Perfect cast and a good story

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A Disappointing Continuation

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This story was… well confusing. The problem was that they had a 'puppeteer' who was changing people's thoughts and memories in order to use it for his own purpose to hack into official's heads. I won't lie, I don't normally understand all that political stuff. The fact that this was so heavy in that made it more of a chore to try and figure stuff out. If I missed something that someone said, to bad, I couldn't really go back and check it out because I wouldn't know where to find it again.When we get to the characters, the only ones we really get to understand slightly are Batou and Kusanagi. The others just seem like background characters compared to them. Even then, we don't get much about the two although you can tell that Batou really cares greatly for Kusanagi. When we do get near the end, it does get into a rather interesting and deep. It really dives into physiological problems and aspects to life. It might of still been a rather confusing show but I did enjoy it.The art style starts out with a lot of CG stuff in the beginning of the show and then going deeper into the normal animation after. I have to say they really took me off guard when they showed the naked body of the major in CG while she was working. Of course then they had to have an opening that expanded on showing a women's naked body being created through electronic means. There were little scenes where they would do a bit more of the CG and half of it is rather pretty. Some of the characters designs seem a bit off from how they looked in the anime that I had watched part of before, namely the major. Still, the camera angles and some of the ways they showed the world felt very classic to the anime style of the late 1990s.Some of the sounds are a bit off and the English voices sometimes don't match lip movements but the voice actors really tried their best to make such a serious show work. You can tell just how they read their lines that they were trying really hard to keep it interesting but sadly, I keep feeling that they do a whole lot of talking and sometimes not all that much action or just a lot of shooting. When we do get action, its mostly slow movement, looped or over almost as fast as it starts. Now there are also some talks that feel more like a lecture about the problems with the cyber technology and a philosophy of having your own identity. These small parts were the only things that kept my attention as the others talks seemed a bit more complicated and I had no way of understanding the political problems.

Just like other reviewers have said, I can not recommend this remake of Ghost In The Shell to people who like the visuals and the sound of the original. For me, the original GITS was near-perfect in look and feel. The color palette, visual designs, animations and sound design were all strong, hard-hitting and rough.In the 2.0 remake, the color palette was changed to a earthy, brown look that we know from so many video games and movies. Additionally the image is drowned in blur and bloom effects. Watching the movie you can clearly tell which scenes are CGI and which are hand-drawn, whereas these elements integrated well in the original. To make matters worse, many of the CGI scenes do not hold up to the original hand-drawn scenes. The jaw-dropping intro and title sequences from the original GITS are ruined for that very reason. The city has lost it's dirty, melancholy mood and is now indistinguishable from designs in other movies.A similar treatment has been given to the audio. All new sounds are toned down in impact. Vehicles, machinery and weapons now sound like plastic. The new sounds alone destroy the combat scenes beyond recognition. On the upside, the original voices and music were preserved.Why Ghost In The Shell received this treatment I can not understand. Supposedly it was to adapt GITS to the look of it's successor "Innocence" (Ghost In The Shell 2). The merits of such an undertaking can be disputed on a general level, yet GITS 2.0 is a perfect example of how not to execute such a task. Viewers should be able to recognize "Ghost In The Shell" as "Innocence"'s predecessor from the title, the story and promotional material.

GITS is one of my favourite films, and one of the first DVD's I bought when the format was new on the scene. After watching Innocence (which looked great), I was quite ready to see something totally awesome in this update. I was wrong.As another comment said, they should have re-done the whole film, instead of a bit here and there. I couldn't enjoy the movie when it kept switching from CGI to cel-shaded animation. Also, considering this was made FOUR years after Innocence, the CGI is awful. Most of the time Motoko looks like a plastic doll. Not cool.The music and sound effects were re-done, sometimes better, most times not. In the original GITS if somebody was getting beaten up, you would hear them scream. In 2.0, a guy gets his ankle broken and doesn't even let out a whisper. Stupid. The main theme song (the choral piece) was re-recorded and it too lost a lot of impact.Don't bother with this. Just watch the original.

Basically, if you've seen the first one, you've seen this one. Lines are the same, acting may be a little less wooden given how much the cast has played these same characters by now, and any faults the first one had, this one has.That aside, the movie is gorgeous, more so if you've seen the original a few times. Not quite Innocence, but close. The new CG scenes aren't disjointing as they are only in places one would expect them, and the new dubbing is solid. Even though one can tell the cg was added as an after thought, it doesn't detract from the score, which is redone. From what I could tell, it is all newly recorded and rearranged, especially the theme, and is a step above and beyond the original score. Sound effects are great if subtle as well.The movie is still extremely sensory minded, and that is what this is for. It is gorgeous to watch and to listen to, but does not act a replacement for the original. They both have a place on the same shelf.