Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (most assuredly spoilers)
Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 7:46 pm
Hopefully there are more people than just Artemio who can discuss this. The following rant is rife with sarcasm which tends to be a bad idea in purely written form.
I saw Innocence about a month ago and I wasn't impressed. Where to start... First of all the plot was very simple. "Androids are killing people. They aren't supposed to be able to do that. Oh, someone ghosthacked one of the investigators. Good thing too since they weren't getting anywhere. Let's track down the hacker and squeeze out the information. Ok, they're operating from a ship on international waters. Let's stop it. So they were making copies of human ghosts and imprinting them on androids." Um, who exactly were those guys and why were they killing those people?
Ok, maybe the plot was just an excuse to explore some deep thoughts. Very little of those here. That lady who inspected the android gave a weird monology about analogies between androids and human offsprings and so on... Batou and Togusa having conversations where they quote something at every opportunity (if I had a brain wired like that I would probably find better uses for it) which ends up unnecessarily cluttering the conversations.
And good God, why does everyone appear to be so completely apathetic, serious and depressed in this movie? The problem being that seems to be pretty much the entire spectrum of emotions anybody seems to have with absolutely no balancing opposites. Stand Alone Complex had some Philip K. Dick -style elements of machines being more human than humans. Something similar would've been needed here.
The ghosthacking sequences were cool, though. It would've been nice to extrapolate a little more on what exactly it means to have your brain connected to the future equivalent of internet at all times. Now it was just taken with the attitude "Meh, shit happens." What exactly are the benefits of that which outweigh such hazards? One the other hand, it is interesting to see a cybepunk world which doesn't preach about the "inhumanising effect" of having metal replacements to your body parts.
Overall the movie felt too long in proportion to the content it had. There were many of those silent (or rather not-talking) scenes showing some incredible computer-generated scenery. Problem was most of it felt out-of-place and empty. The scene showing Batou at his home worked well, and that was pretty much the only one. When Batou and Togusa were entering the hacker's (forgot the name) house, I couldn't help thinking "Who the hell would build something like that? Why? When was that built?"
Much less of Major Kusanagi here than I expected, but that isn't really a problem for me. Or maybe it wouldn't be if Innocence had more merits of it's own on which to stand on. As it is, the whole thing felt more elongated and pointless than David Lynch at his worst.
I saw Innocence about a month ago and I wasn't impressed. Where to start... First of all the plot was very simple. "Androids are killing people. They aren't supposed to be able to do that. Oh, someone ghosthacked one of the investigators. Good thing too since they weren't getting anywhere. Let's track down the hacker and squeeze out the information. Ok, they're operating from a ship on international waters. Let's stop it. So they were making copies of human ghosts and imprinting them on androids." Um, who exactly were those guys and why were they killing those people?
Ok, maybe the plot was just an excuse to explore some deep thoughts. Very little of those here. That lady who inspected the android gave a weird monology about analogies between androids and human offsprings and so on... Batou and Togusa having conversations where they quote something at every opportunity (if I had a brain wired like that I would probably find better uses for it) which ends up unnecessarily cluttering the conversations.
And good God, why does everyone appear to be so completely apathetic, serious and depressed in this movie? The problem being that seems to be pretty much the entire spectrum of emotions anybody seems to have with absolutely no balancing opposites. Stand Alone Complex had some Philip K. Dick -style elements of machines being more human than humans. Something similar would've been needed here.
The ghosthacking sequences were cool, though. It would've been nice to extrapolate a little more on what exactly it means to have your brain connected to the future equivalent of internet at all times. Now it was just taken with the attitude "Meh, shit happens." What exactly are the benefits of that which outweigh such hazards? One the other hand, it is interesting to see a cybepunk world which doesn't preach about the "inhumanising effect" of having metal replacements to your body parts.
Overall the movie felt too long in proportion to the content it had. There were many of those silent (or rather not-talking) scenes showing some incredible computer-generated scenery. Problem was most of it felt out-of-place and empty. The scene showing Batou at his home worked well, and that was pretty much the only one. When Batou and Togusa were entering the hacker's (forgot the name) house, I couldn't help thinking "Who the hell would build something like that? Why? When was that built?"
Much less of Major Kusanagi here than I expected, but that isn't really a problem for me. Or maybe it wouldn't be if Innocence had more merits of it's own on which to stand on. As it is, the whole thing felt more elongated and pointless than David Lynch at his worst.