Ghost In The Shell (2017)

Title: Ghost In The Shell

Director: Rupert Sanders

Released: 2017

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Michael Carmen Pitt, Takeshi Kitano, Pilou Askaek, Chun Han, Juliette Binoche

Plot: In the near future most humans are augmented with cybernetic improvements but Major Mira Killian (Johansson) is the first to combine a cybernetic body with a human brain. Now working as part of the anti-terrorist bureau Section 9 she must track down the hacker Kuze who might hold the screrthe Major’s past.

Review: When it was first announced that they would finally be making the long mooted live-action remake of “Ghost In The Shell” it was of course met with cries of dismay from the fans who could see no way that Hollywood could replicate the cyberpunk tale, especially with its complex plotting and philosophical musing on the existence of a soul. Even if they could they are hardly things which hardly add up to a summer blockbuster which this was being pitched as especially with the casting of Scarlett Johansson as the Major adding to the already rampant assumptions of Hollywood whitewashing especially when many fans were pushing for the much more obvious choice Rinko Kikuchi to play the role.

Directed by Rupert Sanders whose only credit outside of a trio of short films was “Snow White and the Huntsman” which hardly sparked much confidence that this life action version would live up the legacy of the anime which is still regarded as one of the best of all time alongside the likes of “Akira” and “Perfect Blue”. It was of course a pleasant surprise to see Sander not attempting to do a straight remake but at the same time not trying to dumb it down either. If anything it can be seen that Sanders throughout is trying to not only pay homage to the original films director Mamoru Oshii with the inclusion of Oshii’s trademark Basset Hounds and even a nod to “Avalon”.

Shot as a “Blade Runner” style cyberpunk fantasy there are certainly the elements of the Oshii’s vision near future Japan replicated here especially the elements of Hong Kong which made his vision so diffrent and while Sanders vision certainly aims for a more futuristic vision heavily reminiscent of the aforementioned “Blade Runner” but it also seems to draw further inspiration from “Akira” especially with the extensive use of holographic advertisements which at times can prove detrimental as at time it feels like they clutter the landscape rather than adding to it and as such makes you appreciate the more intimate shots from the city streets or building interiors.

Despite the changes throughout there is still a sense of familiarity which runs throughout the film as characters such as the Major’s partner Batou (Asbaek) feel faithfully recreated though his eye implants only look the more questionable here than they did in the anime. ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano as Section Chief Aramaki though is an inspired piece of casting and unquestionably one of the key things which gave me hope that this wouldn’t be a dumbed down version of the anime. Frustratingly though when it comes to the rest of the Section 9 members they are so thinly sketched its hard to connect with them, making this much more of a buddy cop movie than it should have been.

While I may have had my own doubts of Scarlett Johansson’s ability in the role she really does manage to convincingly pull of the role and certainly a better casting choice than Margot Robbie who was also considered for the role and here she manages to convincingly pull off the detached and almost robotic outlook for the Major despite having a human brain. Infact so impressed with her performance Mamoru Oshii who’d been vocal on his own concerns surrounding the largely western cast gave her performance his own seal of approval and its certainly easy to see why when she is able to replicate so many of the key moments from the original film.

Scrapping the original “Puppet Master” plotline instead the plot here chooses to focus on the background of the Major in perticular the mystery surrounding her origins though the mystery hacker element is now filled by Kuze. We also get minor background details such as how Batou got his cybernetic eyes which I guess is great for anyone who really wanted to know these things. However while seemingly trying to craft his own story within this universe, there is still a large amount of material especially from the original film which has been pasted into the story in particular many of the key scenes such as the dumpster chase and most keyly the Major taking on a spider tank and certainly like so many elements of the film they all look fantastic. At the same time though the plotting can get heavy in places especially with Sanders trying to blend the new and original material which does result in the film certainly being more complex at times than it needed to be.

While there might be numerous nods to the source material it is still best to view this film as being its own entity than a remake, especially when here Sanders has chosen to craft a film with its own unique storyline, rather than adapt the Puppet Master plotline of the original film. This of course is not an issue, especially when the universe already established through the Manga, films and stand alone series (or complex) multiple independent timelines and when viewed this way the film certainly fits into this universe. On its own merits this is certainly an interesting approach to the material and certainly a smarter one than I was expecting to get and seeing what Sanders has established here, actually makes me keen to see him build on this world though whether that will happen or not still remains to be seen. For now though while not perfect certainly interesting enough to make it worth checking out.

Elwood's Essentials #17 - The Terminator

Title: The Terminator

Director: James Cameron

Released: 1984

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Earl Boen, Bess Motta, Rick Rossovich, Dick Miller, Franco Columbu, Bill Paxton

Plot: A cyborg assassin known as a Terminator (Schwarzenegger) travels back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Hamilton) the future mother of the human resistance in 2029 before he is born. At the same time Kyle Reese (Biehn) a solider from the future has also travelled back in time to protect her.

