By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Big budget, star-laden, special effects bonanzas are no longer guaranteed hits.
But the box office landscape was different in 2017, a time when The Rock could do wrong, when people still thought Star Wars was on the rise, and Marvel was bringing in huge audiences on its way to an Endgame crescendo.
In that environment, the biggest star in the world released a hugely budgeted, gorgeous-looking, ultra-sexy, high-concept, sci-fi action flick based on a beloved source material. With a reported production budget of $110–180 million, plus $60 million in marketing, Paramount aimed for a global franchise starter, hoping to rival The Matrix’s $460 million worldwide gross from 1999.
The world responded to the movie with outrage and condemnation, but that wasn’t the only problem.
This is why Ghost in the Shell failed.
Stephen Spielberg was a mega-fan of the classic 1995 anime movie Ghost in the Shell. At the time, he called the anime ‘one of the most visionary sci-fi films ever made,’ and his passion drove DreamWorks to outbid competitors like Sony for the rights.
So in 2008, his company, DreamWorks, acquired the rights to turn it into a live-action movie.
Translating it into a usable script proved difficult. Numerous writers were brought in, and different approaches were tried; none of them worked.
The biggest problem was that DreamWorks wanted something accessible for mass audience consumption, and doing that while also staying true to the source was proving impossible.
The very rated-R, 1995 anime grossed only $2 million worldwide but had a cult following. Paramount needed a hit to justify the film’s budget, targeting at least $400 million globally to break even.
Finally, they hired director Rupert Sanders, the guy behind Snow White and the Huntsman.
His solution was to stay true to the anime’s visual fidelity while focusing the story more on action, as a way to cater to general audiences.
Sanders shot in New Zealand and Hong Kong, using 3,000 CGI shots and practical sets to recreate the anime’s cityscape, with Weta Workshop designing the Major’s bodysuit. The script prioritized action set pieces, like a geisha robot fight, over the anime’s dialogue-heavy philosophy.
Scarlett Johansson joined the project in 2015 to play the movie’s lead, The Major.
Thanks to playing Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson had reached the peak of her fame as an action icon in 2015, and she invested that fame in an edgy sci-fi project which would have her basically running around as close to naked as its possible to be in a PG-13 movie, for most of its run time.
The Major’s bodysuit was designed to mimic the anime’s nude aesthetic but used opaque materials to secure a PG-13 rating, avoiding the full on R-rated nudity of the original.
Scarlett Johansson was taking a lot of risks like this, during this part of her career.
In 2013 she earned acclaim for starring in the indie sci-fi movie Under the Skin, in which she plays a man-eating alien who disrobes before investing her victims. That film, made for $13 million, grossed $7 million but won critical praise, with Johansson’s nude scenes sparking debate about art versus exploitation.
If nothing else, Johansson deserves more career credit for her willingness to take big risks. She turned down safer roles in Mission: Impossible – Fallout and Jurassic World to pursue Ghost in the Shell, betting on its potential to redefine her as a sci-fi lead.
So, she would have been a natural fit for Ghost in the Shell’s lead, if she were Japanese.
Breaking news: Scarlett Johansson is not Japanese. Meanwhile, the characters in both the anime version and the original manga version of the story definitely are.
More on that in a minute.
First, let’s look at the movie they ended up with, because examined purely as a piece of entertainment, isolated from the controversy, it’s actually, well, pretty damn good.
Ghost in the Shell takes place in a dystopian future where cybernetic enhancements are commonplace, and humans merge with machines. The setting draws from Hong Kong’s skyline, with 1.5 million LED lights used to create the city’s holographic billboards.
The city, a neon-lit urban sprawl, is a hub of technological advancement and corporate power. Production designer Jan Roelfs built 12 practical sets, including a 40-foot-tall Hanka Robotics lab, to ground the CGI-heavy world.
The narrative centers on the philosophical concept of the “ghost”, what they call a person’s consciousness or soul, and the “shell”, their physical or sometimes cybernetic body.
This concept was simplified from the anime, which explored transhumanism through debates about AI sentience, to focus on the Major’s personal identity crisis.
Scarlett Johansson plays The Major, the first of her kind: a human brain housed in a fully synthetic body after a tragic accident supposedly killed her. The film’s opening sequence, showing her creation, used 1,200 CGI frames and cost $5 million alone.
Yes, it’s a little like RoboCop.
But it goes in a totally different direction. Where RoboCop satirized corporate greed, Ghost in the Shell explores memory and autonomy, though it drops the anime’s political subtext about government surveillance.
Tasked with stopping cyber-terrorists, Major battles a mysterious hacker, assassinating Hanka scientists by manipulating their implants.
