That was on purpose. Verhoeven allegedly didn't read the book (which I doubt) and set out to create a parody of it. The movie is ridiculous because it is supposed to be ridiculous, mocking the US military as dumb hicks (enlisted AND leadership), its culture and its purpose as "fascist" and pointless, in 1997, at the tail end of a relatively peaceful period with no major conflicts for the US.
I suspect the scene [2] is a reference to the book chapter where a soldier is executed for mutiny, which Heinlein uses to demonstrate why a wartime military has strict discipline and which Verhoeven openly mocks (indeed Zim's speech about why infantry is needed in the nuclear age [1] in the book answers the same question as the movie scene).
I have not watched the new Ghost in the Shell but I doubt the director set out to ridicule the original, so the spirit of your remark still stands.
[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Chapter_5
He didn't set out to create a parody of the book, he set out to create a parody of the message he interpreted the book to have without reading it (and accepting that he didn't read the book is the only interpretation of the facts that does not amount to calling Verhoeven an idiot -- well, in his interpretation of the book of the book, at least.)
> The movie is ridiculous because it is supposed to be ridiculous
The movie is ridiculous on many levels, only the most trivial of them apparently intentional. (It is probably not, for instance, intended to be ridiculous as a parody of, or even response to, the written work.)
That said, I don't take it too seriously which arguably misses any intended satirical point. As you say, to the degree that I found the movie more amusing than serious satirical commentary on Heinlein it may well have failed in its purpose.
It's also perhaps worth noting, in the context of ST, that the "service is optional, but required for citizenship" model was presented prior to the all-volunteer military at a time when each of the last several generations had been subject to at least one large-scale draft, and the US (and most of the rest of the world) had a system where service was tied to citizenship but (well, for men at least) mandatory on demand, universal in practice, and quite often deadly.
See, I have never agreed with this interpretation. I think Verhoeven is mocking society at large and how we celebrate appearances and shallowness rather than appreciate independence and quality of thought. There's plenty of vitriol for everyone and everything, of course, but to me the movie is driven by the idea that society is happy to be sheeped around by lies and propaganda. In contrast, the military is a place where stupidity (yours or someone else's) has consequences.
Also, my wife who was never able to grasp the original movie "got" this immediately.
The original Ghost in the Shell is still difficult for many to grasp because the core theme around the essential features of identity are not yet culturally available to everyone.
Mostly her beefs with the original was be lack of things that explain what's going on. This movie made those things more accssible.
It's worth noting that there are multiple subtitle tracks and dubs out there for the show; the good ones are pretty steeped in literary and sociological theory and have strong post-colonial / anti-capitalist / transhumanist themes. Characters deliver awesome rambling monologues on topics that would no way make it onto US network television.
Dragonball Evolution was such a massive turd that it got the original creator of the series to return to it after 20ish years and make "real" movies.
If they made an original story with the same setting and characters, I might have liked it more. But it seemed like they just included some iconic scenes from the original to draw in the fanbase and gave a bait and switch with something new, and conclusions I found much less profound and interesting. I found it... lazy. Like the writers didn't respect the original, and just said "what do we have to make up to get from set piece remake 1 to set piece remake 2?" "oh hey let's use this name I heard from way later on in the story because IDK." Again I must compare it to the slipshod work of the Starship Troopers adaptation. Certainly nowhere near as bad (I do think this movie was good in some respects), but they made many of the same mistakes in terms of reusing and deviating from source material (Why did you make X change? Ignorance, rule of cool, deliberate tone shift? It's unclear.).
Oh, and she blinked. ;)
It didn't need do that. It could've told a totally different story and been set in Rio and it would've been fine if the script wasn't in Hollywood formula 101. I saw this movie before and it was called Robocop. And the dialogue was beyond awful. Arrival took a chance and assumed that the audience wasn't intellectually sterile. Pacific Rim (which I love btw) and its intentionally bad plot was better.
The whitewashing bothers me not so much that the Major needed to be Asian per se. It's that Hollywood just doesn't think an asian person can be a lead in a movie that doesn't have kung fu in it.
Verhoven did not share in Heinlein's militaristic vision of the future where only citizens are granted the right to vote. The movie so blatantly portrayed humans as fascist that Neil Patrick Harris was wearing an SS uniform.
I am familiar with the scene, but I don't understand why you are bringing it up.