Rarely am I ever interested in following internet pissing contests – especially when they revolve around identity politics and pop culture phenomena that will be forgotten almost immediately – so I paid very little attention when the brief hysteria erupted in 2014/2015 about remaking Ghostbusters with a female cast. It seemed plausible from afar (having seen the trailers and read no more than a few articles about it) that the strong backlash against the movie might have been explained by the fact that it looked like garbage, a cynical cash grab even among the dozens of other nostalgia mining projects of recent years. Maybe the outrage among people who care about such things wasn't a result of the decision to go with a female cast.
Then I thought about all of the other cynical, shitty remakes, reboots, and soulless franchise products that have been churned out over the years without any similar reactions. If these fans / critics really were upset because the movie looked like it would suck, then the reaction to Ghostbusters 2016 would not have stood out as exceptional. So, it seems impossible that a demographic of teenage boys and adult losers that line up gladly to pay to see the 25th reboot of Spider-man or some other obviously idiotic comic book-turned-movie could really be so upset about the perceived poor quality of Ghostbusters. It's pretty obvious they were just really pissed off that they made the characters women.
The movie did well at the box office despite the negative pre-release publicity, so here we go: "Replace male character with female" is going to be the next gimmick, starting with (yet another) remake.
The mediocre 1991 live-action Disney film The Rocketeer is getting remade – in itself a good sign of how the bottom of the barrel is being scraped for source material – with a female lead. As if that makes the concept of making the same movie a second time somehow fresh or interesting.
I had no intention of seeing Ghostbusters not because the cast was female, but because almost nothing in the landfill of sequels, comic / video game adaptations, reboots, remakes, and other recycled ideas interests me. If I have a hankering to see Ghostbusters I'm sure I could find a way to watch the real one. Ditto The Rocketeer. Ditto every other idea currently in the process of being turned upside down and shaken until no more money will fall out. I find changing characters from male to female irritating not because I don't want to see women playing the roles, but because I don't want to see anyone playing the same goddamn roles over and over again. And replacing the (describe original character) with (some kind of person not identical to the original) is the kind of cheap, lazy thinking ("Wow, a female Rocketeer?
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What a twist! When can you start?") that passes for creativity these days.
It's the kind of thing dumb people think is clever.
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You could remake Patton with RuPaul in the title role and you're still remaking Patton. Only so much can be done to cover the stale odor of making a movie that has already been made.
dloburns says:
I don't care about anything else you said, I would pay damn good money to see RuPaul's Patton.
Huntly says:
How about an all male remake of League of Their Own?
J. Dryden says:
@ Huntly: They already made that movie–it's called THE DIRTY DOZEN. (Full disclosure: I may be misremembering a couple of things.)
Anyway: the GHOSTBUSTERS thing–yeah, it's mostly misogyny tacked onto the fear of being old. If a remake is a viable prospect, it can only be because a new audience–one without direct exposure to the original–exists. Which makes the nerds (like me) aware that, guess what, assholes, you're fucking old. You're no longer the trend–you're the flotsam. Plus the whole "I've never kissed a girl and I hate them for that" thing. Put 'em both together, and you've got an angry, angry fellow.
Remakes suck. They just do. The only thing worth remaking is something that had a good idea at its core but didn't work–an improvement that corrects the mistakes of the original. But since the only things Hollywood will remake (Because Huge Fucking Investment Of Money) are movies that were previously hits, we end up with retreads of jokes that aren't any funnier when spoken by someone else.
Even if that someone else is, herself, a funny person. I saw the movie, and enjoyed it, because the people involved are, all of them, pretty talented when it comes to making me laugh. Great. Done. Over. It was an enjoyable and disposable experience. I'm not gonna be quoting the movie endlessly to my friends like I did the first movie because–and this circles back around to my main point: This movie was never for me in the first place. It was for an audience that I am pointedly excluded from.
And that, I think, was what pissed off the fanboys so much. Not that the movie had girls in it–though again, yeah, that–but something much worse. The studio told them: We made a GHOSTBUSTERS–and it's not for you–in fact, you're not invited.
