That poses something of a problem. When audiences are confronted with the source of inspiration for basically every exciting piece of media they've put into their eyeholes over the last twenty years, it tends to be met with a collective shrug. Ironically, the original source material appears hackneyed and boring. Viewers have seen it all before, just in different guises. That's the unfortunate fate met by Disney's John Carter, the long-awaited adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's novels which inspired everything from Avatar to Star Wars. Those books had been strip-mined for concepts, characters and themes for a century, and faced with the real thing, everybody yawned. Seen it. Ghost In The Shell could meet a similar fate. The odds are stacked against it. There's that, then the fact that most anime adaptations are horrible, and some people's dissatisfaction with Scarlett Johansson's casting as a previously Asian protagonist. Snow White And The Huntsman's Rupert Sanders in the director's chair is scant reassurance. But look: Ghost In The Shell is a series that's been around in various forms since 1989. It's had highs and lows, but mostly it's been one of the most engrossing, inventive, progressive series in modern history. This form could be equally as awesome.
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/