Review: Who’d have thought that the director of “Piranha 2: The Spawning” would go on to be the director of some of the most iconic and visually inventive cinema of all time. A graduate of the Roger Corman film school were he started as a miniature model maker before briefly being given the Piranha 2 gig taking over from original director Miller Drake before he too was fired topping off what had proven to be a nightmare debut for Cameron who topped off the experience by getting food poisoning.

It was while battling this illness that Cameron had a nightmare about an invincible robot assassin sent to kill him from the future which formed the basis for this film while also drawing inspiration from “The Outer Limits” episodes “Soldier” and “Demon With A Glass Hand”. Cameron also traded recordings with his friend Bill Wisher who helped him turn his draft into a finished script. This original script featured two Terminators and also introduced the idea of the liquid metal Terminator which had to be scrapped when he realised that the technology at the time wouldn’t realise his ideas leaving it for the sequel were he would introduce the now iconic T-1000.

With this film Cameron gives us two distinctive worlds as he opens in the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles of 2029 were humans have been driven to brink of extinction by the robot uprising brought about by the AI defence network Skynet. Its an iconic world vision of the future that Cameron gives us as towering machines rumble over fields of human skulls. Even though this vision of the future is limited it’s still unquestionably effective and perfectly establishes this alternative future. From here we are taken back to 1984 Los Angeles which though Cameron’s lens is shown in a grimy and neon lit style which makes for the perfect battleground for this game of cat and mouse to unfold on.

Returning to this film as an older film watcher it was now that I could finally appreciate this film beyond its set pieces, which certainly helped keep its sequel in heavy rotation during my film watching youth. This original film is a much difference beast than its action orientated sequels as here Cameron’s focus is purely on building atmosphere and tension to create a film which is as equal parts a cat and mouse thriller as it is a slasher only this time the killer is a seemingly unstoppable killing machine.

The casting is another key aspect of why this film works despite the fact that Schwarzenegger was to be cast as Kyle Reese only to talk himself into the Terminator role following a lunch meeting with Cameron, though the Terminator role could easily have gone to both Lance Henriksen or OJ Simpson who were both in the running for the role with the latter being dismissed as they felt no one would buy him as a killer. No doubt neither of them wouldn’t have made the role as iconic as it was in Schwarzenegger’s hands which itself is largely down to the amount of work he put into developing the character to truly sell the idea of him being an unstoppable killing machine and its hard to say if it was this role or Conan which was the bigger star making role for him.

Schwarzenegger as the Terminator is such a dominating presence throughout though Cameron does for the most part keep his personality cold and calculating its never to the point here that he stands out by giving machine like responses as he is shown talking with Dick Miller’s pawn shop clerk whose lack of response for why he’s buying such a shopping list of guns is more questionable than the responses that Schwarzenegger is giving. Even his iconic “I’ll be back” is a perfectly acceptable response to what he is being told by the police station clerk, only here its added to by the fact that its followed up by the Terminator driving a car through the front of the police station.

Unquestionably its a gritty sci-fi thriller that Cameron crafts here with both the Terminator and Kyle being introduced as they land nude in the present day before having to find the resources with the Terminator coldly killing a group of Punks while Kyle is shown having to break into a clothing store while evading the police in a wonderfully tense sequence and Cameron really doesn’t establish the motivation of Kyle’s character until his first confrontation with the Terminator during the now iconic tech-noir club sequence, until this point he is just shown running around the city with a modified shotgun while the Terminator works his way (or should that be kills his way) through the Sarah Connors in the phone book which is such a great touch that the machines only have a name and a location rather than an actual idea of what she looks like.

The relationship between Sarah and Kyle is an interesting one as for the most part she is unsure if Kyle is who he says he is and not just some delusional nutcase as everyone keeps telling her. The reasons for them getting together however are slightly convoluted and even now the idea of the Sarah’s future son giving Kyle her picture and essentially match making his own parents just never sat right with me even though its kind of an essential aspect to the story. This aside having a human soldier as the sole defence against the Terminator really adds a tense aspect to the plot, especially when we see the Terminator easily despatching everyone he comes into contact with. Its equally a ballsy move on Cameron’s part to *spoiler alert* kill off Kyle and leave Sarah to have the final showdown. Obviously for Sarah it perfectly sets up her character evolution from being the damsel in distress as we get to see in the next film even though having a Terminator take on the protector role does remove some of the edge that the human vulnerability of Kyle brings to the film.

The action scenes throughout are still fantastic to watch even after multiple viewings be it the police station massacre of Kyle and Sarah being chased by the Terminator, Cameron really knows how to hold the audiences attention and really craft genuinely exciting action scenes. Of course the appearance of the exo-skeleton Terminator at the finale does loose some of its effectiveness due to being such an iconic image for the franchise while its movements Stan Winston has quite nailed in this film. That being said it still makes for a fantastic finale and a wonderful creation.

