Slick’s Nit-Picks: Ghost In The Shell 2.0

Ted Turner, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg should all be convulsing in their graves over this one, despite none of them being dead yet. Mamoru Oshii has made them look like even bigger fools than they have managed to do on their own. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you remake your classic film: you actually make it better. You don’t replace guns with walkie-talkies. You do not worry about who shot first and hire Stevie Wonder to create your CGI. You do not piss horrible pastel paints all over the master film copy so that future generations never know what a classic was really supposed to look like. Ghost In The Shell 2.0 is quite simply, a masterpiece reborn and restored. Just like the movies I have alluded to above, there was nothing wrong wit hthe original film here. It is subliminal, full of action and it makes you use your brain for a second – something movies never seem to do anymore. I have owned this movie on DVD for nearly as long as I have owned a DVD player and lately I have wanted to burn it in a ritual fire praying for something better. The problem with every DVD version of this film is that there is this horrible haze around the characters in all of the numerous dark or night-time scenes. Not to play on the title, but it seemed as if the characters were ghosts a lot of the time. My prayers got answered with this blu-ray release because video was completely cleaned up. Even the audio, which was fine before, is better on this disc. Anyone who doubts this can go into the special features and watch the original version of the movie. Once your eyes stop bleeding, consign yourself to watching only 2.0 from now on. I wish I could show you just the opening scene side by side from the original and the 2.0 version to illustrate my point. There are some subtle differences where the scenes were redone in CGI, but nothing where it harms the integrity of the final product. The bottom line is that if you have never seen this movie before, buy this version; if you have seen it or if you already own it on DVD, give it to some poor shmoe who never saw this and buy this blu-ray. You will not be disappointed, especially if you can get it for $14 like I did (Best Buy).