Paramount has released a new trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Ghost in the Shell that delves into the Major’s backstory and highlights the terrorist.
In the new adaptation, the Major (who will be played by Scarlett Johansson in the film) is tasked with hunting down a dangerous terrorist hacker with her cyber-counterterrorist government sector colleagues. In the post-cyberpunk future the Major and the rest of her team live in, hackers use cyborgs like the Major to create weapons that will essentially do whatever they want.
The new trailer briefly introduces the strange and dangerous game of cat and mouse that occurs between the Major and the terrorist, but it also digs a little deeper in the Major’s history. It was following a terrible accident as a child that the Major’s brain was placed in a nearly full prosthetic body and she was turned into a cyborg. As the hacker points out, however, the Major once had a family and a normal life outside of the one she knows now.
Ghost in the Shell has been at the center of controversy since Johansson’s casting was first announced last April. Many critics and members of the acting community spoke out against the decision to give the role to Johansson instead of an Asian actor, calling it another example of whitewashing in Hollywood. Johansson recently responded to the remarks for the first time, reiterating she never wanted to offend anyone.
Ghost in the Shell will be released on March 31, 2017.