As Major investigates, glitches in her system—flashes of unfamiliar memories—hint at a hidden past.
Her pursuit of Kuze unveils a conspiracy tied to Hanka’s experiments with consciousness, forcing Major to question her identity and autonomy.
Blending cyberpunk action with existential questions, the film is every bit as visually stunning as the 1995 anime adaptation, but less philosophical.
As an action movie, it’s a wild ride and a unique experience, and its worthy of praise for what it accomplishes. The film’s tank battle finale, recreating the anime’s iconic climax, cost $10 million and required 400 extras.
It was a huge production.
Had the anime adaptation not existed, I think there’s a very good chance we’d be talking about Ghost in the Shell as a cult classic action movie. Instead, it’s doomed to be, fairly or unfairly, eternally labeled as dumb and probably racist.
From the moment Scarlett Johansson was announced as Ghost in the Shell’s lead, the world freaked out, with both faithful fans and people who’d never seen the anime but wanted to cash in on the politics of it, screaming about whitewashing.
As if to demonstrate how truly clueless they were, Paramount and DreamWorks are rumored to have responded to the outrage by considering using CGI “race-swapping” technology to make Johansson appear more Asian.
Thankfully, that never happened. Paramount instead cast Japanese actors like Takeshi Kitano and Kaori Momoi in supporting roles to add authenticity, but this did little to quell the controversy.
Filming wrapped in June 2016, with Paramount betting $250,000 on a Super Bowl ad to shift focus to the film’s visuals.
Probably they thought that by the time it came out the controversy would have run its course and the movie would be allowed to fail or succeed based purely on whether or not it was good. The studio projected a $40 million opening weekend domestically, banking on Johansson’s star power and the film’s 3D screenings, which made up 30% of ticket sales.
But there’s no denying that the script did dumb things down. The final script, credited to three writers, cut the anime’s 20-minute philosophical debates to under 5 minutes, replacing them with a straightforward revenge plot.
The narrative, blending elements from the manga, 1995 anime, and Stand Alone Complex, felt incoherent to some, failing to satisfy purists or engage new viewers. Test screenings in 2016 scored 65/100, below Paramount’s 80/100 target, prompting last-minute reshoots costing $8 million.
Negative buzz was everywhere, driving audiences away. A 2017 YouGov poll found 60% of potential viewers were aware of the whitewashing controversy, with 25% saying it made them less likely to see the film.
Released on March 31, 2017, the film was released long past the peak of cyberpunk interest created by The Matrix in the early 2000s. The big movies out there on its opening weekend were The Boss Baby with a $50.2 million opening, and Beauty and the Beast earning $90.4 million in its third week.
The film opened at only $19 million and it had alienated the core fanbase which might have helped give it long enough legs to become a cult hit.
The movie’s trailers emphasized action over the story’s existential themes, and its those themes which made it unique. Without that it seemed like just another action movie trying to ripoff The Matrix.
A toxic mix of casting backlash, critical lukewarmness, fierce competition, an oversized budget, and a failure to resonate with either fans or casual viewers doomed the movie. The film’s 3.9/10 IMDb rating and C+ CinemaScore reflected mixed audience reactions, with 40% of ticket buyers citing Johansson’s casting as a negative factor.
We’ll probably never get another live action Ghost in the Shell adaptation. And that’s a shame, because fans deserve a faithful take on the story. Paramount’s losses killed plans for a sequel, and no studio has since pursued the IP, unlike Pokémon or Sonic the Hedgehog, which got successful adaptations.
But, maybe Ghost in the Shell deserves more credit. In the wake of its box office failure, we’ve been subjected to far worse anime adaptations.
Ghost in the Shell tries hard and Hollywood dumped a ton of money on it to make it happen.
Contrast that with the limp-wristed, no-budget live-action adaptations like the terrible Netflix take on Cowboy Bebop, or the best forgotten 2018 Death Note adaptation, and it’s hard not to wonder if the world was too hard on Ghost in the Shell.
Scarlett Johansson goes hard, every minute, in Ghost in the Shell, and so does every frame of the movie. She performed 90% of her stunts, training for six weeks with fight choreographer John Wick’s David Leitch.
It’s beautiful and daring, and the action is top notch.
Scarlett Johansson was not the original choice to play Major. The role was first offered to Margot Robbie. But Robbie declined, preferring to play Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, a choice she is not likely to have regretted.
Maybe that was the right call, but remove the controversy and Ghost in the Shell is a much better film than Suicide Squad.
Would we all rather have a more faithful adaptation? Sure. But looked at in isolation, Ghost in the Shell is a well-made sci-fi movie. And, unlike modern box office hits, like Captain America: Boring New World, at least it took risks.
