In the new, five-minute clip released by the studio ahead of the film’s arrival in theaters next week, Scarlett Johansson’s cybernetically enhanced operative takes a high dive off the top of a tall tower in order to break up a violent attack in one of the building’s conference rooms.
Anyone familiar with Masamune Shirow’s original Ghost in the Shell manga and the 1995 animated film based on it will likely recognize some key moments from the scene — particularly Johansson’s character disrobing, then camouflaging herself while falling through the sky, only to burst through the window outside the room in a hail of bullets a short time later.
Directed by Snow White and the Huntsman filmmaker Rupert Sanders from a script penned by Jonathan Herman (Straight Outta Compton) and Jamie Moss (Street Kings), Ghost in the Shell casts Johansson as The Major, a human who has had most of her body replaced with advanced technology and serves in an elite special ops unit dubbed Section 9.
The original manga series was first published in 1989, and explored some heavy philosophical questions about the nature of humanity against the backdrop of a world where most of the human residents have willingly undergone varying degrees of cybernetic augmentation. The series followed the agents of an elite anti-cyberterrorism agency tasked with investigating incidents of hacking that go well beyond tapping into people’s home computers.
Along with Johansson in the lead role, the film also stars Pilou Asbæk (Lucy) as Major’s partner, Batou, as well as Michael Pitt (Seven Psychopaths) as Kuze, Beat Takeshi Kitano (Autoreiji: Biyondo) as Daisuke Aramaki, and Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) as Dr. Ouelet. Additional supporting roles are played by Chin Han, Danusia Samal, Lasarus Ratuere, Yutaka Izumihara, and Tuwanda Manyimo.
The live-action Ghost in the Shell movie hits theaters March 31.
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