A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blistering performances.

This story was… well confusing. The problem was that they had a 'puppeteer' who was changing people's thoughts and memories in order to use it for his own purpose to hack into official's heads. I won't lie, I don't normally understand all that political stuff. The fact that this was so heavy in that made it more of a chore to try and figure stuff out. If I missed something that someone said, to bad, I couldn't really go back and check it out because I wouldn't know where to find it again.When we get to the characters, the only ones we really get to understand slightly are Batou and Kusanagi. The others just seem like background characters compared to them. Even then, we don't get much about the two although you can tell that Batou really cares greatly for Kusanagi. When we do get near the end, it does get into a rather interesting and deep. It really dives into physiological problems and aspects to life. It might of still been a rather confusing show but I did enjoy it.The art style starts out with a lot of CG stuff in the beginning of the show and then going deeper into the normal animation after. I have to say they really took me off guard when they showed the naked body of the major in CG while she was working. Of course then they had to have an opening that expanded on showing a women's naked body being created through electronic means. There were little scenes where they would do a bit more of the CG and half of it is rather pretty. Some of the characters designs seem a bit off from how they looked in the anime that I had watched part of before, namely the major. Still, the camera angles and some of the ways they showed the world felt very classic to the anime style of the late 1990s.Some of the sounds are a bit off and the English voices sometimes don't match lip movements but the voice actors really tried their best to make such a serious show work. You can tell just how they read their lines that they were trying really hard to keep it interesting but sadly, I keep feeling that they do a whole lot of talking and sometimes not all that much action or just a lot of shooting. When we do get action, its mostly slow movement, looped or over almost as fast as it starts. Now there are also some talks that feel more like a lecture about the problems with the cyber technology and a philosophy of having your own identity. These small parts were the only things that kept my attention as the others talks seemed a bit more complicated and I had no way of understanding the political problems.

Just like other reviewers have said, I can not recommend this remake of Ghost In The Shell to people who like the visuals and the sound of the original. For me, the original GITS was near-perfect in look and feel. The color palette, visual designs, animations and sound design were all strong, hard-hitting and rough.In the 2.0 remake, the color palette was changed to a earthy, brown look that we know from so many video games and movies. Additionally the image is drowned in blur and bloom effects. Watching the movie you can clearly tell which scenes are CGI and which are hand-drawn, whereas these elements integrated well in the original. To make matters worse, many of the CGI scenes do not hold up to the original hand-drawn scenes. The jaw-dropping intro and title sequences from the original GITS are ruined for that very reason. The city has lost it's dirty, melancholy mood and is now indistinguishable from designs in other movies.A similar treatment has been given to the audio. All new sounds are toned down in impact. Vehicles, machinery and weapons now sound like plastic. The new sounds alone destroy the combat scenes beyond recognition. On the upside, the original voices and music were preserved.Why Ghost In The Shell received this treatment I can not understand. Supposedly it was to adapt GITS to the look of it's successor "Innocence" (Ghost In The Shell 2). The merits of such an undertaking can be disputed on a general level, yet GITS 2.0 is a perfect example of how not to execute such a task. Viewers should be able to recognize "Ghost In The Shell" as "Innocence"'s predecessor from the title, the story and promotional material.

I gave this 1 star out of 10, not because the story sucks or anything, but because this was a completely unnecessary waste of time and effort.Here's the idea: take one of the greatest animes ever produced and re-draw certain shots with new CGI. Then intercut them with the original animation.The new CGI is very well done; unfortunately, it doesn't match the original artwork at all, and tends to distract from the overall film. It's like having someone slap you every few seconds.One other reviewer mentioned that this seemed like something George Lucas would do, and if you saw the "new" Star Wars films that came out in the 1990s with added scenes and (crappily done) CGI, you've had a taste of what was done with GITS 2.0. But imagine if the original was in B&W and the new scenes were not just in color, but completely CGI. That's how jarring GITS 2.0 is.If the creators wanted to do something with the new CGI technology that exists, they should have come up with a new idea, not tried to re-hash an old movie. They aren't even "re- imagining" it, they are just doing it over again. It's as if an artist working with charcoal discovered watercolors, and then tried to paint over all his old works. This was a terrible idea.My advice is to forget that this movie exists, and just watch the original.

The new scenes are nicely executed for the most part, but completely unnecessary. As eye-candy on their own, they're not particularly impressive either. Further, they tend to break the flow of the film, especially when cutting directly from the new CG to the cel-animated original. Clearly, the entire film should have been revisited rather than this selective and perfunctory approach to an update. It reeks of something George Lucas would do (i say that negatively) and sadly, GITS2.0 fails to live up to his much more seamless updates of the original STAR WARS films.More importantly, some shots lose their original intent somewhat, for example the scene where Motoko rises to the surface during her dive; also the angel-vision that Motoko has just prior to being blasted by snipers was diluted. There are little details added here and there like rain etc, which do add to the atmosphere, but ultimately i was left wondering about the intentions of the people that carried out this re-envisioning. I cannot for a moment believe that Oshii was consulted regarding small but important decisions like changing the sex of the Puppet Master from male to female. In the absence of the original director's blessing, i have no choice but to condemn what seems to be a superficial attempt at re-marketing a classic.As an introduction to the franchise, GITS2.0 is still more than adequate, but it merely offers a diminished and disjointed experience compared to watching the original.The sound FX are improved, although lacking in subtlety. Other user-comments suggest music was redone but i detected no apparent changes.