THAT…will piss anybody off.
Still, the misogyny was hideous, and everyone who contributed to it needs to feel really bad about himself.
Talisker says:
Even you make exceptions, Ed. I've been reading long enough to remember your generally positive review of The Dark Knight. I'm pretty sure they made some other Batman films before that one.
Remakes are fine, if they're good. Insomnia (Nolan), The Thing (Carpenter), Scarface (de Palma), The Departed (Scorsese) and The Fly (Cronenberg) are all remakes, and all perfectly good movies. In some cases, they are good enough to have eclipsed the originals. Hell, they're still finding new ways to retell Hamlet after 400 years.
However, Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies, so we get a lot of crappy remakes. One of the dullest films I've seen in recent years was The Amazing Spiderman. If I'd never seen a Spiderman movie I might have thought it was OK; but I was painfully aware it had nothing to say, except things which had been said very recently and with more wit by Sam Raimi.
OTOH The Amazing Spiderman made a lot of money, much of it from kids too young to remember the Raimi films from ten years earlier. Age creeps up on you pretty fast. Yeah, it sucks, but as @J Dryden correctly observes, bitter misogyny is not a solution.
Helen says:
I think you're missing the point that it's REALLY HARD to get films made with women as the leads. Especially films like this. These women wouldn't have had such a big film if it *weren't* a remake. So it's not this vs original film, it's this vs nothing. I'm glad they made it.
Hopefully it makes enough money to prove that they can carry this sort of film and we get more originals in the future. Long game.
duquesne_pdx says:
When I first heard about the new Ghostbusters, I was really hoping for a new story based on the old generation handing off to the new one. When I saw the trailers, I said to myself, "I've already seen this. I don't need to spend $30 to see it again."
People forget the utter suck that was the second Ghostbusters. It's hard enough making a good original without having the pressure of making the sequel even better. Now add to that 30 years of nostalgia and you have an impossibly high bar to hit. So you make the safe play: recycle the original script and get some of the funniest women on the planet to sell it. It's not enough to get me to shell out for the theater, but I'll probably end up watching it on Netflix, or picking it up on bluray if my wife wants it. YMMV.
Doctor Strange is another tale entirely. I will be paying good money to see Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One.
Katydid says:
I was in high school when the first Ghostbusters came out. It was good fun, but really misogynist (no moreso than pretty much any other movie that came out around that time). Sigourney Weaver was there to give the boys boners. This remake is not catering to the boys' boners, and that may be part of the outrage.
A couple of years before the official movie came out, a group of high school girls remade the movie, line-by-line, and posted it on Youtube. There was much sturm und drang about that as well. Basically there's a bunch of immature little boy-men who can't cope with the idea of women.
Dave Dell says:
Saw the new Ghost Busters in 3d a couple of weekends ago. Funniest movie I've seen in a long time. In some ways it was a parody of GB2. You do need to know GB1 and have at least seen GB2 to get about a third of the jokes/humor. Kate McKinnon is hilarious. Sure, the movie was done before. So what. You're not watching it for its cinematic qualities or how it speaks to the human condition.
Michael Furlan says:
As many other people have said. There are no new stories. But I agree that it is nice to have the set and choreography change occasionally.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
Maaya says:
What Helen said. "So it's not this vs original film, it's this vs nothing."
To each their own opinion and perspective, but to me, having women in lead roles IS a significant change. And I'll pay good money to support that, regardless of the quality of the movie otherwise. Representation is important, ask any black person in the 1950s or gay person in the 1970s.
Greg says:
"Mediocre"? I remember the Rocketeer fondly. Although I was admittedly about ten when I saw it. Reading the comics on which it was based very recently, though, I did find those well-told and exquisitely drawn parts of the 40s nostalgia that overtook film and comics and popular culture in the 70s and 80s. When your product is nostalgia from the beginning though it requires your audience to either share that nostalgia or to be ignorant of it and therefore not put off by it. This remake seems to have been ex
Greg says:
Damn iphone! Explicitly marketed to those with GB nostalgia while actually relying on the money of those too young for nostalgia. It seems that's a tricky dance. Particularly given that the old-nerd demographic is almost entirely white and male, yet all the things they guarded so closely as their own are now fully mainstreamed.
afeman says:
What Talisker and Helen said.
