The Wachowski sisters were powerfully inspired by this film for The Matrix, and Avatar director James Cameron dubbed it a “breathtaking work of speculative fiction”. We’re talking about Mamoru Oshii’s classic anime Ghost in the Shell. The science fiction film has recently been added to the Amazon Prime Video catalogue, this time in two different versions. You can read here which ones are worthwhile for whom.
That’s what the sci-fi classic Ghost in the Shell is about
Ghost in the Shell is set in the year 2029: World War III is over and everyday human life is ruled by technology down to the fibers of the body. Implants and prostheses turn many people into cyborgs, so-called shells, which is a great advantage, especially in police work. Major Motoko Kusanagi leads by example. She and her team are the flagship of the special unit Public Security Section 9.
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Ghost in the Shell
Kusanagi and her team are on the hunt for a super hacker who hacks the so-called cyberbrains of all sorts of people in order to then feed them targeted (dis)information and manipulate them. But in doing so, she not only gets caught between the fronts of competing sections, but kis on the trail of a large-scale conspiracy.
Stream two different versions of Ghost in the Shell on AmazonGhost in the Shell was released in 1995. The science fiction film based on a manga by Masamune Shirow blossomed into an influential cult film that was later even given a Hollywood remake.
Director Mamoru Oshii followed up Ghost in the Shell 2.0 in 2008, which is not a sequel but a kind of update of the original. It combines original footage from the ’90s anime with modern 3D digital effects and re-recorded dialogue. The director told The Guardian at the time:
I have [den Film] not revised because I wasn’t happy with it, but to show how far we’ve come since then.
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Ghost in the Shell 2.0
However, the computer animations in Ghost in the Shell 2.0 have now been overtaken by time. As a technical experiment, this version is definitely worth seeing. If you don’t know Ghost in the Shell, you should definitely watch the original version from 1995 first. It has aged much better and still impresses today with its realistic vision of the future.
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