That's what's confusing to me. Why recreate so many scenes if they're trying to tell a new story? Why use Kuze's name and some details of his backstory, but put him in the place of the Puppetmaster with a wholly new theme to explore? Why is it important that Batou not have his fancy eyes until halfway in, rather than many years before, or if you're changing it anyway, why have them at all?
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.).
I really liken it to the script writers playing the telephone game[0] about GiTS and it's history. The things you point out, as well as not explaining/introducing anyone really bugged me. I guess Pazu and Borma were there somewhere, and Togusa had some screen time but you didn't really know who he was. Saito finally made an appearance near the end of the film as was on-screen for 10s of seconds. And why did everyone speak english except for Aramaki?
I've just been googling to remind myself of themes in the other movies and films and realised that with the dogs that Batou feeds they also pulled the Basset Hound from the GITS: Innocence movie
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. ;)