Substance abuse
Ghost in the Shell 2 aims deep.

By Patrick Macias

CAN A MACHINE possess a human soul? What would happen to the mind if it were disconnected from reality? How will life evolve in a world increasingly dependent on technology?

Here's another deep question: feeling sleepy yet? I don't blame you. This old "man-machine" stuff hardly makes for interesting movies anymore, doubly so after I, Robot.

Even Japanese animation auteur Mamoru Oshii has cashed in some of his RAM chips with Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Rumor is, the director blew a substantial portion of Innocence's $18 million budget, and some of the film's four-year production time, building up his personal doll collection.

"The human is no match for a doll, in its form, its elegance in motion, in its very being," says Kim, Innocence's scheming puppet master who has transformed his body into a marionette. It's not a stretch to imagine that he's speaking on behalf of the director, who's based the killer "sexaroids" in the film on the ball-and-socket dolls of surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer.

Instead of delivering visionary science fiction, this follow-up to the 1995 original is foremost an ode to Oshii's anthropomorphic obsessions. He's the most public member of a movement of collectors in Japan called "Dollers." Their first dose of virtual love came in the form of video "Gal Games," and the next phase has been for men to stock up on oversize female dolls, or to customize their perfect girl from an assortment of hair, eyeballs, and limbs. Innocence aims to find a common link between these dolls, dogs, and human children. And if you think there's something weird about it, well, shame on you. After all, the movie is called Innocence.

While Oshii was tinkering with toys, the real world caught up with him. Inspired by the first Ghost in the Shell's mix of gunplay and mindfuck, the Wachowski brothers set new standards for cinematic sci-fi, only to immediately lower them again, in their Matrix films. Maybe it's their fault that aside from advances in blending together 2-D and C.G. animation, Innocence feels about as state-of-the-art as an old issue of Heavy Metal gathering dust in the back of the comic shop.

Plotwise, there's a series of murders for our cyber buddy cops to solve, and the clues lead all the way into the corridors of power. Every weapon in the William Gibson arsenal, from virtual reality to cybernetic dolphins and really, really dour pan-Asian cityscapes, is trotted out, but the results are about as conceptually groundbreaking as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's retro futurism – which is to say, not at all.

Still, there are some kicks to be had, like a brief but brutal showdown between chilly protagonist Detective Batou and a punk rock, mechanically modified yakuza assassin. Suddenly, cold-blooded Innocence transforms into a trashy old anime series like Cyber City Oedo 808. It's a fine reminder that what originally brought anime to the world stage wasn't family fare like Spirited Away or crass tie-ins like Pokémon, but rather woozy, boss-level video game-style action.

If all Innocence had aspired to be was Blade Runner: The Anime, it could have been great. But no: Oshii began his career in animation as a director on the sci-fi comedy series Urusei Yatsura. Since then he's done everything to assume the position of an important artist; he's the kind of guy who'll whip out the Tree of Life, as in the original Ghost in the Shell, in the hopes he'll get a Keanu-like "whoa" out of you.

Sometimes it works, like when Batou and his beleaguered partner, Togusa, wander through a mental hall of mirrors that references the legend of the Golem by way of Victoriana. It's precisely the sort of menacing waking dream Oshii is aiming for. Unfortunately, the sound of constant chatter is bound to keep you from fully enjoying the reverie. In previous films, Oshii stuck to a mannequin-like silence that was easy to mistake for meaning. But he overstuffs Innocence with quotes from Confucius, Descartes, and other heavy hitters, which pour even from the unlikely mouths of computer hackers and lowlifes.

For all this, the average moviegoer (even one who liked I, Robot) is bound to find Innocence unbearably pretentious and boring. But mileage for those who are perhaps pretentious and boring themselves may vary.

For the rest of us, maybe the scariest thing Innocence predicts for the year 2032 isn't killer sex dolls or people with infrared cameras for eyes, but a world where you'll be expected to trade philosophical musings back and forth like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

'Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence' opens Fri/17, Embarcadero Center Cinema, 1 Embarcadero Center, Promenade level, S.F. (415) 267-4893; Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 464-5980. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.