SPOILERS AHEAD:
What they made: A (slightly technophobic) very human and involentary cyborg fighting for humanity and letting the equally human anti-hero die to keep on fighting for the human race against digitalization and greedy other humans. Also: strange human trafficking sob-story.
What it was: The first cyborg without any human tissue remaining fighting for justice and falling in love with the genderless anti-hero who is first machine gaining conciousness. They fall in love, unite in death, are reborn as a child and are the first thing far beyond humanity: a human soul and AI hybrid, the first life-form beeing native to the physical and the digital world. Also a loveletter to technology.
I don't care who they cast or recast if they would just get the point of the story, but western media has no concept of how to do a proper narrative about identity and can't accept any story involving technology that isn't bemoaning it and "exposing" how dangerous it is to us and society as a whole.
In other words, western media becomes a drooling idiot when discussing either of these topics.
I must be misunderstanding your complaint, because it seems that everyone's favorite metaplot is about identity these days. Off the top of my head:
- Frozen: choosing own future and identity over what was given you
- Dark Knight: projecting an inaccurate identity to protect people
- Zootopia: overcoming prejudice by breaking glass ceilings
- The Crown: how to manage contradictory identities (head of church, head of state), overcoming prejudice
Especially on the nose:
- Westworld: I don't want to get into too many plot details, but there are absolutely questions of identity, both for humans and for artificially intelligent machines.
But that's not what GitS is about.
I'm referring to a more philosophical approach, even an abstract one. GitS specifically is looks at identity as a malleable thing. To a "western audience", in the original film, The Major is no longer The Major at the end. Or at least, they'd be reassured by her familiar voice and reassure themselves that it really is still her and they haven't lost their protagonist. "Well, she sounds the same and seems to act the same, must be the same person."
This is again a very surface look at identity. I'm not saying this is bad subject material or even wrong, but it gets very old when every movie throws in you face how deep and interesting they are because they're about "identity" when really they're just about "stuff people do in situations" or applying a rigid concept of identity to some character's struggles.
The visuals were amazing, but the movie might as well have been named "cyborgs in hong kong".
What I find striking in this whole culture wars thing is how asymetrical it is: there's no principles, it's always white/western people being wrong (well, I suppose that's a principle too). Example: when fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower objected to casting a black actor for the white gunslinger, these same people who complain about white-washing called the objecting people racists and what not. They even went as far as stating that it was only in the fans' minds that the gunslinger was white, that he could equally well have been black, thereby betraying that they'd never even read the series.
Personally, I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell despite its flaws, and I'm pretty sure I'm also going to enjoy The Dark Tower, despite the fact that it's radically changing a central part of the plot of the books.
The Gun Slinger was definitely white in the long series of comic books which Stephen King helped create, so I'm not sure how anyone can say that it was just in their minds. But any adaptation of a epic series of novels into a couple hours of film is going to have to change drastically anyways. And I'm usually excited to see Idris Elba in something. GITS was already in movie format, and the core of the story could have been done justice.
I didn't want it to fail, but I've seen Hollywood shit on too many things I cared about growing up. First they turned Spock into a action hero, now they do this to the Major. Geez, maybe I am a fanboy.
It might be hard for someone non-Asian to appreciate what it's like growing up without a single Asian role model in Hollywood (I'm not even east asian, I'm south asian but I'll take what I can get). I'm not demanding that every movie or show have equally diverse casts, and I don't expect the next Spiderman or Bond to be black, but if the original story was Japanese with all Japanese characters can we please not make the lead caucasian every time?
1) Just cast an Asian lead 2) Make a better movie 3) See 1 and 2 4) Just release the music