Mamoru Oshii ruined the Ghost in the Shell franchise

'A much larger market will be introduced to the franchise by the 2017 film, and by the same logic, will prefer the even dumber version'

Well, that didn't happen. I guess there IS a limit to how far you can water down a franchise.

Author is more-or-less upset about Oshii being Oshii. Christian symbolism, birds (of course), engineering technicals, and the removal of most sexuality is par for the course.

You can say it truncated the story -- of course it did, it's a movie. I have to agree, but there wasn't any choice. The 95 GiTS movie remains as some of the most beautiful cinematography style artwork in any anime I've ever watched. The realism and atmosphere that's built in to that movie in such a short time (1h 25m) is simply amazing to me.

Many of those great cinematography elements are also in Oshii's Patlabor entries. More manga stories butchered, sure, but I guess my personal reason for liking Oshii's work is an ability to judge it separately from the previous work on which it's based.

That ability still didn't save the newest GiTS live-action movie for me, though. That one was just a bit too far gone.