Breaking course from marketing protocol, which would so often dictate that a studio must present a teaser trailer – possibly even a teasing teaser – as a primer ahead of the full reveal, Paramount Pictures has today launched five hypnotic snippets for Ghost in the Shell, and each is as surreal and perplexing as the next.
Clocking in at around 10-to-15 seconds in length, the quintet arrives bearing the titles Aramaki, Silhouette, Unplug, What and finally, the very slick Geisha Hallway. Each vignette is, as one would expect for a tentpole manga adaptation, dripping with Cyberpunk goodness, from dystopian cityscapes to shots of cyborgs wired into some form of computer mainframe. Confounding stuff, but surely these teasers are paving the way for a trailer reveal?
Either way, Scarlett Johansson is at the center of Paramount’s live-action blockbuster as Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg who headlines an elite military team known as Section 9. Along with Pilou Asbæk’s cybernetic ninja Batou, Johansson’s Major will spend much of Ghost in the Shell on the hunt for the Laughing Man, an infamous criminal overseeing a plan to bring Hanka Robotic’s Artificial Intelligence to its knees. Michael Pitt, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, Kaori Momoi, and Chin Han are among the starry, international ensemble which, despite recruiting a number of Asian stars, has still come under fire for its alleged white-washing of the main character, Motoko Kusanagi
Ghost in the Shell boots online on March 31, 2017 across screens both standard and IMAX.