Regardless of the outrage, the remake went on to do poorly, both critically and financially. The casting would then go on to be defended by the 1995 film’s director Mamoru Oshii, who said he believes the outrage against the casting to be politically motivated, and “believe artistic expression must be free from politics.”

Therefore, casting an actress who was already in the public interest, an actress who was familiar with working on high-budget films, and playing empowered female action-heroes made a lot of sense.

Bringing a remake of an already forgotten film about the meaning of life and death to an audience who are indoctrinated with superhero flicks was going to be a mountainous task. It didn’t help that its follow-ups followed far more distinctive anime tropes, and left those who were unaffiliated with the franchise or with anime completely in the lurch. While the original film did help bring anime to the attention of the West, it was quickly overshadowed by easier to understand, and more approachable anime movies. This is a complex, philosophical anime movie filled with anime tropes, gore, over-sexualisation of its central female character, a distinct lack of any real action, and is a franchise that was not entirely in the peripherals of Western audiences. The casting of Scarlett Johansson, who by that point had reached the peak of her career and showed no signs of going down, was certainly a controversial choice, but an entirely understandable one. Of course, that film was marred with its own controversy, namely the whitewashing of some of its characters. Here was, by all accounts, a retelling or remake of the original film that would encapsulate its themes, narrative beats, and characters into a concise, two-hour flick that I could enjoy and then use as a pretence for having not seen the original. When the remake came out in 2017, that mindset changed for me. Its multiple films and series, all with their overly complicated names such as Ghost in the Shell Arise: Border 1 – Ghost Pain and Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045, led me to believe that it was an impenetrable franchise that, like the Neon Genisis Evangelion series, was best left untouched.

The thing is that Ghost In The Shell was both too confusing to get into, and not intriguing enough to bother trying.

I’m a huge fan of anime, whether it be the incredibly talented Satoshi Kon and Studio Ghibli films, to series such as Hunter x Hunter or Full Metal Alchemist.

Ghost in the shell 95 theme