'Ghost in the Shell' Trailer: Scarlett Johansson Is a Cyborg Warrior
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Last week, Ghost in the Shell fans got the ultimate tease: a 13-second snippet of the trailer that showed Scarlett Johansson materializing from the ether wearing her character’s formfitting thermoptic suit. Now we’ve got the whole trailer to dissect — watch it above. Johansson plays Major, a cyborg who’s part of a special ops force working in a glowing, near-future city that looks like Tokyo. And while she’s very obviously adept at the high-risk, high-tech gun play her job requires, she’s less sure about the more human part of her existence. “Everyone around me — they feel connected to something, connected to something I’m not,” she says in voiceover. The rest of the clip — which sets up Major’s quest to find the truth about her rebirth as a cyborg — plays out with some startling visuals and action scenes set to an eerie cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.”
Based on a beloved Japanese cyberpunk manga that eventually became the basis for an animated series and two animated movies, the Ghost in the Shell live-action adaptation is directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman). The production attracted controversy early on when Johansson was announced as the star. In the comics, the character is an Asian woman named Major Motoko Kusanagi, and the casting prompted accusations of whitewashing. Paramount, the studio behind the movie, is obviously taking those concerns seriously: Before the trailer’s release, they debuted a behind-the-scenes featurette that included an interview with Mamoru Oshii, the Japanese director of the 1995 anime movie, and gave Johansson and the live-action film his blessing.