The new "Ghost in the Shell": the common dilemma of mankind

Godfrey 2021-11-11 08:01:16

When the female doctor in the film (sorry I don’t remember her name) told Shao Zuo, "You're one of a kind" (You're one of a kind), I knew this new "Ghost in the Shell" "Team" will part ways with what we are familiar with, the amazing animation filmed by Oshii Morrison more than 20 years ago.

Let us recall the original Shao Zuo. According to the original setting of the comics, in the future technological era, technology has been highly developed, and a person can replace all the equipment in his body with a machine. Shao Zuo is such a full body man who belongs to the nine classes of public security. She used the allotted standard prosthetic body and added a lot of her own transformations; the same is true for Bart, as a retired special forces soldier, is also a full body prosthetic person. The major does possess extraordinary abilities. However, her identity and circumstances are not very special, and the comics and animations have also given no details about her background.

Rather, as the protagonist of "Ghost in the Shell", such a Shao Zuo is a special individual, but at the same time an ordinary individual in that crazy technological age. Her status is special and universal; the special one lies in her being a high-performance protagonist working in a special security organization; the general also lies in her being a protagonist working in a government agency. Therefore, Shao Zuo’s questions in the 95 version of the animation have become the most profound part of the philosophical thinking about human nature, the self, and memory in science fiction: what she doubts is precisely such a universality. When there is no separation between machines and humans, what does human nature represent? In the 95th theater version, the long empty shot of the rumor sounded for the second time, and Shao Zuo found another on the ferry that she was flashing in the glass of a tall building by the river. Such a hint is extremely straightforward: she suspects It is the uniqueness of the self as a human being. It is precisely because Shao Zuo was a person with special and common circumstances among the general public in that era that her suspicion had universal power: she could be anyone.

Throughout the classic literature of cyberpunk, such character setting is almost a default standard. The protagonist "Macro Protagonist" in "Avalanche" is an ordinary and not-so-ordinary hacker; the protagonist of "Blade Runner" is an ordinary detective, and his opponent is an ordinary man-made person; William Gibson's "Neural Wanderer" "And the protagonists in a series of novels with the same worldview are also such little characters on the edge of the glorious world. It is such a setting of "little people in the big world" that can better and more profoundly convey the struggle of the masses as human beings in the "High Tech Low Life" world.

The new attack shell deviated from this setting from the beginning. When the female doctor whose name I can't remember said to Shao Zuo, "You are the only one", this kind of thinking about the definition of human beings has naturally resolved the doubts about human nature in the era of crazy technology: Because she is special, one of a kind. Everywhere in the film emphasizes that she is special, everyone is full of ghost (soul), shell (body), soul (soul), humanity (humanity), body (body), hard work of philosophical thinking Enmity deep. But the more obvious the intention, the more the drama; this sense of drama is similar to what we saw in an anti-Japanese drama, the dying protagonist pulled out his gross ticket to pay the last party dues. We can't connect her situation with ourselves. She is not a representative of the general situation. This is the 95 version of the shell, which is the success of all cyberpunks. Remember the beginning of the 95th version of the game? Togusa asked Shao Zuo why there was noise in the network, Shao Zuo responded: There are probably so many days every month. And when chasing the fugitive, I talked to Dogusa about why he should recruit a person like him who hadn’t been reformed to come to the Nine Lessons, because "If an organization is too homogeneous, it will lead to the homogenization of thinking, which is very dangerous." Small details are being delivered all the time: Shao Zuo is "one of us".

Therefore, in the end, New Attack returned to the cliché of traditional Hollywood science fiction films: the confrontation between human nature and technology. Judging from the meticulousness of the number of tribute sections in this movie to the old ghost shell, the director is indeed a die-hard fan of the old ghost shell: prosthetic manufacturing, check; jump into the building; check; think about the chariot duel, check; split Manipulator, check; even the blond female scientist who likes to smoke and her prosthetic eyes in Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence are copied as they are. But all of this has returned to the Hollywood framework. The evil technology has done bad things and oppressed humanity; the protagonist's conscience discovers that humanity has been restored, and everyone is happy. The director’s understanding of the shell, the Western value system’s emphasis and preference on human nature and individual value itself, the compromise of the appreciation and understanding of the general audience, the tradition of Hollywood science fiction films, and the foreshadowing of possible future sequels, all of which have created This is a new attack on the shell: it uses the name of the attack on the shell, working hard to please fans, re-enacting classic scenes, but the inner ghost no longer exists.

As for the other issues of the film, I will only mention one very interesting little detail: at the end of the film, a middle-aged woman who is a Japanese native speaker should set up a tombstone for her daughter. The name is written in Roman accents. This is equivalent to the Chinese writing a tombstone to write Hanyu Pinyin. I think such a detail can well illustrate the dilemma of New Attack.

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Extended Reading
  • Marcellus 2022-04-24 07:01:04

    The core and theme of the original animation is a philosophical proposition that rises to discussing the existence of individuals. In addition to the homage to the original work by the characters and worldview, the live-action version is detached from the original work. It is discussing class conflicts and conflicts. It's a very permanent sociological proposition, but unfortunately it didn't raise this social issue to the philosophical proposition of the same system. The visual effects are very good, and the original work is respected very much. The Hong Kong framing is very good, and the art is also good.

  • Sigurd 2022-03-20 09:01:29

    Filmed the reflection on personal existence as the revenge of personal heroism

Ghost in the Shell quotes

  • Cutter: Major is our most sophisticated weapon only if she's intact. And Dr. Ouelet informed me that you let her dive a corrupted geisha. You realize the supreme importance that Hanka represents to this government. Major is the future of my company. If you compromise her systems again, I will burn this section.

    Aramaki: [in Japanese] Be careful who you threaten. I answer to the Prime Minister, not Hanka.

  • Kuze: Tell me what they took from me.

    Dr. Dahlin: I'm sorry. They never told us.

    [Kuze rips her eyes off]