With her role as Black Widow in Marvel’s Avengers and Captain America films, along with a surprisingly successful lead turn in Lucy, Scarlett Johansson has shown that she is a bankable international female action star. She may have that category all to herself. The upcoming Ghost in the Shell may be the best example of that yet.
Based on the 1990s Japanese manga and anime film, Ghost in the Shell has drawn considerable controversy for casting Johansson as the lead for a Japanese multimedia franchise featuring Asian characters. Putting a white American actress up front seems to be the worst example of whitewashing in Hollywood productions. Producers will point to Johansson’s international star power as justification for the casting choice (and reportedly refused to greenlight the project unless she was aboard). Though that’s difficult to argue, it was still a disappointing development in an industry where actors of color and different ethnicities consistently miss out on huge opportunities because of short-sighted executive decisions.
Nevertheless, Ghost in the Shell moved forward with production and the first trailer for the film debuted this weekend in Tokyo. Whether you agree with Johansson playing the lead role of The Major or not, this two-minute preview demonstrates that director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) has made a live-action adaptation that looks extremely faithful to the source manga and anime materials. Take a look:
OK, there is also a sizable portion of the audience that will also enjoy Johansson running around in a skintight white bodysuit while taking down bad guys. That attire is also faithful to the source material, though there are probably different aesthetic and costume choices that could have been made there. (Actually, the character spends a significant amount of screen time naked.) Given how the production was already taking flak, however, and the huge popularity of Ghost in the Shell, sticking as closely to the manga and anime as possible was likely seen as crucial.
As you can see in the trailer, Johansson’s character isn’t entirely human. She’s made up of a lot of robot parts. In the cyberpunk future of Tokyo, technology has allowed many people to interface their human brains with various computer networks, and for some, that means powering completely robotic parts of their body. Johansson’s character is almost entirely robotic due to a catastrophic accident she suffered at an early age. But having mechanized body parts and connecting to cyber networks leaves people open to attacks from hackers.
Johansson’s Major leads a special-operations task force composed of former military and police that performs counter-terrorism measures against these cyber-attacks and whatever crimes they might lead to. While pursuing a hacker looking to sabotage all of the technology on which this society is depending, the Major ends up learning secrets about what happened to her after her accident and how she may not be leading the life she believed.
Ghost in the Shell is scheduled for a March 31, 2017 theatrical release. Below is the trailer for the original 1995 anime film.