I saw it this weekend and it doesn't suck on its own merits. Interestingly, it's the lead characters that are the most compelling element.
Brutus says:
to Helen: all or nothing? Plenty of female-led ensemble comedies have been made. Remember Bridesmaids (incidentally, with two of the leads from GB)? There is certainly misogyny enough to go around and fewer cinematic opportunities for women than men, but all or nothing is recklessly dismissive of some real accomplishments already in the can.
Gotta agree that sequels, spin-offs, remakes, and reboots are crowding out other kinds of storytelling, but I’m not convinced that in their absence we would be in an amazing, creative, second golden age of cinema the way we are with TV. YMMV. Like many others, I eventually see many of the fanboy flicks, but I won’t pay money to see them. (Libraries are yesterday’s Blockbuster Video if one is patient.) Some franchises work; others, not so much. Dunno why the bar is set so high. Cinema has rarely succeeded as high art. It’s too populist and intertwined with making money.
I suspect everyone has their favorite character(s) from Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, or high school, much like everyone has a body of music with which to identify because it came along at the right time in life. For me, it's the franchise that started franchising in movies: James Bond. The films are wildly uneven and sometimes dissatisfying, but I dutifully see them all. I’ve heard some people are agitating to reboot and recast with Jane Bond (female lead). I’m perfectly fine with that, actually. It won’t be the same, but then, it never is.
Matt says:
@dloburns: TBH, the really spectacular show for that one would be the full-on wingnut meltdown going on outside the movie. Half of the usual suspects wouldn't even be able to shout for the rawhide they were chewing furiously.
Skipper says:
The original Ghostbusters was pretty stupid. So, I can't see how this could be stupider — but I'll take your word for it.
Now, here's my word of wisdom for the day: If you have not see Star Trek Beyond, run — do not walk, in the other direction. Save your money. Saw it yesterday because my other half wanted to go. Even he hated it.
Paper thin plot. Extremely bad — horrendously bad — acting. Thank dog we went to the early-bird show — 9 am — and only paid $8.
Gene Rodenberry must be turning over in his grave.
negative 1 says:
@Skipper —
I'm probably about to be flamed like no other, but doesn't your review apply to pretty much any Star Trek movie? It's not like Shatner was ever going to win an emmy.
Katydid says:
@Skipper; I was a huge ST fan in the day, and I find I simply can't get into the new ST movies; they have nothing to do with ST, IMO. The humor is missing, the storytelling is (mostly) missing. I was never a Kirk fan to begin with, and the actor playing the new Kirk has all the annoying characteristics of the one. The new Scotty is hilarious, but the rest? Meh. Also not a fan of "things go BOOM" as the major plot.
Now, I do want to see the new GB; I thought the original was pretty funny, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the new cast bring to it.
Helen says:
@Brutus. Of course there are films with female leads, I said "especially films like these". To be clearer: I mean blockbuster / summer tentpole films, with big budgets and marketed at a general audience. (Budget for Ghostbusters was $144m.) Which ensemble female film with that sort of budget were you thinking of?
Bridesmaids (budget $32m) was heavily marketed to women, as are most other films with female leads. I still have to persuade men that it's worth their time to watch Bridesmaids and that yes, they will find it funny, that other men have found it funny etc etc.
Ron says:
I'm with you dude, but if they really did remake Patton with Ru Paul I'm pretty sure that a) I'd go see it, and b) it wouldn't be the same old Patton.
anotherbozo says:
Two comments:
I would stand in line and pay serious money to see RuPaul play Patton.
Damn, but you're fun to read, Ed. If you were in NYC I'd try to audit your classes.