While this film might be overshadowed by its sequel, the subtle charm of this film and slow build tension makes it none the less of an essential watch while also the film which marked Cameron out as talent to watch as he would unquestionably prove with the films which followed in its wake.

Westworld

Title: Westworld

Director: Michael Crichton

Released: 1973

Starring: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold, Alan Oppenheimer, Victoria Shaw, Dick Van Patten, Linda Scott, Michael Mikler

 

Plot: In the near future a high tech amusement park has been created in which guests can act out their fantasies in one of the three “worlds”. However when the park androids begin to malfunction they soon start to turn on the guests. 

 

 

Review: While Michael Crichton might be best known as a writer, having given us the likes of Congo, Jurassic Park and Disclosure he is should be equally recognised for his work as a director with this film not only marking his debut as a director but also the first film to use 2D computer imagery.

Opening with a reporter greeting returning Delos guests sharing their experiences of playing knights or cowboys, engaging in shoot outs and marrying princesses before we are shown the introductory video to the resort which outlines the three worlds they have created West World (Wild West), Medieval World and Roman World with each promising their own experiences within their lifelike settings. We also meet Peter (Benjamin) and his friend John (Brolin) who are both paying $1,000 per day to live out their cowboy fantasies despite Peter being sceptical about the whole experience. 

In many ways a test run for “Jurassic Park” as here we get another hi-tech park suffering a major malfunction, only this time instead of rampaging dinosaurs we get homicidal androids who’ve forgotten the fact that they aren't supposed to be killing the guests. The idea behind the parks though is fantastic with guests being free of any kind of moral quandary over the actions they make thanks to the park being staffed with android actors for the guests to engage with as well as seduce and kill. This of course is just what Peter and John want of course as they play out their gunslinger fantasies, while casually giving a thought to joining in a bank robbery while they hook up at the local brothel. 

 

The androids in the three worlds all play a variety of roles, while programmed to respond to the guests or provide cues to engage with them in shootouts or romantic dalliances, while going into a state where they just repeat themselves if a guest misses their cue, bringing back memories for myself of the restaurant scene in Cronenberg’s “Existenz”. Yul Brynner is unquestionably brilliant as the gunslinger as he essentially plays the android version of his character in “The Magnificent Seven” and perfectly projects a cold and emotionless exterior, only ever showing emotion when he’s running through one of his scripted lines and as a result gives us the perfect villain of sorts for the film and in many ways a forerunner for the unrelenting killing machine that James Cameron gives us in “The Terminator”.

 

Unlike “Jurassic Park” the issues with the park here aren't caused by sabotage but instead a technical breakdown that the technicians can’t resolve because they don’t fully understand how the technology actually works. The lead up till the collapse of the park though is subtly done as more of the androids start to malfunction as we build up to the final chase between Peter and the unnamed android gunslinger (Brynner) as he tries to escape through the other worlds. it’s during this build up we also get to see hints of the inner workings of the park as a team of engineers work through the night to reset scenes and clean up shoot out’s the guests seemingly none the wiser of the work they are carrying out to maintain their fantasies.

 

While Westworld might be the main focus, Crichton also gives us passing glances of the other worlds, mainly to show how the breakdowns are spreading across the park and possibly as an excuse to work a sword fight into what is essentially a sci-fi western with one of the guests engaging in a length battle with the medieval world villain who unsurprisingly is “The Black Knight” the same as Westworld’s black clad gunslinger. Sadly we never get to see who the villain of Roman world is.

While Peter and John might initially be setup as being the heroes of the film, here Crichton instead does something unexpected as he follows the pair on their cowboy fantasy only to in the finale suddenly have one of them suddenly and unexpectedly shot dead leaving the survivor to spend the final 15 mins running away from the Gunslinger. It’s an unexpected ending especially when it doesn’t see either of our supposed heroes stepping up and becoming the hero they are playing at being.

A strightforward story which throws out some intresting ideas and ones which Crichton obviously explored further with “Jurassic Park”, while a sequel “Futureworld” and a short lived series “Beyond Westworld” attempted to expand the world further with little success and while the forthcoming HBO series aims to take another crack at this world this remains a fun curiosity if ultimately too disposable to be considered high sci-fi.

Nemesis

Title: Nemesis

Director:  Albert Pyun

Released: 1992

Starring: Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Yuji Okumoto, Marjorie Monaghan, Nicolas Guest, Deborah Shelton, Merle Kennedy

Plot: Alex (Gruner) a retired cyborg police officer is pulled out of retirement to track down his former girlfriend and cyborg Jared (Monaghan) who is smuggling data to terrorist organizations plotting to assassinate government officials.

