Ghost Hunting

Andrew Osmond Hears How the Anime Classic Got A Live-Action ReBuild

- Jordan Farley

In recent years, we’ve been treated to a legion of superhuman Scarlett Johanssons. There’s the disembodied girlfriend (Her), the alien succubus (Under The Skin), the brain-boosted drugs mule (Lucy) and of course there’s Marvel’s most eligible widow, who dates the Hulk and owns Loki.

Now Johansson is the Major in Ghost In The Shell, a terrorist-fighting cyborg with a customised body, diving off skyscrapers and kicking butt. But what makes her interesting is how uncanny she is, says Johansson.

“She doesn’t have those little nuances that make us human. For instance, she’s standing and listening. She’s not got her hands in her pockets. Or maybe she has, but it’s at a resting position. I just imagined this character doesn’t do anything that is not necessary. Finding the physicality was challenging, because it was a combination of something that I liked, and something that Rupert also liked.”

That’s British director Rupert Sanders, returning after his 2012 debut Snow White And The Huntsman. He’s been intrigued by the Major since he saw the character in the first Ghost In The Shell film, a 1995 anime. (She was “Major Kusanagi” in that version, but there’s no confirmation if Johansson’s character will pick up that moniker.)

“The Major was kind of hard and unusual,” says Sanders. “You were quite unsure about what she was thinking. She was kind of remote. I like that kind of distant character.”

It doesn’t sound an easy Hollywood pitch, but then Hollywood had been wrestling with the strange Japanese property for seven years already. Sanders went through the various anime versions, including the even stranger film sequel Innocence and the TV reboot Stand Alone Complex.