I also found myself missing the interludes from the animated film. The scenes with the canals, the jet passing overhead between the buildings. They all had a beauty to them and they let you reflect on what happened in the previous scene. This film proceeded too quickly from one scene to another, likely because the studio was afraid people would get bored if something wasn't happening every single moment.
> The Japanese themselves absolutely loved Scarlett Johansson in the role
That's discussed at 10:40 in [1]. Briefly, Japanese films don't really have a whitewashing problem, so it's easy for the people in Japan to accept this film. In Japan the casting isn't reinforcing representation and visibility problems (asian erasure). Those problems do exist in Hollywood.
I actually quite liked the movie, once you get over the fact that you are comparing it to the original anime, and the new elements it brought in, despite it being a bit too much dumbed down for hollywood audience.
I also never understood the SJW critics of white washing it, and it was in fact mostly white hollywood people that got offended. The Japanese themselves absolutely loved Scarlett Johansson in the role, and funnily they were more annoyed with Takeshi Kitano and why he spoke Japanese as the only one (he apparently even has a rep of being hard to hear what he says, so they joked that they missed subtitles on the Japanese part).
There are some valid criticisms, such as Kusanagi (as just Major, as they call her) being a too obvious emotionally considering she's not in a human body anymore, and it differed quite a bit from the original content. Some other things too.