Headscratchers / Ghost in the Shell (2017)

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Togusa

• Why is Togusa, always the youngest member of Section 9 played here by an actor who looks like he's older than Takeshi Kitano's Aramaki?
  • It might be to make it more believable to have him as an authority figure. As for looking older than Kitano, well YMMV.
    • Maybe it's to show that Aramaki maintains a more youthful appearance via his own enhancements.
  • In the anime the emphasis is put on Togusa being "the rookie", an Audience Surrogate that Motoko can explain things to. Here what little we have of the character focuses on him being the Badass Normal among the other cyborgs, so he might as well be a police veteran to have him fit in with the other (military and intelligence) veterans.
  • In most other instances of the franchise, Togusa is usually the rookie in the Section 9, which does in no way suggest that he's a rookie cop. To the contrary, being a chief (and arguably, only) detective in a team of ex-military special forces types, all indications are of him being a police veteran — not to mention that he's always shown to be a married man, with children and family, which modern Japanese often don't even start to think about until they are in their thirties.
  • Plus, it's Major who's the newbie on the squad in this adaptation. No need for two neophytes in the same story.

The Raid on Kuze

• When the Major and Section 9 raid Kuze's hideout, the Major strays into a different part of the lair before attacked by Kuze's men and hung up and then she and Kuze have a conversation. Where the hell was Section 9 this entire time despite only a few moments away?
  • Right before they get separated, we see the team get caught up in a grenade's explosion, which probably caused quite a bit of confusion while they tried to figure out where she went. When they do finally turn up, it's implied that they've spent the intervening time in a running gun battle with Kuze's people.

The Garbage Truck Driver

• How was he able to kill himself so easily by seemingly improvising a death by jumping up and use his restraint as a hanging noose, despite not nearly enough height to do enough damage to his neck?
  • You tuck your legs under your body as you fall.
    • Not to mention it's connecting directly into his neural implants which are usually grafted into the spine. The force of a human body falling suddenly like that while connected which what is essentially a metal collar would more than likely cause fatal harm. Where as other instances you're not strung up like that so it'd just pull out.
    • There has been research on the length of rope needed to hang yourself, anything less than 5ft wouldn't provide enough force to kill a man according to 1892 British "Official Table of Drops". But as stated there does appear to be a wire connected to the brain and that could have caused damage if suddently ripped out.
  • The better question is why his restraints were designed in such a way to make such a death so easy. It would have been better to rig it to his torso where he couldn't choke himself out or break his neck. As it is, such a setup as shown in the film would allow a prisoner to accidentally die just from passing out, as there is no way for them to sit or lie down on the floor if they can't remain standing.

• Also, why did Kuze bother with the wife-and-daughter routine with Lee, when in this version he just takes over their bodies directly anyway? In the anime the false memories were implanted to con the garbageman into helping the Puppetmaster, but here Kuze's just screwing around with people's memories for no reason which is just as bad as Hanka.

The Major

• Why is she actually called the Major in this continuity? In the source material it's because she's the one in charge of the unit on the field, a nickname based on respect that the squad has for her. But in this film it's talked like it's her actual military rank (Batou gets called sergeant at one point), but not only does she not seem to possess any kind of authority, she's only been in the outfit for one year. That's hardly enough time to prove herself for such a lofty promotion, and the only talent she seems to have is her superhuman combat aptitude, which does not cut it for a position of authority.
  • It's possible Hanka lied about her background to Section 9, as in some versions she has a military background from which the name likely came from, to cover up she's just a teenager put into an adult's shape.
    • It really shouldn't matter, since she objectively doesn't have the skillset required to be an effective military officer, not are such skills ever expected or required of her.
  • It could be that "Major" is actually a code name rather than a literal rank: something used to maintain a degree of anonymity for a cyborg whose technology is so new that she'd probably be followed around by the paparazzi and/or monitored by Hanka's competitors if her actual name or face became well-known. Calling her "Major" makes it a little more ambiguous about whom they're talking about, as many people associated with the government have that same rank.

Hanka's Plan

• What was Mr. Cutter and Hanka Robotics actually going for by creating the Major the way they did? They could have gotten hundreds of terminally ill patients to literally pay for them in return for a chance to partake in the experimental treatment in spite of low chances of success, but they instead decided to kidnap people off the street, just because. And why did they put her in the Section 9, to begin with? Hanka has its own security force she could have served in while still remaining completely under their control, if they weren't satisfied by just keeping her as a lab rat. And finally, why was Mr. Cutter surprised or upset that she was exhibiting personal initiative, it was sort of the whole point of the project, judging from the dialogue at the start of the film.
  • They wanted test subjects who nobody would miss and who they could dispose of without their families getting in the way. But mostly because they could.
  • The terminally ill would be bad subjects for this experiment since the "mindwipe them, outfit them with a completely new identity" seems like part and parcel of the process - harder to get volunteers when the offer is "your body dies, you're no longer you, but your thinky meat gets a new purpose". And as to Cutter, I don't remember the dialogue you specifically refer to but I got the impression that he and Dr. Ouelet had vastly different desires for the project. She wanted the next step in human evolution, he wanted super soldiers.
    • Plenty of people would have accepted indentured servitude in return for a chance of a new lease on life, especially if they were military to begin with. The mindwipe was only necessary because the Major was a kidnapping victim, not a volunteer. Much of what Mr. Cutter does is self-destructively evil with no actual benefit for himself or his company, culminating to his assassination attempt of the entire Section 9, something that was entirely avoidable, had a hundred different ways to backfire and did nothing to actually benefit his cause. If Cutter wanted the Major to be loyal to himself, maybe he shouldn't have put her in an agency that both legally and factually comes ahead of his interests in her life in the first place.
    • One assumes that Hanka Robotics has specifically contracted to supply battle cyborgs to Section 9, and so send the first successful one there to fulfil their contract. As for why they'd select disposable test subjects as opposed to volunteers, with 90-odd failures before they succeed with Major that's a pretty High Turnover Rate. Even terminally-ill people may be reluctant to commit suicide For Science!
  • Presumably using kidnapped street kids would allow them to maintain the secrecy of the project from competitors, as well as sidestep whatever ethical strictures might still exist about human experimentation. Seeking out terminal patients as subjects would, of necessity, entail advertising their need for volunteers, and invite scrutiny from the wider medical community, nearly all of whom wouldn't recommend that patients subject themselves to a "treatment" that keeps killing people.

Aramaki

• Why does Aramaki exclusively speak in Japanese during the entire film? I'd believe it if his actor only knows Japanese and that's why from a production standpoint, but what's the in-universe reason, especially considering that Aramaki clearly understands all the other characters speaking English and they all understand him?
  • It's probably just Translation Convention, specially if the movie is still set in Japan.
  • In countries with multilingual populations—as this future version of Japan has due to massive multiethnic immigration—this isn't unknown. It's sometimes a lot easier to understand someone talking in a different language than to speak it, and if you have two people who understand each other's mother tongue well enough, sometimes it's just easier. There's a reason Bilingual Dialogue has a long Real Life section.
  • With the neural implants that everyone seems to have, translating between the two languages might be trivial. Aramaki speaking only his native Japanese might just be meant to indicate how much of a throwback he is compared to the more multicultural younger characters, with even Togusa speaking English to his teammates.
  • During his meeting with the African president, the hack-victim mentions that it took his very young daughter about six seconds to learn fluent French thanks to enhancement. People in this setting probably don't need to care what language they're speaking, and so long as Togusa understands both Japanese and English, Section 9 doesn't either.