Basically, it’s just the film in writing. Which, if you’re just wanting to read what happens in the film, then great, but personally i feel that this is just totally lazy on the part of the writer: or maybe this is all they were told to do by the rights holder???
The great thing about books, as opposed to film, is that you don’t have to pay for the sets, the extra cameras, the costumes, etc.. In a book the writer is simply limited by their own imagination and language skills, whereas in a film the director/writers are totally and absolutely constrained by finite resources such as finances, but also logistics, cgi limitations, the human elements of everyone involved (remember the pandemic and the disruption that caused to films and tv shows?) and many other things besides. So to sit down and write a novel based upon a film, one would think a really good writer would have a fucking field day with it, but, with Ghost in the Shell, they didn’t.
Like is say, maybe this was the brief, and when someone throws a bag of money in the direction of writers and tells them what they want writing i would imagine they’ll get plenty of writers clamouring to take on such an easy task as this “novelisation” must have been.
At less than 2300 Kindle Loc points you’re pushing it to label this as a novel anyway. At this length you’re seriously riding the boundaries between novella and novel.
I suppose they didn’t want to upset the film fans who only have attention spans of two hours.
So yeah, sadly, a total let down. There could have been so much more background and detail that could have really added to the story. A seriously wasted opportunity.
James’ Page