Safety Man! says:
@ Dave
That's one thing I wonder about, there were a lot of references to the first movies. Was the movie enjoyable to those haven't seen them? Does the plot make sense if you never saw the original? For example, are teenagers left clueless about the fire station scene? Perspective is a funny thing.
I enjoyed the movie. The only joke that stuck with me so far is that an aquarium is indeed a submarine for fish.
@katydid
Let's not forget the villain was basically the personification of the trolls, bonus points. I expect there's a cut scene where he writes one of the comments they joke about on YouTube.
ronzie says:
And that's why I don't like Shakespeare!
And that's why we have to have a Clinton as the first female President!…? ;)
Now you tell me! I'm just glad the bargain matinees around here are only $6.
**************SPOILER ALERT******************
You will know that the guy who plays Scotty wrote it!
SeaTea says:
The reboot of Battlestar Galactica took a cheese-ball sci-fi show and remade it as a gritty, well-written sci-fi classic (IMO). One of the hallmarks of that reboot was making the womanizing character of Starbuck a woman. People freaked the fuck out about that, and then it was goddamned incredible. So you'd think we could learn the lesson that it's not about who's playing the character, or the franchise, but about how well the project is executed.
You can make a totally shitty original movie, and you can make a totally shitty reboot of a movie. You can do both well also.
I don't really hate the trend of doing nothing original as much as I hate the trend of re-hashing everything in a shitty, lowest-common-denominator way.
lofgren says:
Spoken like somebody who probably doesn't watch a lot of movies.
If you do watch a lot of movies, you pretty much have to get used to the fact that most movies are remakes of something or other. Lifting a title or a name isn't any less valid a way to reinterpret a story than to lift the plot or the characters.
If you don't watch a lot of movies, chances are you come across novel ideas in films a lot more often than those of us who do watch a lot of movies do. Even when I do come across something that is novel to me, a little research often reveals that it is continuing a tradition of films that I have simply somehow managed not to see. Everything is novel to somebody. I'm sure there are a lot of people seeing Ghostbusters who would never watch an '80s movie about doughy men in jumpsuits fighting ghosts with outlandish technology, but would happily watch Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon make fart jokes. Seeing a movie with a hook that interested me, which then turned me on to other movies that were more outside my primary interests, is one of the big ways my primary interests have evolved over the years.
The Rocketeer will be an interesting test, because it's worth remembering that, if they stick to the original setting, we're not just talking about a Black woman in a White man's role. We're talking about a Black woman in a White man's role in 1930's USA. THAT movie ought to be different in a few major ways, I would say. At the very least, it's highly unlikely the Nazi agent will be wooing the main character's White starlet girlfriend.
This is also why I have argued that replacing superheroes with actors of different races is fine, EXCEPT for Captain America. That is straight-up a different character and a different story. It HAS to be. This country has a real history of medical experimentation on Black people and it didn't result in Captain America. And if it had, they wouldn't have dressed him in a flag and sent him touring the country as a model of true American manhood.
(In the comics, they actually told this story when it was revealed that the Super Soldier serum had been tested on Black soldiers and prisoners, at least one of whom went on to become a masked superhero in his own right.)
It is also why I have been so disgusted by the latest wave of X-Men movies. Set in the '60s and '70s, about a group of people fighting for their rights amidst rising paranoia and social change, and there's like three Black people in two movies and none of them has anything to say about the Civil Rights movement. When Professor X showed up to recruit Darwin for the CIA, his response should have sounded a lot more like "Fuck you."
Skipper says:
@negative 1 — you're right, of course, but this one was egregiously bad. It fell apart about five minutes in. I couldn't believe how bad the acting was.
@katydid — yes, plot development these days seems to be "How many things can we make blow up? Good, now get some intern to write a story that ties the explosions together."
mrearl says:
The Magnificent Seven was a remake. I mean, it can be done.
And RuPaul as Patton, yes!
Robert says:
To borrow a line from Stoppard*, the anger of the fanboys was the rage of Caliban not seeing his face in a mirror.
There are people out there, mostly young men, who are strangely committed to the idea that any cultural phenomenon not for and about them is against them.