 

Review: Directed by cult favourite Albert Pyun, who to date has directed over 40 movies while earning a reputation as something of a b-movie hired gun, as if you have a movie that you need to make on a minimal budget then Pyun is your man. He was also responsible for the very first film I reviewed here “Wrecking Crew” which was also for the longest time one of the worst films I had reviewed here, an honour now currently shared between “Deaden” and “Dear God No”. For some reason though it has taken me to now to review another film from his back catalogue but then I can hardly claim that I am the biggest fan of his work, but this is another film from my childhood whose cover I remembered from my misspent hours scanning video library shelves only to never actually get around to watching it until now.

Predictably being a Pyun film, ruined buildings, cyborgs and a post-apocalyptic future are all the order of the day which always amused me about his film, especially considering how Pyun cares little for any of these themes as he stated once in an interview were he essentially cleared up this irony.

“I have really no interest in cyborgs. And I’ve never really had any intrest in post-apocalyptic stories or settings. It just seemed that those situations presented a way for me to make movies with very little money, and to explore ideas that I really wanted to explore – even if they were [controversial].

Honestly I’m not too sure what story he wanted to tell here, seeing how there is less plot development than “Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever” which really is kind of saying something, but here the film goes from one bullet riddled shootout to the next, with seemingly only explosions and scenes of Alex and his unintentional sidekick (of sorts) Max (Kennedy) frequently diving off cliffs to tie it all together.

Okay perhaps this is a little harsh as there is some William Gibson-esq musing over what it is to be human, especially on the part of Alex whose frequent injuries have left him in need of frequent cybernetic upgrades, while refusing to be labelled a mindless robot, frequently stating that eighty-six point five percent of him is still human at any given moment. I would like to believe that these cybernetic upgrades are responsible for the continually bland and emotionless performance that Gruner gives here though I would seriously doubt this is the case. Even the most basic of emotions seems to be a push for him outside of the occasional smile while memorably showing zero emotion when his dog is killed by one of his former handlers in a pretty dickish move to try and convince Alex to come back. The logic behind this move still lost on me, I mean how many times have you convinced someone to do something by killing one of their cherished pets?

On the plus side Max comes with a Lorri Petty / Tank Girl style personality which never really gets any chance to shine and instead just comes off constantly skittish while providing enough personality to cover for both of them. Elsewhere the villians all bizarrely have a faux German accents while generally spending the film chasing after Alex and Max and shooting up the scenery. Sadly one of the worst aspects of the film is how underused Cary-Hirouki Tagawa is as his appearance is really more of a cameo, while more interesting one of his rarer non villainous roles and considering that he manages to act everyone else off the screen with his handful of scenes only makes me wish that Pyun had found a way to expand his role.

So what does this film have going for it? Well action, action and more action is essentially the order of the day, with everyone seemingly being armed to the teeth even an doddering old granny pulls out a pistol at one point!  Needless to say the film doesn’t waste any time getting to the first of the numerous shoot-outs as right from the off Alex is involved in a fierce shoot out, with Pyun  choosing like John Woo to have his characters rarely reload and even when they do it is only after they have fired off countless rounds. More amusingly though is that despite frequently being only a few metres from each other no one ever seems to be able to hit the broadside of a barn door and seeing how everyone is seemingly a cyborg (something which seemingly doesn’t improve anyone’s ability to aim) when someone does get hit it is usually in a hail of sparks which is visually pretty fun to watch.

While Gruner might be lacking as an actor, he does however make up for it in the action scenes with his character being changed from the originally proposed violent street urchin to Gruner’s cyborg cop as part of a production deal between Pyun and production executive Ash Shah who were keen to use the former Kickboxing champion in one of their projects with this film with Pyun in return being allowed free reign to make the movie he want and by the looks of things he really took that ball and ran with it. Surprisingly despite Gruner’s kickboxing background he only gets a chance to actually show off these skills on a couple of occasions as Pyun instead opts to have his Gruner demonstrate his gun handling skills instead which thankfully also works in Gruner’s favour as he handles himself well during the action sequences including a scene where he memorably machine guns his way though the floors of a hotel which would be memorably reworked in “Underworld” to similar effect, with the other memorable sequence involving him brawling with a generic villain while sliding down a muddy ramp and it really is in these scenes that the film really does shine and no doubt would have made this possibly my favourite movie had I watched it when I first discovered it, when the action scenes mattered more than the rest of the film.

Far from my favourite viewing experience as of late, yet like so many of Pyun's films I can't help but feel that the film was in many ways close to something, only to lose it along the way. Still if you like sparky firefights and explosions with minimal plotting then this could be the film for you. Now I just have to see were the series goes next seeing how this film spawn an additional three films, so don't be surprised if this isn't my last venture into the series.