being a mere tool for Mr. Cutter. Does he save Ghost in the Shell (2017) from being a mere corporate cash-grab remake? Eh...
To be honest, I don't think I can bring myself to say this movie has "soul". It might actually just be a "soulless" remake. But it has heart, and I'll be damnned if it isn't trying its best.  

Kuze' invites Motoko to join him and live with him as a ghost in the net, but she refuses for the time being. He tells her he'll watch over her from the network.
Motoko defeats the Spider Tank. The scene plays out with absolutely none of the moody contemplativeness that made the original compelling.
The rest of Section 9 outwits and defeats Mr. Cutter, and brings Hanka robotics to justice.
The film ends with the Major spouting a bunch of cliche's including the line "It's not who we are, but what we do that defines us." which is a line lifted directly from Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

It's interesting to note that the film was marketed with a trailer that included a remix of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence".
Its a song that includes the line "All I ever wanted, all I ever needed was here in my arms. Words, like violence, unmake the silence. They can only do harm." - lyrics featured in the trailer in question.
The orignal 1995 movie, and really a lot of Mamoru Oshii's filmography often eschews dialogue in favor of the non-verbal "pure cinema" experience.
The use of this song suggests to me that people involved in producing this 2017 film were disappointed with aspects of the script. Disappointed that they couldn't have done a more non-verbal movie and more thorough homage to Oshii's style.

What does Mamoru Oshii have to say about all of this?
In a 2017 interview with IGN conducted by email, on the issue of Scarlet Johansson's casting he wrote:
"What issue could there possibly be with casting her?"
"The Major is a cyborg and her physical form is an entirely assumed one. The name 'Motoko Kusanagi' and her current body are not her original name and body, so there is no basis for saying that an Asian actress must portray her. Even if her original body (presuming such a thing existed) were a Japanese one, that would still apply."

"In the movies, John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, and Omar Sharif, an Arab, can play Doctor Zhivago, a Slav. It's all just cinematic conventions[...]"
"If that's not allowed, then Darth Vader probably shouldn’t speak English, either. I believe having Scarlett play Motoko was the best possible casting for this movie. I can only sense a political motive from the people opposing it, and I believe artistic expression must be free from politics."

Corresponding on the re-created opening sequence, Oshii wrote that he thought it was "well done" but that it made him think "that hand-drawn animation is still superior to CG at emotional expression." and that this "is due to a difference in the range of techniques that have built up over time for each method."

I think it's worth noting he may not only be referring to the evolution of animation technique in the entertainment industry here, but to the Japanese art of calligraphy, Shodo. It is an art form concerned with imbuing expression with intent through concentration and fluid execution. As an aside, the ancient art of Staves in Nordic tradition, or the more modern art of Sigils among the rebellious practicioners of modern western "Chaos Magick" could be considered comparable western traditions. In the west, these modes of expression, which are essentially modes of creating art imbued with intent in a similar way, are little known and buried. Shodo Calligraphy is a pillar of Japanese culture, and is one of the reasons they have become so dominant in the arts of illustration and animation.

Oshii calling Scarlett Johansson "The Best Possible Casting" seems like the kind of hyperbole one would say to stay in good social graces, but again, I don't think it's wrong to say that she does a pretty good job, and I doubt he was being disingenuous.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing her take on the Major again.
I wouldn't mind seeing Rupert Sanders return to direct a sequel, and hopefully one with more freedom to be itself, rather than a re-tread of Oshii's work.
There's probably little chance of a Ghost in the Shell 2017 sequel, but I'd love to see one which is allowed to be a quieter, slower, more non-verbally oriented art movie, than an action movie directed at the masses. As if that'll ever happen.

