Ghostbusters

[charliepanayi]

And to the person saying one character is like a walking stereotype, maybe we should wait to see more than thirty seconds of footage to judge that?

The things that someone consciously chose to show of the character are that she's uneducated and she screams about religious-ish stuff, maybe if they didn't want people to come to those conclusions they should have used different footage.

Pretty sure that second bit is just a lame Exorcist joke and says little about the character. And it's a bit patronising to assume she's uneducated simply as she isn't a scientist (I saw one person pointing out MTA employees earn more than a lot of scientists!).

[Freya]

I think I remember reading she's an architectural historian originally in the first script or something.

[Shorty]

So late to the party.

Finally saw the new Ghostbusters trailer. It looks fine. It looks fine, guys. It doesn't look any better or worse than any other rebootish sequel thing that we've ever seen. I 100% believe that any/all criticisms that are being directed at it are purely based on the fact that it has a lady crew, because if this was an all-male cast with the EXACT same trailer, it would be getting fast-tracked around the internet as a genius/hilarious remake and would certainly not be receiving all of the wet blanket criticism it's getting right now.

We can't expect the high-caliber level of Fury Road in all of the reboots or sequels that come up. We got lucky with that one. Anyone who was expecting this Ghostbusters to be better than the original fooled themselves into disappointment. It looks fine and I will probably see it because 1) it's filled with a cast full of hilarious women and 2) paranormal stuff is fun. It's getting shredded because people have the highest expectations for females participating in any art form and if we are less than stellar, we get nodded off as trout; whereas men can be a part of a mediocre performance and get recognized as being hilarious.

If Andy Samberg, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte and Jay Pharaoh were in this cast and said the exact same lines, word for word, and had the exact same shots, shot for shot, this film would be celebrated as smurf and the internet would be running to see it; there would be zero mention of "it just doesn't have that ORIGINAL GHOSTBUSTERS MAGIC [jerkoff motion]".

It's disappointing to see the negative reactions to this film in 2016. Go see it and contribute to the box office so we can have more of a chance of diverse films in the future.

this post has been brought to you by copying it from my facebook because I didn't want to type up something different just to post here

[Psychotic]

Could be. Or I dunno, maybe people have different senses of humour and find different things funny.

[Shorty]

I'd be inclined to believe that if this wasn't already considered a "controversial film" 1) before it's even been released and 2) when the subject matter is not controversial.

[Psychotic]

I'd accept your view if you said some or even most criticisms were driven by sexism. But you specifically used the phrase any and all, and not only do I think you are wrong, I also think such a view - that it is impossible to offer criticism to women without a sexist agenda - does more harm to women than good.

[Shorty]

I believe that most of the criticism of this film is driven by sexism.

[Psychotic]

In that case, yeah, pretty much and it's a shame that there are enough knuckle dragging morons out there who are muddying the waters. I still think what we've seen of the script is unfunny, uninspired and cringeworthy in many places and I still think I would have that view if it was Bill Murray himself saying the lines. Evidently several people in this thread do find it funny and that's great and I'm jealous because I wish I could like it too.

Enjoy your movie, just don't tell me why I don't like it!

[Freya]

You don't like it cause you're a poo-poo head.

There are a lot of people, I think, just disliking it cause it's a reboot.
There are a lot of people, I think, just disliking it cause it's a lady reboot.
There are a lot of people, I think, just disliking it because they are contrary.

I think it's a big culmination of the three. And some just don't like the humor. But there's a lot of negativity that it doesn't deserve yet.

[Fynn]

I still think it's way too early to determine how funny or unfunny the movie will be based on a single trailer. There have been good trailers to terrible movies in the past, and there have been terrible trailers for good movies as well. I think the trailer was okay, nothing super awesome, but nothing too terrible. I'm just super psyched to see these ladies in action because they're all super funny

[Psychotic]

I know it's just a trailer, but then likewise you have to consider what the point of a trailer is. It's to give you a little idea of what the movie is going to be like to see whether it is relevant to your interests. Then you can decide whether or not you want to spend money to go see it. All I'm doing is using the trailer as it is meant to be used!

[Shorty]

I think that calling it cringe-worthy and unfunny is even a stretch. How much of the script have we seen, really? A minute and a half of talk time? Is that enough to judge how funny a movie is or is not? I think that if you were in a theater for a preview and saw Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd pull that scene where Melissa McCarthy catches Kate McKinnon behind the shelf and she goes, "Is it the hat? Is the hat too much?" that it would be hilarious and that fans would love it. If you really and truly don't think that's funny, that's your prerogative and of course you are entitled for it, but that was an objectively funny scene. And if someone chooses to not like it because it doesn't have their favorite dudes saying the lines, well, that is problematic.

I do firmly believe that this film would be embraced open-armed if there were funny men in the roles in place of the funny women who are currently cast. I say that because we've seen mediocre garbage like Horrible Bosses or Dinner for Schmucks that is received as being fairly funny, but if women were cast in place of those roles, I believe that they would receive much lower ratings. Instead they are tolerated and even celebrated as being funny because of the men who star in them, even though the scripts and jokes are not that good, whereas films that star funny women like this are shredded apart if they don't have 10/10 five-star jokes across the board.

The fact is that the actresses, the director, the entire crew took a gamble on this film and making these changes, and I think that it's being criticized much worse than it needs to be. It doesn't look atrocious or cringe-worthy to me. It doesn't look like the best movie of 2016, but does look fine.

I understand that a lot of this resistance is riding on childhood expectations being messed with, but within the realm of encouraging an open mind, if you like the actresses and think seeing a squad of funny ladies hunt down ghosts to save New York sounds like a good time, then I would encourage you to see it. If you compare it to the good time Murray and Akroyd had decades in the past, then you'll have a bad time of it.

[Pheesh]

Well, I didn't laugh at the trailer, so I guess that makes it a pretty bad trailer for my tastes. Whether the trailer is a reflection on the movie as a whole I don't know, but there was a chance I was going to see this in the cinema and now I'm pretty sure I will wait for it to be released for home viewing*.

*subject to change if they manage to release a trailer that I actually enjoy.

[Night Fury]

I dunno man, the trailer isn't always gonna be how the film is.

That Godzilla trailer was smurfing awesome but the film was an absolute crock of trout.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Wait, do you mean the 1982 film The Thing with Kurt Russell (itself a sort of remake of 1950s film The Thing From Another World), or the terrible remake/prequel they made a few years back?

I mean the "prequel". It's basically the same plot.

Clearly you didn't like it. I'm not saying it's the same as the '82 cult-classic, but I feel it's a lot better than the critics were willing to admit.

User reviews seem to split between "it's nothing like the '82 film!" or "it's actually a good, solid prequel and I liked it a lot."

I'm in the second group.