Ghostbusters (2016)

**Shorty** · July 11, 2016

Ashley said:
So reviews are coming in and it's doing well: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghostbusters_2016/

Don't worry though, reddit is out to prove its a conspiracy.

[tweet]752306791401132032[/tweet]

One person makes a thread with no votes and no comments and "reddit is out to prove" something? I'm quite an avid redditor and a fan of the site in general, I'd prefer not to be lumped in with random morons that happen to share the space.

Edit: Vast majority of redditors telling OP he's a moron.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Shorty

**Ashley** · July 11, 2016

Shorty said:
One person makes a thread with no votes and no comments and "reddit is out to prove" something? I'm quite an avid redditor and a fan of the site in general, I'd prefer not to be lumped in with random morons that happen to share the space.

Edit: Vast majority of redditors telling OP he's a moron.

You have the power to edit my post to redditor

Yeah not all people on that site obviously.

**Ashley** · July 11, 2016

Shorty said:
One person makes a thread with no votes and no comments and "reddit is out to prove" something? I'm quite an avid redditor and a fan of the site in general, I'd prefer not to be lumped in with random morons that happen to share the space.

Edit: Vast majority of redditors telling OP he's a moron.

You have the power to edit my post to redditor

Yeah not all people on that site obviously.

Magnus · July 11, 2016

#NotAllRedditors

Magnus · July 11, 2016

#NotAllRedditors

killthenet · July 11, 2016

From the trailers the main problem with the film to me seems to be that its just the same as all modern comedy films, which is more a problem of being written and directed by Paul Feig than the fact that it stars women. As someone else pointed out on another forum I visit, the original 'Ghostbusters' was actually a pretty dry comedy, there wasn't very much 'broad' comedy in it, it didn't seem like it was really trying too hard. Modern comedy films seem to rely far too much on a mixture of gross out humour and asinine dialogue that makes every character sound like sex obsessed teenage boys. It's an unfortunate effect of the success of Judd Apatow and his ilk, every major comedy film nowadays has the same tone, there is very little variety when it comes to R-rated comedy nowadays. The fact that Feig is a frequent Apatow collaborator is what gives me such little faith in this, I'm sure it will be an average, watchable and at times enjoyable film but there just doesn't seem anything special about it.

People shouldn't be aggravated by it because it's 'ruining the legacy of Ghostbusters' or because it stars women, they should be annoyed by the fact that it's just going to be the same film with the same characters as 'Spy', 'This Is 40', 'The Heat', 'Identity Thief', 'The Watch', 'The Interview', 'The Hangover' etc, etc just in a more sci-fi/fantasy setting. The lack of variety in big budget comedies these days is infuriating.

killthenet · July 11, 2016

From the trailers the main problem with the film to me seems to be that its just the same as all modern comedy films, which is more a problem of being written and directed by Paul Feig than the fact that it stars women. As someone else pointed out on another forum I visit, the original 'Ghostbusters' was actually a pretty dry comedy, there wasn't very much 'broad' comedy in it, it didn't seem like it was really trying too hard. Modern comedy films seem to rely far too much on a mixture of gross out humour and asinine dialogue that makes every character sound like sex obsessed teenage boys. It's an unfortunate effect of the success of Judd Apatow and his ilk, every major comedy film nowadays has the same tone, there is very little variety when it comes to R-rated comedy nowadays. The fact that Feig is a frequent Apatow collaborator is what gives me such little faith in this, I'm sure it will be an average, watchable and at times enjoyable film but there just doesn't seem anything special about it.

People shouldn't be aggravated by it because it's 'ruining the legacy of Ghostbusters' or because it stars women, they should be annoyed by the fact that it's just going to be the same film with the same characters as 'Spy', 'This Is 40', 'The Heat', 'Identity Thief', 'The Watch', 'The Interview', 'The Hangover' etc, etc just in a more sci-fi/fantasy setting. The lack of variety in big budget comedies these days is infuriating.

Beast · July 11, 2016

Ashley said:
IDK, I think it does need to be a political statement because people were so insistent it was ruining their childhood because it featured women. Sometimes you do need to make a statement, particularly in light of absurdity.

This is brilliant (the user review section):

But then what about the handful of people who would've moaned about Rey being the lead in Star Wars? It just wasn't a big deal to make purely because that wasn't the big deal in the first place. Fair enough if it was but even females said the same thing, that it looked too slapstick, ridiculous and unnecessary and I think the cast and crew hitting out on men didn't help at all.

I think it's good that it's got positive reviews if the film is actually good but for me, as someone who was following this for ages, the fact that they reacted the way they have on numerous talk shows was appalling.

But like Flink said, they're all talented (even Leslie Jones now that I've actually seen her as herself) but it was just crap they made this into a sexism thing.

I'll wait for bluray release (since I have the others on it)

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Beast · July 11, 2016

Ashley said:
IDK, I think it does need to be a political statement because people were so insistent it was ruining their childhood because it featured women. Sometimes you do need to make a statement, particularly in light of absurdity.

This is brilliant (the user review section):

But then what about the handful of people who would've moaned about Rey being the lead in Star Wars? It just wasn't a big deal to make purely because that wasn't the big deal in the first place. Fair enough if it was but even females said the same thing, that it looked too slapstick, ridiculous and unnecessary and I think the cast and crew hitting out on men didn't help at all.

I think it's good that it's got positive reviews if the film is actually good but for me, as someone who was following this for ages, the fact that they reacted the way they have on numerous talk shows was appalling.

But like Flink said, they're all talented (even Leslie Jones now that I've actually seen her as herself) but it was just crap they made this into a sexism thing.

