Scarlett Johansson’s latest role as Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg-human special-ops officer in the upcoming live-action remake of the Japanese manga series Ghost in the Shell, has us all a little excited.
We caught the trailer — and a look at the actress in a skintight ninja suit and a jet-black bob — during the season-two finale of Mr. Robot, and, all criticism of “whitewashing” notwithstanding, the film looks pretty fucking cool.
Yeah, yeah, so she’s been named “Sexiest Woman Alive” by Esquire — twice. She’s also Hollywood’s top-grossing actress of all time. But what we love most about the de-lovely Johansson is her ability to shift so effortlessly between superhero badass (most recently in Avengers: Age of Ultron), girl-next-door smarty-pants (in our personal favorite, Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film, Lost in Translation), and gum-snapping Jersey girl, like in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s 2013 directorial debut, Don Jon.
And then there’s that voice, which was on full display in Spike Jonez’s 2013 film, Her, in which Johansson played an advanced operating system named Samantha, whose breathy, crackling cadences captivate lonely writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). Did you know the actress has two studio albums under her belt as well? And, again, that voice can be heard (along with the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, and Seth McFarlane) in the upcoming animated musical Sing, in which she plays a punk-rock-singing porcupine named Ash.
Of course Johansson has a number of other projects in the works, including the bachelorette-party comedy Rock That Body, and reprising her role as Black Widow in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, due for release in 2018.
With a workload like that, maybe the 32-year-old mother (of two-year-old daughter Rose, with journalist husband Romain Dauriac) really is a cyborg. Or maybe she’s just some sort of genetic freak with the talent, looks, brains, and work ethic that really should put us all to shame.
PHOTO: Getty Images / David Livingston