Despite all its attempts to recreate the signature visuals of 1995’s landmark “Ghost in the Shell” anime feature, the new live-action version is reductive in every way that matters.

To be fair, the film dazzles visually, delivering some of the most memorable sequences from its source with accuracy and ingenuity. It’s clear that the minds behind this new “Ghost in the Shell” had faith that the anime’s most compelling action sequences would prove just as riveting when brought to life in live-action.

If only they’d shown that same faith in the original’s ambition when it came to storytelling.

Instead, the story built around those elaborate action sequences boils down to the American superhero origin film blueprint, predictable almost from start to finish.

What’s it about?

As in the anime, “Ghost in the Shell” takes place in a future where human augmentation via technology is commonplace. For the right price, just about any human body function, from intelligence and memory to strength and durability, can be improved with cybernetic implants.

Those implants, however, are not invulnerable to hacking. Thus, cyberterrorists can not only hack information systems or machines, but also people’s minds and bodies.

Scarlett Johannson plays the Major, the field commander of Section 9, an elite team tasked with tracking and eliminating cyberterrorists. While her team, with one notable exception, all use cybernetic enhancements, the Major is unique in that only her brain is human — the rest of her body is a manufactured shell.

While it allows her to perform her duties above and beyond what other humans could do, her uniqueness and the fact that her memories before she became “the Major” are fragmented leave her questioning her identity. Is she truly “human”? Does she still retain her “ghost” — her soul — despite her mind being in a synthetic body?

The Major’s personal identity crisis becomes a serious problem when her team is tasked with tracking down a terrorist who threatens Hanka Robotics, the company that created her body and cybernetics in use throughout the world. The terrorist, who calls himself “Kuse,” attacks by hacking the minds of Hanka’s leading scientists, literally stealing their minds and memories before killing them.

What is Kuse’s grudge against Hanka, and what’s behind the method of his elaborate attacks? The answers to those questions lead the Major to question everything she’s been told about where she came from and what she’s meant to do with her new life.

Most importantly, they point to a hidden truth about her “ghost” and how that truth can define her future.

From manga to anime to live-action

What’s important to note when discussing any iteration of “Ghost in the Shell” is that the anime feature that most Western anime fans are so familiar with is itself an adaptation of prior source material. The original manga (Japanese comics) by legendary artist Shirow Masamune, “Kōkaku Kidōtai: Mobile Armored Riot Police,” debuted in 1989 and garnered enough of a following to inspire a feature-length anime adaptation.

That film, director Oshii Mamoru’s 1995 “Ghost in the Shell,” was one of those rare occasions when the adaptation outreached and exceeded the source. Darker, more somber in tone and more complex in plot and themes, Oshii’s film reached iconic status and introduced an international audience to a new vision of cyberpunk science fiction.

Unlike Oshii, the director behind this new “Ghost in the Shell,” Rupert Sanders (“Snow White and the Huntsman”), fails to bring to life a version of Shirow’s world and characters that transcends its previous iteration.

As stated earlier, Sanders makes a spirited effort to recreate the anime film’s signature action beats and fixtures. Base jumps from skyscrapers, “thermo-optical camouflage” and spider tanks are all here, more or less realized via CGI almost shot-for-shot as they are in Oshii’s animated film.

But the production’s ambition seems to end there.

The script Sanders works from focuses not on the political, ethical and spiritual consequences that come from using technology to screw with the essence of humanity but rather on the Major and how her existence is one of those consequences.

In other words, rather than tackling the bigger questions that such a world would face, the film instead punts, choosing to forge the origin of a very American-style superhero to take on those bigger questions in a future film.

The result is a movie that uses Masamune’s manga and/or Oshii’s earlier work to storyboard the action scenes and fills in the gaps with a familiar and more easily digested plot. The questions regarding identity and how it's tied so closely to memory and association, as well as the ethics of “ghost-hacking,” are there on the surface but not explored to any meaningful depth.

The gang’s all here

For fans of the manga and anime film, at the very least this “Ghost in the Shell” delivers just about all of the series’ most beloved characters in about as faithful a manner as possible. The Major’s subordinates — former Ranger Batou (Pilou Asbæk), detective Togusa (Chin Han) and tech wizard Ishikawa (Lasarus Ratuere) — are all here and more or less recognizable.

So, too, is the Major’s boss, Chief Aramaki, played by veteran Japanese actor Kitano "Beat" Takeshi, who oddly is the only cast member who delivers all his lines in Japanese. It’s a jarring choice on the part of the production, quite frankly — it might have made more sense to have the team all talk to him in Japanese at the very least, while conversing with themselves in English.

Johannson’s casting as the Major has been, of course, the source of tremendous controversy, to some the very definition of “whitewashing.” Johannson’s performance doesn’t quite justify her casting here. Yes, she delivers the film’s action credibly, but her delivery of the Major’s emotional journey and painful discoveries about her true nature feel diluted and doesn’t have the impact it should as the film's centerpiece.

It doesn't help that the Major's character arc, as written in the script, is devoid of a single surprising turn.

Worth seeing?

Fans of the "Ghost in the Shell" manga and anime will doubtless flock to the theaters this weekend in order to confirm their fears and lament what Hollywood has done to their beloved masterpiece.

Truthfully, that wouldn't be an overreaction — at best, this "Ghost in the Shell" is a pale shade of the earlier work. It strives for less substance in order to be more marketable to Western audiences while still borrowing enough from its progenitor to lure in devotees.

For casual movie audiences who do not know or do not care about the film's background and origins, it may have some entertainment value. Longtime sci-if cinema fans will clearly see visual similarities to "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix" with good reason: "Blade Runner" in the 1980s proved to be an enormous influence on science fiction manga and anime in Japan, including "Ghost in the Shell," and "Ghost in the Shell," in turn, was one of the primary visual inspirations for "The Matrix."

Beyond that, there are guns and robots and ScarJo kicking, punching and shooting her way through scenes wearing tight, flesh-toned gear that makes her look almost naked.

Hard to argue that's not going to appeal to somebody.

Ghost in the Shell

  • Starring Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbaek, Kitano "Beat" Takeshi, Juliette Binoche, Michael Pitt. Directed by Rupert Sanders.
  • Running time: 107 minutes.
  • Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, suggestive content and some disturbing images.