Film Preview: Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Page Revisions:

(November 20, 2016) Original
(February 12, 2017) New Link (Super Bowl Trailer)
(February 19, 2017) New Trailer (#2) / New Poster (#2)
(March 26, 2017) New Posters (#3-#18)

Release Date:

March 31, 2017

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “A cyborg policewoman attempts to bring down a nefarious computer hacker.”

Poster Rating: C / C+ / C / C / C / C / C+ / C / B- / C- / B- (8)

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Review: (#1) If you’re familiar with the original anime (and not everyone is), this might be familiar or make sense. No one else is likely to get that, making the design ill-fitting.

(#2) A stylized, hand-drawn poster, one which typically accompanies a film with several more designs already released. It features fewer impressive details than most of those, making this a bit inconsequential.

(#3) The mechanized geisha is one of the trailer’s more crafty elements, but as a sole element of a poster design, it’s just not that interesting. (#4) We’ve seen this image in all of the trailers and that doesn’t make it that interesting. It’s action heavy and sells the film, but that’s not enough. (#5) This character is only hinted at in the trailer and revealing him may ruin a scene that could have been most fascinating, but being something we haven’t see much of so far, it works well enough. (#6) Scarlett Johansson is likely to be the primary selling point of the film and this is a more busy design than others, but it’s not that interesting. (#7) Same pose as #6, same tech-streaking, and different background. It’s not that impressive a change.

(#8) This scene is one of the more interesting in the trailers, but they’ve transported it into a darker backdrop and made it an IMAX sales design. This isn’t going to cut it. (#9) The white at the base is visually distracting, especially since the character is clad in white and those around her are wearing darker colors. To make her pop, using a different color would have been appropriate and it might have made the rest of the design shine.

(#10) A less interesting version of the similar visual styles of posters #5 & #6. That’s insufficient, especially since this looks even more bland. (#11-#18) This series of eight character posters are the most interesting they’ve designed for this film. They aren’t terribly unique, which harms them and the consistency of using character names on some, but not all, is distracting and disorienting.

Trailer Rating: C+ / B

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Review: (#1) The trailer goes all over the place, which may be a good thing to bring fans of the original film into the theater, but for other audiences, the trailer is a poor sales tool.

(#2) Giving some background details to the material helps push this towards mainstream audiences who aren’t familiar with the anime film that inspired it. There are some interesting visuals here, but everything I’ve read suggests that it’s almost an identical remake of the film, which doesn’t seem as impressive or interesting to me.