Ghost in the Shell (1995/2017)

Look, it’s a double feature!

In 1995, “Ghost in the Shell” brought the manga comics to the big screen, telling the story of an almost-dystopian future of cyborg cops and...

I don’t know. Megan and I gave up about half way through. The voice acting was awful and a lot of critical world-building information was left out. 
I’m sure the directors expected anyone watching the movie in ‘95 would have been familiar with many of the critical details from the manga, as I can’t imagine that, at the time, non-fans would have flocked to see this. 
The side effect was that it absolutely prevents any newcomers from feeling like they’re understanding what’s going on, discouraging any potential fans from wanting to dig deeper.
So we decided to watch the remake.

In 2017, fans of the original movie got a chance to be outraged that their dearly beloved animated movie from 22 years ago was being reimagined as a live-action film.
Scarlett Johansson was chosen to play a Japanese woman, it’s set in Japan though that’s never explicitly mentioned, and there were shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from the animated movie that they did with actors and CGI, so that was kinda cool.

The ‘17 version wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t particularly inventive either. There’s a shadowy government/corporation behind the scenes, there’s a conspiracy to kidnap people and use them for experiments, and there are drugs that prevent you from remember your past life. Pretty bog-standard sci-fi stuff.
Megan and I watched all of this one, so we saw the very-American happy ending.

If you want to see these tropes in action, done better, elsewhere: watch literally any science fiction anthology series. You’ll find all of those fine concepts and more!

The music wasn’t great, the CGI was good (but some scenes were terrible), and I didn’t have nostalgia lenses to watch either movie with, so I don’t have whiny complaints about how they do or don’t match up with various parts of the source material. 
If you’re desperate for sci-fi, watch the remake. If you’ve got a few extra hours, watch “Altered Carbon” on Netflix instead.

And to clarify a final note: in the movie, it’s stated that “ghost” means “soul” and “shell” means “body,” so these movies are literally titled “Soul in the Body.”
It’s a bit on the nose.