Director Rupert Sanders in a 2016 audio interview transcribed and posted on the website Den of Geek had this to say:
"When Steven Spielberg approached me and said, ‘Would you be interested in Ghost In The Shell,’ and I was obviously, ‘Yes’… I kind of made a graphic novel. I shot stills of the original anime, I shot stills from Innocence and I shot stills from Stand Alone Complex, and I made a graphic novel, and I kind of wrote a story that went beside the images. I then took that back to Steven and said, ‘This is how I feel the film should be’, because originally, the version I wanted to do was borrowing from the first, but… I think it’s a hard story to tell cinematically. There’s so much philosophical introspection that it’s not an easy multiplex filler."
And when asked about how the film was being marketed he said: "I think Scarlett’s a big part of that marketability"

Finally, when asked about the contributions Anime and Manga have made to American cinema, he said:
"I think there’s a beautiful symbiotic nature of all cinema. You look at Ghost In The Shell, you can see traces of Blade Runner in it. You look at Blade Runner, you can see traces of Kurosawa in it. We’re all kind of cross-pollinating, and that’s the beauty of international cinema. To me, that’s the beauty of Ghost In The Shell: you’ve got, hopefully, a very global view of the world..."


[...]


I had considered ending the review there. That could have been a nice mic drop. However there are more comments of interest from Mamoru Oshii to note.
Also from the 2017 IGN review, he had more to say about CGI and the re-creation of the opening sequence.

He continued: "[...]there is no telling what the future may hold."
"[...]there may come a time when the CG staff will have a greater expressive ability than hand-drawn animators."
This is something to consider.

Keep in mind for a moment that these comments came from an interview in 2017.
I had mentioned in my review of The Sky Crawlers (2008) Oshii's knack for drawing a sense of artistry out of CGI, and praised his use of CGI in that film. In Innocence, he also makes interesting use of CGI elements, and, in the spirit of his nearly totally non-verbal 1985 cel animation film called Angel's Egg (a collaboration with renowned Japanese painter Yoshitaka Amano), in 2005 he directed the little-known CG animation 30 minute non-verbal short film Mezame no Hakobune (or "Open Your Mind", in English). A gorgeous short film featuring an emphasis on bioluminescence, mythic chimeras, and creatures that exist between the worlds of the sky and sea. In 2006 he wrote and directed the mixed media movie Tachiguishi Retsuden (or The Amazing Lives of Fast Food Grifters - its English title), a mockumentary presenting an embellished history of fast food in Japan, from streetside ramen stands in the 40's through to packaged noodle cups and hamburgers in the 70's, depicted with a blend of traditional animation, collage, puppetry, and CGI animation elements.
Following the release of James Cameron's Avatar (2009), in 2010, he was recorded conversing with another Japanese creator, Studio Ghibli's Toshio Suzuki, about Avatar.  
In it, he jokingly issued a "Formal declaration of defeat", praising Avatar's use of CGI to create a "Total fantasy", which is evidently a mindset he brings to his use of CGI: ambitions as an artist to use all the tools available to him to create a "total fantasy" of sense, which he felt Avatar had achieved.

In the IGN interview correspondence, Oshii responded to questions about other possible Live Action adaptations of anime he'd like to see, answering that he would "Most want to see" an adaptation of The Sky Crawlers, writing "It would be impossible to make that on a Japanese film budget and scale."
He ended the correspondence writing, "I find it fascinating to see films I was involved in being remade in another country, with a different director. It's something I look forward to seeing. Of course, I'm sure it would be even more fun if I could direct them myself."

Currently, as of writing this review, Mamoru Oshii is adapting the lesser known 70's mecha classic Armored Trooper VOTOMS into a film titled "VOTOMS: Die Graue Hexe" ("The Grey Witch" - from German).
The single trailer released so far displays Oshii's trademark use of traditional animation elements blended with CGI.

I'm looking forward to it, though perhaps, after he's finished his work on that film, it would be time for Hollywood to reach out to Mamoru Oshii and provide him with the budget, teams, and technical means to create the kind of "total fantasy" he wishes to make.
I'm sure such a film could co-exist with the equally likely Rupert Sanders GitS Remake sequel.
Okay, okay. I'll drop the sarcasm and endeavor to be more sincere next time.

Ghost in the Shell (2017) gets 3 out of 4 stars.