I admit that I was not a fan of this story and / or game in the past. That is not to say that I wouldn't have been but I was just never exposed to it. I think many of the people who saw this in theaters probably were unfamiliar with the manga and perhaps we looked at the film differently than long-time fans.
With an absolutely massive budget of 110 million dollars, it should come as no surprise that the visuals and action sequences in the film are incredible. From the very start of the film we are drawn in by the magnificent effects. I found the battle with the spider geisha to be particularly awesome.
This ominous start gives us a quick introduction to the Section 9 counter-terrorism group and also to "Major" who is played by Scarlett Johansson. In the future it seems as though most humans have some sort of cybernetic enhancements, and Major is an extreme example of this.
One part of this movie that irritated me was the Chief Daisuke Aramaki - the leader of Section 9, speaks Japanese exclusively to everyone and everyone understands all of what he says but never speaks Japanese back to him. It seems a bit dumb to do this but I suppose they had their reasons.
The lack of character development or any real kind of story was disappointing because what is going on is confusing enough and this is made worse by it not really being explained at any point. Despite the constant on-screen eye candy that made almost every scene visually appealing I found the film to be devoid of any sort of actual sentiment towards the characters. At least Euron Greyjoy was in this one though. It was nice to see him not be completely all powerful the way he is in Game of Thrones.
I can't say I really enjoyed this movie beyond the special effects and that is unfortunate because although I never got on board the original source material it is my understanding that it is actually quite legendary among fans, particularly in Japan. The movie made a modest profit but nothing that really impressed the studios. I for one am surprised they green-lit so much money for the production in the first place.
On a scale of "Urgh!" to "Wowsers!" I give Ghost in the Shell the overall score of....
