User blog:ThatScrewyDuck/PE Proposal: Cutter



This is another character that I think deserves to be officially approved, and therefore. wanted to do a proposal for when I had the chance. Honesty, there are some other characters who I’d like to get done even more, but this guy is an easier and faster one to do, so I thought I’d start out with him in my ongoing effort to get more characters I feel are deserving sorted under the Approved Evil label/category.

Oh, and if he does get approved, this’ll actually be the 10th character I’ve gotten approved since joining the wiki, so fingers crossed for getting to reach that little milestone of sorts. I guess it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it still feels like I’m making a solid contribution, and I think that counts for something.

What’s the work?
Ghost in the Shell (2017) is a live-action film adaptation of both the Japanese manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow and the anime film adaptation from 1995 by acclaimed director Mamoru Oshii. In a near future setting where humans regularly augment themselves with cybernetic enhancements to improve their capabilities, a young woman named Mira Killian awakens to find out that she is the sole survivor of a terrorist attack which claimed the lives of her parents. However, her body was badly damaged, so her brain was inserted into an artificial body, making her the first of her kind; a full-body cyborg run by a human brain rather than an AI.

As soon as she’s operational, she’s assigned to Section 9, an anti-terrorist bureau run by Chief Director Aramaki, who answers straight to the Prime Minister of Japan. Within a year, she is revealed to have attained the rank of Major, and is often referred to as such. However, she begins to question why she remembers so little about her past and starts searching for answers after she is assigned to track down a cyberterrorist who is hacking into robots and cybernetic humans alike to commit a series of murders, with all the victims being senior company researchers with Hank Robotics, the world’s leading developer of augmentative technology that created her. The cyberterrorist goes by the name Kuze, and it turns out he’s a lot more similar to her than she’d like to admit since he’s a full-body cyborg, much like she is. He also seems to know a number of things about the company that she doesn’t, hence why he’s lashing out.

Who is he and what does he do?
Cutter/Mr. Cutter is the corrupt CEO of Hanka Robotics, which is not only the largest and most powerful tech corporation in the country, but, as mentioned before, the world’s leading developer of augmentative technology, and the main antagonist of the film who is the real one responsible for the events of the plot. It is revealed over the course of the film that Mira Killian’s real name was Motoko Kusanagi, and that she was extremely opposed to technology, to the point she believed it was destroying the world, which is why she ran away from home to a place called the Lawless Zone, where many teenagers who were against cybernetic augmentations went. However, Cutter saw them as ideal test subjects for his illegal, covert experiments, and spearheaded an initiative to kidnap many of them to experiment on in the process of developing a trans-human weapon; the project was called Project 2571, and she was the successful end result. However, before her, there were 98 failed attempts; the first 97 people died, and Kuze was number 98, but even though he survived, he was considered too flawed and unstable, so he was thrown out like garbage, which is why in the present time, he’s murdering all the researchers who were involved in that project. When they finally succeeded with her, she was given false memories so that she would be motivated to fight terrorists, which Cutter saw as a huge potential asset and source of profit for his company.

When Major Killian starts finding out about this from Dr. Ouelet, a doctor who was involved with the project, but did so by convincing herself that the test subjects were necessary sacrifices for the sake of advancing human evolution and truly cared about her, Cutter deems her a liability who’s no longer a viable asset they can control, as well as a threat to his operations. Therefore, he orders Dr. Ouelet to euthanize her so they can move on to a new project to perfect the process even more by creating a more unquestioning, blindly obedient machine. However, she is unable to go through with it and instead helps her escape, after which Cutter remarks “that’s the problem with the human heart”, coldly takes out his gun and shoots her dead. He then frames her death on Killian and labels her as a rogue who must be terminated, much to her partner Batou’s angry objections, since he strongly believes she would never kill her.

Later on, when Killian gets in touch with Aramaki using what she thinks is a secure private line, he discovers the truth about how Dr. Ouelet died, and declares that Cutter will be brought to justice for his actions. However, Cutter listen in on their conversation using his resources and declares that “the virus has spread”, proceeding to send his men from Hanka Security to effectively “burn” Section 9 by killing everyone who’s part of it. However, it turns out Aramaki let him listen in on purpose and anticipated that he would do that, so he warns the other members that they’re being targeted before efficiently taking out the assailants sent to kill him. Elsewhere, Batou and Togusa are also shown being targeted, but like Aramaki, are able to kill the men that come after them first.