*To the best of my recollection.
old white person says:
Yesss. I would love to see RuPaul as Patton.
Scotius says:
I would love to see what RuPaul would wear while rejecting the Oscar for "Patton – The Next Generation."
Marc says:
Yes, there is a lot of recycling in movies. It does not follow that all recycling is useful and commendable. I really despise the idea that everything has to be reduced to politics: we can't dislike sloppy remakes because bad people dislike them for bad reasons, and good people with good intentions made them.
Zdanov is not a role model people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhdanov_Doctrine
Major Kong says:
The Rocketeer is one of my guilty pleasures. It's cheesy but fun.
John Danley says:
Not to rub dill-pickle flavored vodka in a necrotic wound, but Rob Zombie has another breathtakingly original project scheduled for release in late September. How lucky we are to be alive in an age of such cinematic splendor.
sluggo says:
I really liked both 'My Favorite Year' and it's remake "Get Him to the Greek" :)
and any of the new "Sherlocks" smoke B. Rathbone.
mothra says:
Sounds like a lot of folks are seriously interested in a RuPaul Patton. I know I am. I would love to hear RuPaul's Patton telling the Germans to "Sashay Away."
sluggo says:
@Robert
Speaking of Stoppard and remakes: Shakespeare in Love
I saw Dogg's Hamlet and Cahoot's Macbeth thirty years ago somewhere in Uptown Chicago, I highly reccomend that play if you can catch ( or anything by Tom Stoppard.)
Katydid says:
I saw The Rocketeer because I loved Jennifer Conneley in Labyrinth, and was sorely disappointed. Then again, I've pretty much hated every one of the 70 gazillion Batman and Superman remakes, and the only Spiderman I liked was the Tobey McGuire one. You never hear the fanboys whining that the latest comic book remake "ruined their childhood" the way they do about the new Ghostbusters.
lofgren says:
Well I'm not going to pretend that a significant amount of the backlash against Ghostbusters wasn't about sexism, but in fairness:
1. Yes, you most certainly do hear that.
2. Ghostbusters was worse than most of the last batch of superhero movies (although still better than Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice).
JustRuss says:
@Katydid: Man I forgot Jennifer Conneley (sp?) was even in Rocketeer, which is a good indication of how "meh" that movie was. I only remember it because the actor who played the Rocketeer was an acquaintance of my brother, and I think it was Tim Dalton's first post-Bond movie.
Maybe they can CGI it into awesomeness, but I'm not betting on it.
I don't mind remakes, if they're not just treading over the same ground as the original (most do). Ghostbusters would seem to have a lot of potential for new fun, I haven't seen the new one so can't say how it is.
Tim says:
Channing Tatum is set to play the mermaid in a gender swapped reboot of 1984's "Splash!"
Here's the article to prove I'm not just making up a funny "What if?" scenario:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/01/channing-tatum-mermaid-splash-remake
Noel B. says:
Curious Movie Trivia re remakes:
John Huston's Maltese Falcon is the exception that proves the rule – it was the third film version of that great Dashiell Hammet novel – much of the dialogue from #2 & 3 is identical . Another curious remake was The Wagons Roll At Night – a circus background flick with Bogart and Joan Leslie – it was a1941version of the 1937 Kid Galahad with Bette Davis& Edward G. Robinson – it is a boxing pic with same story arc and near identical dialogue
PhoenixRising says:
Went with a (male) physics prof friend and our teen daughters. My sisters have taken their teen daughters. We all loved it. The movie has done well, the investors are going to get repaid and that means we're going to get a movie with a female ensemble cast in which women scientists solve problems and blow shit up while wisecracking…soon. Win-win-win-win. But not for Ed.
Here's another perspective: I was 15 when Ghostbusters was released. It was disappointing; the roles of women–not just the speaking parts but woven into the plot–were simply misogynist. Those weren't just hilarious rebel scientists fighting the system to save NYC from ghosts. They were sexist, woman-fearing, undersexed male scientists.
