Scarlett Johansson Makes Her Anime-Inspired Debut in 5 Mysterious 'Ghost in the Shell' Micro-Teasers

The upcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell — based on the influential 1995 animé feature — has been mired in controversy ever since it cast Scarlett Johansson as its lead, a character who was a Japanese woman in the source material. Those complaints didn’t subside when the film released its first still of the actress — an A-list star whose casting undoubtedly played a huge part in getting the big-budget Hollywood production made. Now, we have the film’s first round of five micro-teasers (watch them above), which premiered on TV last night during the season finale of Mr. Robot, and critics may be at least partly assuaged by the clips’ cryptic strangeness that seems in tune with the source material.

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Taken together, the five brief promos for the film (directed by Snow White and the Huntsman’s Rupert Sanders) don’t reveal much other than the action’s haunting, otherworldly atmosphere. From a shot of a robo-geisha walking down a hallway, to Johansson’s cyborg cop Major unplugging herself on a bed and caressing the face of a woman who asks “What are you?” to Takeshi “Beat” Kitano firing a gun and then dumping its empty casings on the ground, these Ghost in the Shell snippets are the definition of a tease, and don’t touch upon the film’s story, about Major’s attempts to locate a nefarious hacker in a future defined by cyber-connectivity. They do suggest, however, that Sanders is aiming to channel his animated predecessor’s eerie blend of techno-paranoia, existential dread, and chilly sexuality, all of which comes through loud and clear in these initial promos.

Ghost in the Shell uploads into theaters on March 31, 2017.

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