Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Ghost in the Shell is a live-action movie of the manga and anime franchise of the same name as well as being the newest installment in the franchise released on March 16, 2017, released by Paramount Pictures.

Plot
In the future, humans have become enhanced with cybernetic upgrades. Hanka Robotics is the top company in this type of technology, and it is on the verge of developing a new kind of cyborg that uses a human brain to function.

A woman, Mira Killian (Scarlett Johansson), is being taken into Hanka after an accident. Her brain is put into a cybernetic body with greater strength and agility. Once the process is complete, her designer, Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), talks to Hanka's CEO Cutter (Peter Ferdinando). Cutter wants to put Mira in Section 9, an anti-terrorism squad, but Ouelet feels she is not ready for something like that.

One year later, Mira is now known as "The Major". She is on the roof of a building listening in on a meeting between Hanka representative Dr. Osmond and an African Ambassador (Chris Obi). The Major receives her orders from Section 9 Chief Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) and works alongside Batou (Pilou Absaek) and Ladriya (Danusia Samal). In the conference, several geisha-bots start to attack the people in the room, leading The Major to spring into action, against Aramaki's orders. She goes invisible and jumps off the roof before swinging into the room and she starts shooting the geisha-bots. One of the geisha-bots hacks into Dr. Osmond's neck and kills him before The Major gets to it. The geisha-bot says "Commit to the will of Hanka and be destroyed." The Major shoots it.

The Section 9 team meets with Aramaki to discuss the attack. They learn that the geisha-bots were hacked from a mysterious source, also uttering the same phrase that the geisha-bot said to The Major. The rest of the team leaves but Aramaki talks to The Major about her move by jumping into the room. Aramaki tells her that she still has her "ghost" (her soul) within her "shell" (her cyborg body).

The Major meets with Dr. Ouelet frequently to fix her body when it's been damaged. The Major has trouble remembering her past, only seeing brief glimpses and flashes. Ouelet dismisses her hallucinations as glitches, but she is shown to care for The Major.

The Major and Batou are driving around the city. She mentions what little memory she has of her past, which involves her family dying while getting to the country. On the road, The Major sees a hallucination of a burning hut.

The Major and Batou meet with Dr. Dahlin (Anamaria Marinca) with the geisha-bot body. The Major "deep-dives" into the geisha-bot's AI to try and get more answers on the hacker. The Major finds herself walking through a club with distorted images. She is grabbed by the entity, forcing Batou to pull her out of the connection. The Major says she knows where to find the hacker.

The two go to a Yakuza nightclub with Ladriya. The Major is pulled into a room by two men who force her to dance while she is handcuffed to a pole and is zapped by a cattle prod. The room also blocks a signal for her to communicate with Batou. The Major then starts fighting the men in the room, kicking one out of the room and leading to a shootout that Batou engages in. He and The Major kill a number of goons before they head off to find the hacker. They run toward a room that is really a trap. A bomb goes off that damages The Major's body and blinds Batou.

Batou receives cybernetic eyes to replace his damaged ones while The Major's body is repaired. Meanwhile, Cutter meets with Aramaki with anger over The Major doing the deep-dive. Aramaki warns Cutter who he's threatening since Aramaki answers to the Prime Minister and not Hanka.

The hacker (Michael Pitt) finds Dr. Dahlin and rips her eyes out before killing her. The Section 9 team finds her body, and The Major pulls a drive out of Dahlin's hand which contains names of other Hanka associates, including Ouelet. They figure she is the hacker's next target.

The hacker controls two sanitation workers to ram their truck into Ouelet's car. She survives but the men step outside and try to shoot her. The Major and her partners arrive in time to shoot back at the men. She chases after one man, Lee, as he runs by a body of water. The Major fights him while invisible until Batou shows up and stops her.

Lee is interrogated after the hacker's connection is severed. He tells Section 9 that he was on his way to pick up his daughter. The Major shows him a photo of what he sees as his daughter but is really a picture of himself. They determine that the hacker placed fake memories in Lee's head. The hacker, whose name is learned to be Kuze, then speaks through Lee to threaten Section 9 before making Lee jump to hang himself with the cable around his neck.

Section 9 member Togusa (Chin Han) traces the hacker's signal to a hidden location. The Major finds Kuze as he is connected to a network with other humanoid cyborg bodies. Kuze reveals that he was a test subject of Hanka's, but considered a failure and a freak due to his deformed outcome. The Major sees a tattoo on his chest of the burning hut like in her hallucination. Kuze says that Hanka took control over their lives instead of saving them.

