What bothered me...

...was not the casting of Scar Jo that everyone seems so upset about. I think she was fine. What did bother me was the lack of a compelling villain. This has become a pet peeve of mine, maybe because I watch so many of these types of movies and video games. I'm so bored of the cliche evil-businessman-who-just-wants-money villain who's out to kill the rowdy young rebels who live in the slums. Yes, to a certain degree, that's cyberpunk.

However, I've always felt like a more interesting villain is one who isn't one-dimensionally evil and who part of you might sympathize with. Dr. Tyrell in Blade Runner is a good example of this, unlike Cutter. Tyrell's replicants, arguably, are of great benefit to mankind, by carrying out labor ordinary humans could not, although at a difficult moral cost, which is what made the conflict in that story interesting.

Unless I miss something, Cutter just kidnaps orphaned kids and kills them for no reason other than that he's a mean businessman. What I thought they should have run with is that Cutter does rescue people on the verge of death and give them a new life with cybernetics, but at the cost of their memories and their freedom (shout out to Deus Ex: Human Revolution!). Wouldn't that have been a more nuanced and interesting motivation?