I'll wait for bluray release (since I have the others on it)

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

**Ashley** · July 11, 2016

But there certainly was an element that was (is) sexist, so why not call it out? Not all people that were saying it looks shit were being sexist, but there is certainly a very vocal group that were criticising it for being a female-led cast.

In regard's to Flink's statement about "why not just make a new film?" New IP in Hollywood is a tough sell in the first place, yet alone female-led new IPs. In spite of the success of Hunger Games (obviously not an original IP), Snow White & the Huntsmen (again, not original but it did do surprisingly well) and Bridesmaids studios still bank on males. They still believe males won't see a film with female leads. So if we have a comedy that is saying "fuck that, we're going to make a film we want to make and I don't fucking care if you like it" then all the more to them. The fact they have a well known (and successful) male director probably helped offset 'the female problem' (as well as the fact it was an existing IP).

It will be interesting to see how the new Ocean's Eleven plays out.

And yeah, it looks like a mediocre modern comedy and it's fine to criticise it for that, but that's not what a vocal minority were complaining about and they deserve to be called out for their bullshit.

And I never got this "ruining my childhood" thing. How? How does this eradicate your childhood? It's not like the original film is being wiped from existence. If anything it might being new audiences to it and resurge it. Is your identity that fragile? And also, fuck you because this:

[tweet]752339263455395840[/tweet]

**Ashley** · July 11, 2016

But there certainly was an element that was (is) sexist, so why not call it out? Not all people that were saying it looks shit were being sexist, but there is certainly a very vocal group that were criticising it for being a female-led cast.

In regard's to Flink's statement about "why not just make a new film?" New IP in Hollywood is a tough sell in the first place, yet alone female-led new IPs. In spite of the success of Hunger Games (obviously not an original IP), Snow White & the Huntsmen (again, not original but it did do surprisingly well) and Bridesmaids studios still bank on males. They still believe males won't see a film with female leads. So if we have a comedy that is saying "fuck that, we're going to make a film we want to make and I don't fucking care if you like it" then all the more to them. The fact they have a well known (and successful) male director probably helped offset 'the female problem' (as well as the fact it was an existing IP).

It will be interesting to see how the new Ocean's Eleven plays out.

And yeah, it looks like a mediocre modern comedy and it's fine to criticise it for that, but that's not what a vocal minority were complaining about and they deserve to be called out for their bullshit.

And I never got this "ruining my childhood" thing. How? How does this eradicate your childhood? It's not like the original film is being wiped from existence. If anything it might being new audiences to it and resurge it. Is your identity that fragile? And also, fuck you because this:

[tweet]752339263455395840[/tweet]

Helmsly · July 11, 2016

Saw the film this morning and it seemed like its a bit of a mess to me. It was really disjointed in places. I liked Kristen wiig's character and I felt like had she been surrounded by three better written characters, the film would have been a lot better, character wise. It seemed to me that the other three Ghostbusters were very two-dimensional. There was nothing really to them.

Reveal hidden contents

Leslie jones wasn't quite the stereotype the trailers led me to believe, which was good, but there wasn't much to her character overall other then she knew about the city. She was presented as someone that knows details and history about random buildings, such as the history of the spot their working from is located. She was still loud and hysterical in a lot of her scenes which I just didn't think was funny.

Mccarthy's character just seemed to bicker a lot with Wigg and complain about won ton soup every time she ordered Chinese food.

Kate McKinnon doesn't say much for most of the film, just random stuff in scenes, because her character is supposed to be an edgy, slightly "out there" science nerd or something. Her character has an unnecessary "bad ass" scene during the end, where she's destroying ghosts with her proton pistols in slow motion.

And this is what I think the problem was for me. These New Ghostbusters did not have any real vulnerabilities outside of Wigg's character. It meant that in all situations, the ghostbusters reactions are the same: Loud hysteria from Leslie Jones, sneering from Kate McKinnon and then little cheap one liners between Wigg and Mccarthy.

When you have characters like that, i couldn't really care about what they do because there can't be a funny payoff for anything that happens to them.

Characters were only half the problem with the film too. I felt like there must of been disagreement going on between the Director and Sony, because its very disjointed.

For example, They catch ghosts but the Mayor doesn't want them to do it anymore. This is Because apparently they have been aware for quite some time that ghosts exist, but don't want the the mass public to know about it. He says the government is already taking care of it and he flat out tells them to stop busting ghosts.

...but then there is a scene directly after it where the Ghostbusters are talking to each other back at their Chinese restaurant and one of them says "well he says we can continue busting ghosts, so I guess its business as usual" .

From there, it seems the Mayor will publicly dismiss everything the Ghostbuster's do as publicity stunts and brand them as frauds while thanking them in secret for their work.

I can't imagine that was originally written that way... the second scene felt like something added in to the movie at a later date. I could be wrong and maybe I missed something, but that is how it seemed to me.

Another example is the weird absence of the dance scene during the finale, which they start by making the possessed Chris Hemsworth character, take control of the army and NYPD in times square and make them all take a John Travolta Saturday Night Fever pose. He keeps them frozen like that for the rest of the movie.

But then, the entire dance number, which they filmed, is shown in its entirety during the end credits.

I was disappointed with it overall. It probably could have been decent but it looks like something went wrong along the way. On the plus side, today I finally got to find out what these taste like:

Been waiting since the mid 80's to try them.

Ashley said:
And I never got this "ruining my childhood" thing.
[tweet]752339263455395840[/tweet]

Yeah, coming from someone that has had an unhealthy obsession with the Ghostbusters films and cartoons since the age of 6 or something, this is also something I never understood. That picture is awesome.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Helmsly

Helmsly · July 11, 2016