In recent years, the box office has been inundated with a slew of comic book adaptions. Dependable, popular, and profitable, the comic book movie is to Hollywood what the domestic commuter flight is to the aviation industry: the lifeblood from which all else flows. Sure, there are more glamorous options, but they don’t make anywhere near as much money. The biggest difference between the comic book movie and the domestic commuter flight may be that the airlines generally provide a soda and snack for free.

The latest contribution to the genre is Rupert Sanders’, “Ghost in the Shell,” the live action debut of a franchise that includes comic books, video games, and animated films. The movie, which stars Scarlett Johansson, is set in a sprawling, vaguely dystopian metropolis. Televised billboards, visible sex trade, gleaming skyscrapers, and grimy street-side bodegas suggest a neoliberal fantasy turned nightmare, a mechanized world in which everything has a price but nothing has value.

As in any self-respecting dystopia, there is a sinister corporation with diversified holdings and close ties to government. The version du jour is Hanka Robotics, a company best known for producing “augmentative technology,” i.e. sophisticated prosthetics. Hanka’s products are used to enhance sensory perception and increase physical strength; they can even be used to replace injured limbs and organs. The company’s size, power, and influence make for an obvious target. Resistance comes in the form of Hideo Kuze (Michael Pitt), a shady computer hacking insurgent responsible for assassinating a slew of prominent Hanka scientists.

Mara Killian, aka Major (Scarlett Johansson), is part of a counter-terrorism agency tasked with apprehending Kuze. Though unaware, Major is herself a Hanka product, a mechanical cyborg with an integrated human brain, constructed by the company as an élite police operative. Like Matt Damon’s character in the Bourne series, she is an ass-kicking special agent with serious questions about her identity. Unlike Jason Bourne, Major tends to fight in the nude. Nude, in this case, being a relative concept. As far as the MPAA is concerned, Killian’s cyborg body, which is technically sexless, cannot be “nude” and so the the film is rated PG-13. The film's promotional materials take full advantage of this technicality and are among the most blatantly violent and voyeuristic in recent memory. Perhaps you’ve seen billboards of Johansson wielding pistols in nothing but her pearly white cybernetic skivvies. Much like a Barbie doll, Johansson’s figure is eroticized as its gender is rendered ambiguous, suggestive creases and curves hint at what isn’t shown.

From a crime fighting perspective, Major’s predominantly robotic constitution is ideal. She is reparable, replicable, and ultimately dispensable. She is also part human—a sentient being who is both conscious and empathetic. Unfortunately, the film makes little attempt to explore the moral, legal, and ethical implications of cyborg life. The film’s title alludes to Arthur Koestler’s “The Ghost in the Machine,” a treatise that refutes Cartesian dualism and explores the relationship between brain structure and the human tendency towards self-destruction. This, however, is about as far as its philosophical exploration goes. The film’s fertile premise is reduced to little more than a narrative gimmick, the pretense for making a movie about a sexy police robot. 

The so-called “ghost” in Major’s “shell” manifests itself as a vague and sinister influence lurking in the depths of her subconscious. Major is plagued by a series of frightening and discordant memories that recall a life prior to involvement with Hanka. She has difficulty reconciling these memories with the details company scientists have told about her about her past. Later, assisted by the sympathetic Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), Major digs into the Hanka archives and discovers her previous identity: a left-wing radical involved in youth politics.

One might assume the fact that a liberal activist could be reborn as a police commando would be among the more troubling consequences of a society in which brains can be freely transplanted into robotic shells but “Ghost in the Shell” doesn’t see it this way. Rather than portraying Major’s transformation as an example of corporate coercion par excellence and her employment by Hanka as little more than indentured servitude, the film transforms Major’s discovery into a moment of moist-eyed humanism, a reminder that even police cyborgs are good liberals at heart. The irony of this transformation is apparently lost on the filmmakers.

Much has been made of the film’s aesthetics, as if looks alone might salvage the picture. Indeed, the $110 million lavished on “Ghost in the Shell” is responsible for a handful of special moments. The opening sequence, which depicts Major’s robotic genesis, is one such highlight: the Hanka factory, a repository of neon lighting, dexterous machinery, and colorful creams and jellies is less “Modern Times” than “Willy Wonka & and the Chocolate Factory”—never before have cybernetics looked so much like confectioneries. Exterior styling is often evocative but too closely reminiscent of “Blade Runner” to be of particular interest, though Major’s Le Corbusier-inspired apartment provides an inspired rendition of Brutalism.

Save your $15, “Blade Runner 2049” will be here in a few months.