Speaking of which, if any of those themes or philosophical musings seemed familiar, that's because Hollywood has been ripping them off for decades at this point. Recently James Cameron's Avatar, Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, and Jonathan Mostow's Surrogates have all riffed on the ideas of identity and technology Ghost In The Shell got to first, but the worst offender in terms of nabbing those original concepts are the Wachowskis. When The Matrix hit cinemas in the mid-nineties it was a complete revolution in action filmmaking. Audiences hadn't seen anything like it before. Well, not most audiences. The first film, and the trilogy as a whole, are a patchwork Frankestein's monster of influences: Hong Kong martial arts movies, 20th Century philosophers, Phillip K Dick stories. Bullet time even originated in an advert. Ghost In The Shell was the main source for them to steal their ideas from, though (besides Grant Morrison's comic The Invisibles, anyway). The virtual world, the way they jack into it, and the ensuing philosophical debate regarding subjective reality and man's dominance over machine? Everything in The Matrix, done originally by Shirow and Oshii.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
