The International ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Trailer Features the Major Bringing the Pain
Paramount has rolled out a new international trailer for Scarlett Johansson’s live-action Ghost in the Shell, which is faster-paced and shorter than the first one we got early last month. There isn’t a whole lot of new footage in this aside from a few second-long shots, but we see the Major and her partner Batou in action again, and less of those scary-looking spider leg people.
What the trailer does most of all is show how differently the plot of this movie is being marketed to modern moviegoing audiences. The original Ghost in the Shell dealt more with philosophical conversations about the nature of consciousness and existence (kind of like a feature-length Westworld episode), but this one, or the trailers, at least, seem to be focusing more on Major’s journey to find out who she was before.
The official synopsis, oddly, is truer to the original movie:
Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, Ghost in the Shell follows Major, a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
However, the Major and her cohorts, aside from a couple of characters, are still white, which is troubling to those of us concerned about Hollywood diversity and representation. This movie even takes the Major’s full name — Motoko Kusanagi — out of the movie entirely, probably so that they don’t actually have a white person masquerading as Japanese, but still. If diversity in movies is to be improved, we’d rather they cast non-white actors for non-white roles.
Ghost in the Shell hits theaters March 17, 2017.