Movie Review - Ghost In The Shell: Innocence

Ghost In The Shell: Innocence

(2004)

Bandai Visual Company / Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Dentsu Music And Entertainment / ITNDDTD / Kodansha / Production I G / Studio Ghibli : Bandai Entertainment / DreamWorks Home Entertainment

7 / 10

This sequel doesn't come anywhere near the original in either story, atmosphere, artwork, or provocativeness.  From the onset, the viewer is slammed with a philosophical quandary, this is given by the cyber-coroner and feels so out of context that it appears forced.  Whereas, in the original, it was subtly woven throughout the film and its context. You just don't get that here.

I don't know if this is Disney's influence at work...  The first film was a little convoluted, though, with a little brain power you could figure it out.  For "Innocence" they give it to the audience in black and white.

Then you have the appearance of digital artwork, fused and mixed with the more original.  For most of the time, this works, though it does have less effect on building atmosphere as does the setting and direction of the scene.  The worst scenes containing digital art are the cars driving down the street.  The street backgrounds are dark with a mat lustre, howbeit, the cars are ultra shiny bright metallic.  The reflections flowing over the surface of the car doesn't tally with their surroundings.  This draws the viewer out of the story to register the imperfection of the scene, this hurts the movie as you want your viewer to feel as though they are apart of the story and not a third party just watching.

The story was a nice follow-up, even though I don't think is was told all that well.  Something is happening to the sex-bots!  For some reason, they are malfunctioning and killing their owners and whoever's in the vicinity before committing suicide.  Section Nine is called in as this could be an act of terrorism since robots cannot kill humans or themselves.

Under better hands, this could have been as great as the original film had they decided to entwine the philosophy, the mystery and thriller elements, and mood and ambience into the story and artwork instead of segregating them and lessening the power of the piece.

Worth watching if you've seen the original but be warned it's not as good.