Big changes are happening to the live action ‘Ghost in the Shell‘ adaptation as writers William Wheeler (‘The Hoax’,’The Reluctant Fundamentalist’) and Jamie Moss (‘Street Kings’,’Safe House 2′) were just replaced by newcomer Jonathan Herman (‘Straight Outta Compton’). The film is set to star Scarlett Johansson in a leading role similar to that of Motoko Kusanagi from the original series. The new direction is making a few sweeping changes from the complexity of how the series was originally setup. While some of these changes might be needed for a single movie adaptation from the story we’ve been given, the two big ones aren’t going to set well with long term fans of the series.

Of course a few major changes have been made if this following description is accurate:

In the film, Scarlett Johansson stars as a special ops cyborg who leads an elite task force called Section 9 for Hanka Robotics. Section 9 is devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, led by The Laughing Man, whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka’s advancements in cyber technology.

Fans of the original series know that not only does Section 9 work for the government but that there bodies are created by Megatech with Hanka Robotics not being quite the major player that they sound to be here. This is changing things up from having Johansson’s character work a private corporate instead of a secret government agency tasked to fight cyber warfare at an entirely new level. Not only that but instead of an activist trying to find corporations who are breaking the law it now seems that The Laughing Man is being reduced to a more standardized villain. I almost feel as if I can accept the change for the villain with time constraints being an issue but I’m not sure how I feel about the rest of the changes.

Are you looking forward to the live action adaptation of ‘Ghost in the Shell’? Do you think the change from warring governments to corporations makes sense or should they have left that plot point be? Share your thoughts below!

‘Ghost in the Shell’ is due on the big screen at the end of March 2017.

Source: Forbes