Re: Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Regardless, the manga publishers gave their okay on this (and even said they didn't have a Japanese actress in mind for the Major anyway) and whether you believe them or not is up to you. To me, this particular film isn't a race issue but a star one.
And yet the evidence mounts up as a race issue, intentional or not. It is institutionalized and internalized in Hollywood. It's not a conscious thing they do, but something they have learned to do over almost 100 years because of how movies first started out.
https://www.facebook.com/Vox/videos/510428462478094/
The examples in that comment you linked are weak. People most certainly did voice their complaints over AoT's Japanese adaption, but there still remains a key difference between Japan and the United States: Japan is majority Japanese whereas the United States is ethnically diverse. In Japan it isn't exactly easy to find non-Japanese actors who speak Japanese fluently, and even when they do those actors tend to actually be foreigners they hired from government agencies across Japan who have taken in expats. These are usually people who have never acted a day in their lives but are hired because they are convenient and all they really have.
In the United States, there are plenty of Asian actors out there that only remain unknown for the fact that Hollywood doesn't hire them, and there is no excuse not to hire them.
The argument that ScarJo was hired to fill seats falls flat in my opinion because once upon a time ScarJo was not a known actress. Somebody had to give her a chance to play in a film for her to become famous. ScarJo doesn't even sell internationally. Besides the Marvel films, films she has been in did not have very strong international box-office numbers.
And think of all of the films that have 1) had Asian actors and 2) did not have box office names but became well known. Pacific Rim comes to mind instantly as one such film that did well despite not having the most famous actors out there to sell the film. Idris Elba certainly wasn't a seat filler at that time in his career, but after the film he definitely started growing in popularity.
"nothing about the plot is inherently japanese"
Ghost in the Shell was born of the era when Japan was the leading country for technology, and it plays into the idea of a futuristic Japan where cybercrime is one of the country's worst issues.
"Sure it took place in Japan, but so?"
So if I decided to adapt The Great Gatsby, but based it in 1920's India, that's cool? I mean, sure it took place in America, but so? That "dream" thing in the plot is not really inherently American.
"If you removed the name Mokogo Kusanagi, and called her by the name most people who watch the anime call her (Major) no one would know any better."
By changing her name, that essentially is erasing a part of who she is. She isn't just "the Major" but she IS Motoko Kusanagi. That is her name. That is her identity. She is a Japanese woman who has a cybernetic body. She grew up in Japan, lived in Japan, was Japanese in all ways except for the fact that her body was not organic.