At the climax of the film, Cutter deploys a spider-tank which he manually takes control of to personally kill the Major and Kuze after she arranges for them to meet up in the Lawless Zone, where they start to remember the past life they had together that was forcefully taken away from them. He starts by using it to blow up part of the building they were in, which causes Kuze to lose his legs, after which Killian engages the spider-tank in a shoot-out. After thinking he’s blown her up with missiles, Cutter tries to have the spider-tank crush the incapacitated Kuze’s head, and callously mocks him by saying “you came close… you freak” (which is especially cruel when you remember that he’s the way he is because of him). However, before he can kill him, Killian sneaks up on the spider-tank and rips off its main motor, deactivating it, but with such effort that she rips her arm off. As they’re both lying heavily damaged on the ground, Cutter sends snipers in a helicopter to take them out, which results in Kuze getting shot and killed. However, before they can shoot Killian, she is saved by Batou and other members of Section 9 when they shoot down the helicopter first.

Finally, Aramaki confronts Cutter where he was controlling the spider-tank from to tell him that he’s spoken with the Prime Minister, and that he’s been charged with murder and crimes against the states. Despite holding him at gunpoint and encouraging him not to resist, Cutter still fakes surrendering only to try to shoot him with a gun he was hiding in his coat pocket. However, Aramaki non-fatally shoots him first due to having sharper reflexes, causing him to drop his gun, which he then kicks away while continuing to hold him at gunpoint. As Cutter starts begging for his life, Aramaki calls the Major and asks her how she wants to deal with him, which she responds to by granting him permission to execute him as justice for his crimes. He then shoots him twice, causing him to fall dead into his decorative pool.

Does he have any redeeming qualities or a valid excuse for his actions?
This is an easy pass. All Cutter cared about was what was good for him and his company, and had absolutely no moral boundaries or lows he wouldn’t sink to in pursuit of that. Even those who worked with or for him were disposable liabilities as soon as they weren’t on board with his actions and/or threatened to expose his activities in any way. This is especially evident when he swiftly executed Dr. Ouelet, who was one of his most significant partners since she was one of the main researchers who participated in and conducted the Project 2571 experiments.

Is he heinous by the standards of the work?
Like many futuristic science fiction films that fall into the cyberpunk subgenre, Ghost in the Shell is a pretty dark and serious movie. However, despite the presence of other minor antagonists like the yakuza at a bar that Major Killian and Batou visit, Cutter’s only real competition in terms of heinousness is Kuze, and his series of murders is all thanks to being forcefully experimented on (to the point he recalls having to watch his body being dissected), being deemed a failure, thrown out like garbage, then understandably wanting revenge for what was done to him. So in a way, he’s partially responsible even for his actions.

To go into a bit more about Cutter himself, yes, he’s very much a clichéd corrupt businessman that you often get in these kinds of cyberpunk movies that are all about how overreliance on technology can corrupt societies, with corrupt corporations, like Hanka Robotics in this case, usually doing very unethical things to stay on top of their competition in terms of progress and success. However, that doesn’t stop him from standing out as an especially heartless and callous psychopath with no humanizing traits whatsoever who will order anyone who stands in his way or threatens to expose his illegal activities killed, or personally execute them himself. His actions in the present tense of the movie are bad enough, what with murdering Dr. Ouelet as soon as she opposes his immoral methods, framing it on the Major, ordering everyone in Section 9 killed when it’s evident they’re going to find out about his activities, then trying to kill the Major and Kuze, who are his own creations, himself, all to cover his tracks so he can proceed with further illegal experiments.

But of course, most significantly, there’s the inhuman experiments he’s already conducted. Engineering the kidnapping of at least nearly 100 teenage runaways just to experiment on them to perfect a trans-human weapon for your own benefit? I think that’s the type of thing that stands out as heinous in almost any given work, especially since unlike Dr. Ouelet, he seems to be completely apathetic about all the people that died in the process as long as it resulted in something that could be beneficial and/or profitable to him and his company. This doesn’t even entirely count as off-screen villainy; when Major Killian visits the Lawless Zone, she starts seeing flashbacks of him just watching coldly while his men forcefully take her and the others away from their surrogate home as it all burns, with some of them even getting brutally beaten in the process. There’s also a brief bit where she remembers seeing a couple of teenagers being forced apart and confined to their respective tables when they were in the lab and about to be experimented on. And remember, he was quick to try disposing of the Major herself as soon as he started having doubts she could be controlled, and had the full intent to move on to another project/phase to perfect the process even more. So after after all those senseless deaths, even the end result of it all was expendable to him if it proved to be flawed.

What’s the verdict?
With all this taken into account, I think he’s an easy approval, despite his lack of originality. What do you think?