to reveal its meaning". In February 2004, Cinefantastique listed the anime as one of the "10 Essential Animations". It ranked 35 on Total Film's 2010 top list of 50 Animated Films. The film ranked on Wizards Anime Magazine on their "Top 50 Anime released in North America". Ghost in the Shell has also influenced a number of prominent filmmakers. The Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix and its sequels, showed it to producer Joel Silver, saying, "We wanna do that for real." The Matrix series took several concepts from the film, including the Matrix digital rain, which was inspired by the film's opening credits, and the way characters access the Matrix through holes in the back of their necks. Other parallels have been drawn to James Cameron's Avatar, Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Jonathan Mostow's Surrogates. James Cameron cited Ghost in the Shell as a source of inspiration for Avatar, calling it "the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence." Visual style in the opening credits of the Westworld series, as well as in movies like Ex Machina borrow heavily from the Ghost in the Shell, which became one of the most influential sci-fi movies of the 20th century. Themes The film explores nature of human cyborgs, consciousness, self-aware computer programs and memory alteration. In one of the monologues delivered by the Puppet Master throughout the film, it is argued that the human DNA is nothing more than a program designed to self-preserve. There are also multiple mentions of the act of granting political asylum to self-aware computer programs. The film depicts Motoko's identity and ontological concerns and ends with the evolution of the Puppet Master, a being without reproduction. Austin Corbett characterized the lack of sexualization from her team as freedom from femininity, noting that Motoko is "overtly feminine, and clearly non-female". In describing Motoko as a "shapely" and "strong [female protagonist] at the center of the story" who is "nevertheless almost continuously nude", Roger Ebert noted that "an article about anime in a recent issue of Film Quarterly suggests that to be a 'salary man' in modern Japan is so exhausting and dehumanizing that many men (who form the largest part of the animation audience) project both freedom and power onto women, and identify with them as fictional characters". Carl Silvio has called Ghost in the Shell a "resistant film", due