From a storytelling perspective, there's one part of Ghost in the Shell 2017 that stands out above the rest. Or perhaps, below the rest, as you'll see.

I can only contrast between RoboCop, Bourne and what others have written here, since there seems to be no compelling reason to watch GitS2017 beyond its slick-yet-empty visuals. And that's the purpose of this post -- to hear your thoughts instead of sitting through a mediocre film (at least, "mediocre" as far as Ghost in the Shell is concerned).

Several people on /r/ghost_in_the_shell have mentioned "consent" as some kind of brilliant addition to the philosophy of Ghost in the Shell.

Cybernetic Control in RoboCop 2014

In the 2014 RoboCop reboot, there were real questions of consciousness explored that dovetail with a "hard science" perspective. Consent in RoboCop 2014 used a "man-machine interface" concept to question the limits of free will. Was Murphy/RoboCop in control of his body, mind and actions, or was his sense of control an illusion?

This is an issue that is currently being explored in fields like cognitive neuroscience. RoboCop 2014 showed the consequences of such questions through the schema of "robotic body versus human mind". They only botched the second half by tacking on a senseless "mind over matter, emotion over physical reality" ending that Hollywood seems to crave instead of intelligent exploration of cognition, emotion and volition.

Control Becomes 'Consent' for Ghost in the Shell 2017?

In GitS2017, it seems like "consent" was tacked on and rolled into the plot with no thought given to story mechanics, science or philosophy. So here are my questions:

...1. Did Kusanagi -- I mean "Killian" -- need to consent before taking orders? There is no police, espionage or military unit in the world that asks its officers and soldiers for consent. That doesn't make any sense at all. Consent takes place when you enlist. From there on, taking orders is just part of the job.

...2. Did GitS2017 explain how it was possible to override orders given to a completely cybernetic body -- and "go Bourne" in search of "true identity"? At least in the RoboCop universe, the robots were fallible. They were presented more as "easily broken robot" than "semi-human cyborg". In GitS2017, the story world seems so advanced that "I forgot to take my meds and started having flashbacks" is an anachronism from a time when you had to take medicine by hand. In fact, pharmaceutical and neurological memory editing [2] is coming closer to reality right now. By the time cybernetic bodies are available, the technology will presumably have been perfected.

If you can create a self-contained neuroendocrine system that pumps blood, transmits nerve impulses and self-regulates a flow of artificial hormones, adding a "memory loss potion" to the bloodstream or neural kill-switch to the brain would be trivially easy.

...3. In GitS2017, was "Killian" explicitly still a Japanese woman? The answer seems to be "yes" since there was a cringe-worthy "I'm really Japanese, mom!" scene between Scarlett Johansson and with her character's 'mother', a real-life Japanese woman played by Momoi Kaori.

But if Kusanagi was still herself, why would Scarlett Johannson pretend that the character was 'identity-less' while giving interviews promoting the film?

A person with a suppressed memory doesn't become a clean slate, without ethnicity or identity. This feeds back to question number two -- if they could selectively repress personal memories without resulting in a human vegetable, why did Kusanagi still need to exercise some illusory idea of "consent"? Presumably, the cyberbrain could have been pre-emptively "hacked" to maintain the consistent illusion of consent. Or, they could have chosen a brain that wouldn't actively reject its programming. Or, they could have done what militaries do to new recruits now: indoctrination and social programming to ensure consent, no matter the sociopolitical ramifications or consequences to human life.

After reading a couple of convoluted theories about "consent" in Ghost in the Shell 2017, it seems like the inclusion of consent as recurring motif just reinforced the fact that GitS2017's script was poorly written on several levels. RoboCop 2014 almost got it right except for the "heart conquers all" Hollywood ending. GitS2017, though, seems to have been a badly-scripted cash grab laced with pseudo-philosophy to hide its lack of resonance with the original source material.

Was GitS2017 just a less-competent remix of plots from the stories of RoboCop and Jason Bourne, with none of the cognitive science accuracy of the former, nor military/espionage rigour of the latter?

If the science and philosophy were equally vapid and ludicrous, maybe the new film has more in common with Lucy (2014). In that case, had they not named the movie "Ghost in the Shell", maybe it wouldn't have failed as badly as it did.