Ghost in the Shell vs. Ghost in the Shell

The Major vs. The Major

Don’t worry, I won’t spoil Ghost in the Shell (2017) for you… but the reviews are in, and they are decidedly “meh.”  Despite Ghost in the Shell (2017) being visually and aurally stunning, no one seems to like it.  So where did it all go wrong?
 
The concept.
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That may surprise you, because the original anime movie is loved by legions.  Many of the scenes are lifted almost completely from the original movie, so it should be a no brainer, right?  But when rewriting the 2017 version, the central question of the film (the question that holds your concept together) was changed.  Once you mess with a story’s core-- it’s skeletal framework-- the flesh won’t hang on it the right way and it becomes an unwieldy lump.  I’ll let ​Manohla Dargis of The New York Times describe the results:

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