If that is not your primary perception of the failings of an otherwise moderately funny movie, rewriting the script to make it specifically about hilarious scientists fighting the system to save NYC from ghosts *unleashed by a whiny MRA prick who has more in common with the protagonists of the original Ghostbusters than with this film's heroes* probably doesn't strike you as obviously different than the original movie.
This is not a remake with a demographic twist, in the sense of casting Superman as black; it is a revision that uses the concepts but rewrote the plot and jokes to make them inclusive and therefore funny for everyone. (Except entitled whiny MRA pricks, but they need to stop being those things and we'll stop laughing at them.)
I would suggest that you ask yourself this: why is Paul Feig, who is demographically like you, able to see the potential in breaking down a neat idea (again, "hilarious rebel nerd scientists fighting the system to save NYC from ghosts") into components that don't rely on sexist stereotypes, and rescripting the concept so it's funny…for everybody? While you are reduced to complaining about a movie you haven't seen?
That's just sad, as well as lacking insight.
Katydid says:
@Lofgren; we'll just have to agree to disagree. I've never heard any fanboy *ever* complain that yet another pointless movie based on a comic book ruined their childhoods, and I've read a number of great reviews for Ghostbuster. Don't like it? Don't see it. A huge number of people have seen it and enjoyed it.
schmitt trigger says:
Just wait for……………..drum roll:
"Gigli Reloaded"
Jacob says:
@Tim
Will Tatum's merman be man-on-top/fish-on-bottom or the (possibly better suited) reverse?
Katydid says:
@PhoenixRising; I was about the same age as you when the original movie came out, and I thought spending a couple of hours in an air-conditioned movie theater on a hot summer day wasn't bad. Looking back, I'm shocked at the movies I loved when I was that age; pretty much everything that came out in the 1970s – 1990s was misogynist, even Romancing the Stone, which was nominally about a woman author (romance, of course) trying to save her sister from drug traffickers (or whoever they were–i think that's right but I may have forgotten the fine details).
The basic premise of the movie–outsider scientists save the city–doesn't have to be gender-specific to work; "outsiders saving the masses" is a common movie trope. The actresses are each funny on their own and I'm looking forward to seeing them as an ensemble.
Ed says:
I've heard RuPaul will be in the broadway adaptation of Patton.
Nunya says:
The first Ghostbusters was the highest grossing comedy of the 1980s. The reboot isn't going to leave a mark.
I don't think I've seen more "you're a misogynist if you don't like this" trolling than over the release of this movie.
Sometimes things suck for non-bigoted reasons.
Peggy says:
Loved the new Ghostbusters. I think @PhoenixRising nailed it. @Michael Furlan also makes a good point. Then again, I teach high school English (aka Romeo and Juliet on infinite loop), so clearly I'm not too fussed with ORIGINALITY UBER ALLES.
Bitter Scribe says:
I personally wouldn't mind a remake of Brokeback Mountain with cowgirls.
mago says:
Pop culture concerns dissected as weighty matters. Really?
FMguru says:
If we're naming good remakes, how about the Coen brothers' recent adaptation of True Grit? Much better than the John Wayne version, which was itself pretty good.
FMguru says:
The Daniel Craig remake of Casino Royale was pretty excellent, too.
Noel B. says:
Ditto on True Grit which I have watched3 times butj Coen brothers blew it with their Lady Killers remake – Tom Hanks is no Alec Guiness — it's always sad to see money and talent wasted like that-
Xynzee says:
My understanding of the debate went like this:
Female YouTube movie buff says she's not going to see because it looks crap, and thinks the whole female reboot is just a gimmick, aaannd… Crickets.
Male YouTube movie buff says he's not going to see it because it looks crap, and the whole female cast is just a gimmick, and MISOGYNY!!!oneoneone!!!
Now whether one sees a film or not means one is or is not a misogynist?? WT…!?!?
Xynzee says:
@FM: "remaking" Casino Royale wasn't a hard ask. The original was out of canon, and basically a spoof on the whole franchise. Though David Niven may have made a good Bond.
