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Watch the first teasers for the live action ‘Ghost in the Shell’

Does the live action Hollywood remake live up to the original anime?

 

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

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Posted on Sep 22, 2016   Updated on May 25, 2021, 11:05 pm CDT

Instead of posting a traditional trailer, the live action Ghost in the Shell movie is introducing itself with a series of short, enigmatic teasers.

The ten-second clips offer flashes of insight into the world of Ghost in the Shell, but no information about the film’s plot or characters. Fans will recognize Scarlet Johansson as the cyborg cop known as The Major (renamed from Major Motoko Kusanagi in the original) and Takeshi Kitano as security chief Daisuke Aramaki.

This movie was controversial before it even started filming, mostly because it stars Scarlett Johansson as a character who was previously thought of as Japanese. There’s been some debate over whether her casting counts as whitewashing for a character with a cybernetic body, but critics are unlikely to be impressed by the first teaser in the sequence, a clip of a woman in a stylized geisha mask.

The film’s other teasers highlight a visually arresting cyberpunk aesthetic, but we’re yet to see anything from the film’s other two lead actors, Pilou Asbæk as the Major’s partner Batou, and Michael Pitt as the hacker villain The Laughing Man. 

Ghost in the Shell will be released in March 2017.

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*First Published: Sep 22, 2016, 9:04 am CDT