I went in to this movie after hearing from both sides of people who have both loved and hated the movie. Since there are more than a few people that loved the original, but still think this is a good movie, I tried my hardest to go into this with a decent amount of hope for the movie, that it may be able to do things in it's own way, but still be as good and engaging as the original.
I finished the movie annoyed and disappointed. I felt patronized and treated like a child through most of the film.
Hollywood really did lobotomize Ghost in the Shell. The story has been gutted from the original nuanced plot and replaced with a generic plot that beats you over the head with the point. The characters are also poorly defined with almost no nuance to them. The actors are fine, though even if I think they dont understand what defines the characters in the original film. The biggest strength of the film is the visuals. They mostly nailed how the Ghost in the Shell universe would likely look like.
On to spoiler territory (for both the original movie, and this remake).
So, the whole Scar-Jo debacle is stupid. She does fine for her role, even if her character is completely different than the original Motoko Kusanagi. A good actor is a good actor. Judge the merits of the film for what they are.
The original film was about the idea of one's self. The idea of being a "human", vs "a consciousness". It touches on some very uncomfortable ideas, like memories being just information, what makes you unique, and trans-humanism. The new film does not really touch on all of that. It deals more heavily with free will in society and corporate power, along with hamfistedly being a cautionary anti-corporate story.
Now, the original movie was subtle with how it presented each character, with their backstories having a ton to do with how each of the characters interact with each other. As an example, Motoko in the original is Motoko from the outset (and in the other works in this universe, you learn that she was one of the first people with a fully cybernetic body due to unfortunate circumstances, and has a history with most of the other people in Section 9). In the new version, Motoko is not Motoko, she was a run-away called Motoko until they wiped her memory and used her as the first completely successful fully cybernetic body person. They cram her into Section 9 as a way to show how badass a fully cybernetic person can be. "The Major" has basically nothing to do with Motoko. "The Major" shows up as part of Section 9 literally weeks before the "beginning of the story" and has no history with any of the characters due to the complete tossing of her backstory. The "New Major" is not a complicated character, just a blank slate. She is a badass only because of her fully cybernetic body in the new movie, the original made her out to be a badass because of her experience, since she is NOT the only fully cybernetic person (in the other works from the universe it is made clear that there are many other "special ops" groups with plenty of full-cybernetic people in them, as Batou comes from the army and is heavily enhanced himself). There are many plot points and character interactions that are carried over from the original, but are completely jarring and nonsensical due to the fact that they tossed out the back-story to basically every character because of their complete tossing of the Major's back story and nuanced interactions with the characters. One that stood out to me as one of the most nonsensical plot points is when Batou finds The Major diving in the bay. Batou and The Major have NO HISTORY prior to a couple weeks ago, but he "knows where to find her". What? I guess Batou is telepathic? In the original, it is hinted upon that The Major and Batou have a long history together, and that he finds her diving since that is what she does to clear her mind/try to feel more human, Batou knows about her diving trips from before. The movie also assumes you have seen the original movie, and presents some of the characters without any establishing scenes. Togusa in the new version also is never properly fleshed out. The original movie makes it clear that Togusa is the newbie to Section 9, and comes from regular civilian law enforcement, and that The Major specifically chose him due to his preference against augmentations, as a person she can trust. He makes it clear that he is the more analogue take on things, and prefers to use revolvers when everyone else uses automatics, even saying that he just loves his Unica. Due to the way they completely tossed the character of The Major, in the new version, Togusa has been with Section 9 longer than The Major... what? They also only give him a couple lines, and never actually have him interact with anyone. He does carry his signature Unica, but there is no explanation as to why, and he never uses it. The entire cast of characters in general is a mess due to their decision to completely toss the backstory that every character leans on.
The story is also completely tossed and dumbed down. The original story was about finding a truly sentient AI as the result of a chasing down a terrorist hacker. The AI created the whole mess to get itself out of the confines that the government had it in, and wants to obtain a human perspective by mixing consciousnesses with The Major. The new movie is a bog-standard "evil mega corporation that does horrific immoral human experiments needs to be stopped". The corporation puts The Major in Section 9, as an example of their ability to create a military-grade cybernetic person, then in the process of trying to use Section 9 to clean up their messes from their experiments, The Major finds out the truth and takes down the evil CEO. The original presents it's implications, and leaves you hanging to ponder them. The new movie makes up your mind for you. As an example, the arc where the hacked sanitation worker gets tracked down and eventually arrested. The original sets up the situation, making it out to be a normal day, but one of the workers is being coerced into helping a terrorist for money. The whole iconic chase and fight scene in the water happens, the terrorist is captured, and then it hits you with the realization in the interrogation room. The terrorist had their mind hacked, and memories replaced, all to give him the true motivation of trying to do something to make money for his non-existent kid's future. It ends the arc by telling you that the erased memories are unable to be recovered, and The Major and Batou bring up the question of "do your memories make you who you are?". The new movie tosses all of that "deep nonsense". The sanitation workers are straight hacked mid-route and completely taken over, they have no real will. They add the pointless scene of an attempted assassination of a pointless character that was added to try to give the audience a poorly cobbled together emotional attachment. The fight scene happens (I feel like they didnt understand what made the original movie's fight in the water so memorizing), and then they have a weird "futuristic" jail cell, where the remaining terrorist is held, where the terrorist is half under the control of the hacker. They clumsily bring up the fact that the person's memory was overwritten and cant come back, and it ends with the sanitation worker hanging himself... What? Why? I guess the writer thinks that all of the viewers cant be left with any questions, you are too dumb to think about complicated things. It is fine if they wanted to be different from the original movie. But, what they did is only half rip everything out, so you have a bunch of loose-ends, they then decided to spend almost no effort on creating the new stuff while jamming it in, expecting everything to fit properly.
In the end, the new movie isnt "bad", but it isn't "good". The only thing that stood out to me in any way, was the visuals. The way they portrayed the futuristic cyberpunk world was great, but having an interesting world, and impressive visuals, does not make a good movie by themselves.