Katydid says:
@Xynzee; the point you're missing is that an entire class of boy-men arose and began the piteous whining and wailing that remaking a "classic" movie such as Ghostbusters was SACRILEGE and was going to RUIN THEIR CHILDHOOD and the movie SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MADE because NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF FILM HAS A REMAKE EVER BEEN MADE THAT MIGHT POSSIBLY BE BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL—oooops ignore that, GO BACK IN TIME RUIN THE ORIGINAL FOR EVERYONE. Only with worse spelling and more death threats to women.
Khaled says:
Am I the only person who remembers Karate Kid 87 (I may be misremembering the number) that had a girl as the lead in the 90s? Hilary Swank was the female lead. So no, this isn't the first time this "gimmick" has been tried.
Seriously though, Xynzee, if you don't see this as fanboys all butt-hurt because women are playing the roles, I don't know what to tell you. I guess your connection to reality is getting weaker by the day.
SeaTea says:
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only liberal who's sick of liberals by this point. People who sit around looking for something to be outraged about and then trying to shame people into seeing things their way by using cries of "racism" and "sexism" and every other "trigger warning" word they can come up with. It's boring and makes people feel super comfortable being conservative idiots because at least they're not stick-up-the-ass PC liberals.
For the record, I would never see the new Ghostbusters movie. I would never see it if it had four dudes-du-jour playing the parts (e.g. the usual "funny" guys they put in a movie with Seth Rogan). I won't see it with the four women-du-jour it does have. It doesn't make me sexist. It makes me someone who doesn't want to cringe while watching something that was done well in the past be done poorly today.
I didn't see the remake of Psycho for the same reason. I could name a few dozen other examples. If something was done really well, why see a version of it that's going to fuck it all up? Go ahead and film that Blade Runner reboot with Ryan Reynolds or Chris Pine as Decker and Chris Hemsworth as Roy Batty. I won't see that either.
IMO, if you're going to remake something you should remake something you have a chance to improve upon in some way. Hell, I even gave the new Star Trek franchise a chance until they made it really clear that the people involved have zero idea what made Star Trek great science fiction in the first place.
Marc says:
The people defending the movie by dismissing all critics as bigots are making the opposite of the point that they're intending to make.
Turning everything into a political battleground removes the neutral ground that a lot of us cherish. The idea that disliking, say, special effects heavy remakes of lightweight movies, means that you hate women is a ludicrous escalation. The existence of fools on the internet isn't exactly news; implying that anyone who disagrees with you agrees with them antagonizes the people that you're in theory trying to persuade.
The usage of gender-based insults in the service of gender equity is just frosting on the cake, by the way.
Katydid says:
@Marc; the point–it's whooshing over your head. For example, the GB movie has gotten some really great reviews, which you conveniently ignore. Fact, the butthut fanboys screaming that a movie remake retroactively ruined their childhood and all women should go die in a fire is out there, another fact you so conveniently ignore.
Katydid says:
@Khaled; I had utterly forgotten that Karate Kid remake 117 (I may be mis-remembering the number) had a girl in it! I'm pretty sure I saw that movie on VHS rental and thought it was okay, but I remain a fan of KK2 (set in Okinawa, where I used to live) and the awesome 80s rock of Peter Cetera. I guess fanboys were less hysterical in the 1990s, because I don't recall the bitter tears flowing over how it was ROOONED by having a girl in it.
geoff says:
Surprised no one's mentioned "Mad Max: Fury Road". I was pretty resistant, not because Charlize Theron was the star (didn't know that until seeing it), but y'know, why remake something that was pretty much perfect? ("The Road Warrior", natch, itself a sequel!) So I certainly understand the impulse to reject remakes and reboots out of hand and worry what it says about Hollywood's and its audience's embrace of the SAME OLD SHIT over and over, but hell, sometimes they (remakes/ reboots) work.
@Katydid, entirely agree. It's embarrassing what assholes nerdy dudes are on the internets. Check your privilege, bros!! And don't be assholes!!
Marc says:
Yes, I know that some people attacked Ghostbusters on silly grounds, for example rejecting out of hand female leads for the characters. That doesn't obligate me to love the thing that they dislike.