The Major confronts Ouelet over the revelation. Ouelet says that there were 98 failed experiments before The Major became the first successful one. The Major appears angry even as Ouelet tries to defend her position.

Cutter orders Ouelet to terminate The Major due to her being a liability. As The Major undergoes the process, Ouelet instead gives her an address so she can find answers for herself. Ouelet lets The Major escape, so Cutter shoots and kills Ouelet in retaliation. Cutter reports to Aramaki that The Major killed Ouelet and that she must be terminated.

The Major follows the address to what turns out to be her old home. Her mother (Kaori Momoi) is there, having believed that her daughter ran away and was killed. The Major's real name was Motoko Kusanagi. Her mother does sense a familiar look in The Major's eyes when she looks at her. As she leaves, The Major gets in contact with Aramaki, who informs her that Ouelet is dead and that Cutter says she killed her, though they both know the truth. They let Cutter listen in on their conversation as they plan their next move.

Cutter sends his men to kill Section 9 members, but Batou, Togusa, and Aramaki all survive and kill their attackers. The Major meets with Kuze at a hideout, which resembles the burning hut. They learn that Kuze's real name was Hideo, and they were originally against augmentations with humans and cyborgs.

Cutter sends a spider tank to kill The Major and Kuze. The spider tank hits Kuze and damages him severely. The Major leaps onto the back of the spider tank and tries to rip its back open. She uses all her strength, causing her arm to rip off as she destroys the spider tank. One of Cutter's snipers rides in on a chopper and kills Kuze. Aramaki sends his own man, Saito (Yutaka Izumihara), to take down the sniper to save The Major. Batou recovers The Major, who is still alive. Aramaki then corners Cutter after having spoken to the Prime Minister. Aramaki contacts The Major and gets her consent to execute Cutter. He shoots Cutter three times as he falls into his own pool.

The Major visits her own grave with her mother, who now knows her daughter is still with her. The Major's voiceover states that she knows there will be more like her, but she knows her enhancements do not define her. She then leaps off a building to her next mission.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The story is weak, with an over-convoluted plot.
 * 2) Very poor grasp of the source material.
 * 3) Unlike the 1995 animated film of the same name, which was rated R, this live-action remake is rated PG-13, which means most of the violence and action gets toned down a lot.
 * 4) Abysmal acting, except for Scarlett Johansson.
 * 5) Bad and forgettable soundtrack by Clint Mansell and Lorne Balfe, who made better soundtracks which are Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan for Clint Mansell as well as Assassin's Creed: Revelations and the Skylanders franchise for Lorne Balfe.
 * 6) Mediocre action scenes.
 * 7) The film was accused of whitewashing the anime.
 * 8) *For example, Scarlett Johansson as the Major.
 * 9) The characterizations are a bit off from the original, often leading to unlikable and badly developed characters.
 * 10) The opening narration was a straight-up rip-off of mh:greatestmovies:Blade Runner.
 * 11) Not great direction by Rupert Sanders.
 * 12) The pacing isn't very good.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Impressive visuals.
 * 2) Exciting futuristic style.
 * 3) Some scenes are faithfully recreated from the anime.
 * 4) "Beat" Takeshi Kitano gives it all even if he's not even speaking in English, and has a good action scene.
 * 5) The Japanese themselves saw no problem with turning the main character non-Asian.
 * 6) In the Japanese dub, the original Japanese voice actors return to reprise their roles as their respective characters.
 * 7) A lot of people argue that Scarlett Johannson (mostly known as Black Widow from the Marvel Cinematic Universe) gave a good performance.
 * 8) The cinematography is good.

Reception
Ghost in the Shell (2017) was met with mostly a mixed reception with praise for its visual style, action sequences, cinematography and score, but criticism for its story and lack of character development. The casting of Caucasian actors, particularly Johansson, drew accusations of racism and whitewashing in the United States and was a commercial failure, only grossing $169,801,921 worldwide against a production budget of $110 million, and was given a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ghost in the Shell boasts cool visuals and a compelling central performance from Scarlett Johansson, but the end result lacks the magic of the movie's classic source material.", a 6.5 rating and a low 111 which is down by an underwhelming 23% percent popularity on IMDb, and a 52 rating on Metacritic, and a 4/5 from The Guardian.