I don't really see it myself, but it certainly would have been an interesting challenge for both Scarlett and the make-up and costuming people to try and pull this off.
Well there are people that have complained about disabled actors not being used in disabled roles, maybe not in a movie like Skyscraper due to the stunt component as someone else mentioned, but for general disabled characters, but you don't hear a lot about it as it's not a focused activist group like with the LGBT community or race and womens groups.
Here's an add on to that, would the people that were angry going to be as angry had they cast an actor to play this part? I mean technically a person transitioning wants to be seen as that gender right? So then a man playing the person in this film would technically be correct from their POV.
I mean it's crazy to demand that any trans character only be played by someone that is trans IMO, it's like saying only straight actors can play straight characters and only gay actors can play gay characters, and I know transgender is about gender identity as opposed to sexuality, but it is also not the same as the race argument IMO, a white person cannot play a black person in a biopic, but the idea of someone transitioning is that they are becoming a man or woman therfore any man or woman should be elligable for that role, not only a man or woman that used to be a woman or man.