In terms of merit, the reviews of Ghostbusters 2016 by professional critics were mediocre. 60% on metacritic, ignoring the hostile fan reviews.
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/ghostbusters-2016/critic-reviews
The most common complaints were that they had soulless special effects, that they didn't innovate, and that they wasted the on-screen talent.
See, for example,
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ghostbusters-2016
If anything, the critic reviews have to bend backwards to dismiss the online critics before noting that the underlying movie just isn't that good.
lofgren says:
@Katydid
The reviews I have seen of Ghostbusters have mostly been mixed. I saw it because I am a huge fan of the original and I quite like the actresses, especially the SNL alum and current castmembers. The antics were quite funny and had me laughing out loud, which is something that rarely happens in this kind of comedy for me. The talent were criminally misused, the plot was utterly dumb (yes, dumber than your average buddy comedy), and the characters were mostly obnoxious. Wiig's character in particular was underdeveloped and her arc was preposterous. The fact that her criminal negligence gets somebody killed in the middle of the movie just added to my dislike of her.
If you don't see people claiming that every new iteration of a comic book or scifi movie raped their childhoods then all I can say is you must hang out at a better class of internet joints than I do because those people are pretty much the worst.
Gabe says:
I am appalled not one of you fellow intelligent individuals has mentioned the Bechtel Test, which this movie passed with flying colors. And incidentally is the first action-explody movie to do so that I know of. Helen and PhoenixRising are on point. It's not just different because it's women in the lead, it's different because there are women in the lead, a script meant to be entertaining to all genders, lots of explosions, and character identities and body types that do not cater only to 13 year old boys. I was disappointed it was a remake and not a next gen follow up, mostly because I think the cast could have taken it in some fantastic new directions but other than that I thought it was fantastic.
Also, I think some of the ire from the whiney man baby set is not just that they are female leads but they are (intentionally, I think) not sexy in a way that comic books and action movies have groomed them to think is acceptable of female heroes. They are getting the bad guys while essentially wearing boxy dirty mechanics uniforms and sports bras – which is shorthand for "this isn't just for you, kiddo" and therefore offensive.
lofgren says:
I was also disappointed that it wasn't a follow up, because I liked the sound of the original proposal that the Ghostbusters have gone national and the main characters were just a hapless local franchise called up to the "big leagues" in NYC after the A team vanished. Of course, that would make it a remake of A League of Their Own and about 500 other movies with the same plot.
Kaleberg says:
I saw both the old and the new Ghostbusters and thought they were both pretty funny. Having seen Spy, I'm now turning into a Melissa McCarthy fan. Personally, I like remakes. It's always interesting to see what someone new can do with old material. Some of my favorite movies are remakes. Star Wars was almost a scene by scene remake of Hidden Fortress. Forbidden Planet was just The Tempest set in space. OK, I like science fiction movies with good special effects.
Don't complain about technology either, half of all talkies were remakes of silents. Most people don't know this because no one watches silents anymore. They just aren't as good as talkies, mainly because of some technical razzle dazzle that lets you hear what people are saying.
People don't bitch about remakes of plays. They call them revivals, but they bring in a new director who changes the setting and hire actors who have new ways of thinking about the characters. It's often quite revealing. I saw A Doll's House with a Nora who towered over everyone, playing against physical type. I saw a version of Midsummer Night's Dream with children as the fairies. They were creepy.
Sometimes sequels outdo the original. Look at the New Testament: The Bible II. the main problem with remakes is that they can be bad movies, just like original movies can be bad movies. I think the producer Arthur Freed once said, "You don't have to be different to be good. To be good is different enough."
Nunya says:
@SeaTea
"I'm pretty sure I'm not the only liberal who's sick of liberals by this point."
You hit the nail on the head. Half of the people I've known for 20+ years have convinced themselves that absolutely everything is racist, sexist or transphobic and that every white male is responsible for it all.
Wake me up when the zealots all wear themselves out or have brain aneurysms.
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