“…if I don’t know if these are my real memories, then how do I know I have brain in here?
When does the malicious demon end?
”
—The Major 
Steve “Frosty” Weintraub’s report “Ghost in the Shell”: Everything You Need to Know about Hollywood’s Gritty, “Sexy” Adaptation (Collider, November 2, 2016 AD) is a great read for anyone who still thinks that a movie is just a movie, fiction is just fiction, etc.
The movie in focus “has been in development for almost ten years” and no one invests (time, money, energy, etc.) a decade to just show up, point a camera and say, “Just, like, do whatever and stuff.” Rather, storylines are conceptualized, discusses, edited, approved and so that with which you end up is an admixture of ethics and philosophy, worldview and all of it based to some or another degree in the real life ethics, philosophy and worldview or the script writer, director, editor, etc.
The movie, which is due to be released on March 31, 2017 AD, is director Rupert Sanders and stars Scarlett Johansson as The Major who is “a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid who leads the elite task force Section 9.”
Below, I embedded the video, “Transhumanism & the Bible in ‘Ghost in the Shell’ (GITS) anime movie.”
Ghost in the Shell originally titled Kôkaku Kidôtai, refers to a series of anime and manga (Japanese comics and animated cartoons) which began in 1989 AD. It is one of those ahead its time tales of what was then known as cyberpunk and is now loosely known transhumanism, futurism, post-humanism (H+), etc. as it is set in the year 2029 AD.
The under production live action movie:
…explores what it means to be human. When you can copy your consciousness to another body, when do you stop being human? Is it your body or mind or both that makes you who you are? In addition, in the world of Ghost in the Shell, hackers can plant memories in your head and the recipient can’t tell what’s real or fake. The world of Ghost in the Shell tries to deal with real issues in a technologically advanced world.
We are told that it will be “tackling these philosophical issues” that there is “philosophy in this movie” the “spirituality and philosophy of the animated film,” etc. so that it is more than just telling a cool story with no connection to anything.
I wonder if they will include some of the anime/manga’s biblical themes such as when in the 1995 AD version a voice is heard speaking through the Major during the boat scene, “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Then at the movie’s end the Major states:
Remember the words I spoke in another voice on the boat that night? I understand it now and there are even more words that go with the passage. These words are:
“When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child. Now that I am a man I have no more use for childish ways.” [1 Corinthians 13:11
Now I can say these things without help in my own voice because now I am neither the woman known as the Major nor am I the program that is called the Puppet Master. And where does the newborn go from here…
Of course, when you are dealing with an ongoing 27 year old storyline you have to decide which direction to go. Well, in the movie, there is an “enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out advancements in cyber technology.” Producer Avi Arad notes that they are also focusing on “addressing her sense of self and resolving how she defines herself in terms of memories…villains…are really there to antagonize her spiritually…villains in the story are people that are abusing this brave new world…there are characters, both at a criminal level and a governmental level, who are abusing technology and doing scary things.”
I am glad that Rupert Sanders noted that “The sexuality was something we wanted keep” because in the anime, for some reason (can you say fan service?) when, for example, the Major is about to attack the Yakuza she decides that going into a fight naked is the way to go. Well, it is a good thing that the movie will not follow that, at least not directly, as the Major wears a suit that “is skin tone colour, she’s not actually naked. This is a whole suit she’s wearing. The thermoptic. We’re not actually trying to pretend she’s naked.”
Scarlett Johansson notes that her character is “having an existential crisis for a large portion of this film and asking herself the questions of ‘Who was I? Who am I now? And what will become of me?’” and also references an “identity crisis.”
Executive producer Michael Costigan dug deeper into the movie’s worldview-philosophy:
It’s a world where people are enhanced. What is evolution? Who is a human and who is enhanced? What are these different stages? If you’re enhanced there is a lot of that idea of what would you want to be in that future. You can learn something immediately or do anything. The possibilities are endless.…You can do great things with it. But if you can take the same technology and do bad things with it, it can be dangerous. Who is monitoring that? That is something the movie gets to delve into.
He also notes that “Gender is really explored because there are deep friendships and deep emotional relationships. It’s complicated because who’s human and who’s cyborised, who is not human in the movie? But, even if you’re not human in the movie and have human emotions like love or fear or desire that was interesting for female and male characters.”
Sir Richard Leslie Taylor, who is the founder of New Zealand’s film prop and special effects company Weta Workshop, notes how real life high tech advancements correlate to the high tech advancements of the movie:
On Lord of the Rings, 100% of everything we made was handmade by the technicians on the workshop floor, by the time we reached The Hobbit, 60% of everything we made on The Hobbit was manufactured by robots in the workshop. Mainly robots that we’ve built on the workshop floor so milling machines, plasma cutters, laser cutters, and 3D printers…We even built a robot that builds the components for the robots we built.
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