Ghostbusters!

Looks like a generic comedy movie using a well-known heading to boost sales. I usually reserve full judgement until after I've seen a movie but I think I'll pass on this one. Never gave much of a fuck for Ghostbusters anyways, and that trailer certainly didn't help.
 
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I'll refrain from making a long reply mostly because I hopped up on pain meds for my hand right now and I doubt I'd make it the the end without ranting about eggs or some shit, but I will try to make a point here.


This movie looks like shit, it really does. In that way you can just tell, your instincts as a regular citizen of the internet tell you it'll be awful even though you know the sheep will still elevate it to record sales because of name recognition. I could be wrong and hope I am, I remember seeing trailers for The Lego Movie and thinking it was going to be a stinking commercial turd only to be blown away. So here's to being wrong...maybe.

Now here's where we get the tricky part, where I walk the growing battle lines in our modern pop culture trying not to fall into one of the trenches. Holywood's abuse of female talent is real, just as real as sexism is in many aspects of life, but it's not a terminal issue, at least not one that can be treated suddenly. So many trends are picking up now, portraying female characters outside of the "defenseless damsel in distress," and "stone cold badass chick." Every step of the way you have idiots who look at these and somehow think that studios are "pandering" to "SJW's" and on the opposite end you have people who never think it's enough. I'm not saying that pandering doesn't happen, but I am saying that it's not the illness to society many seem to think it is. So to get with the point here, I think that the involvement of females in iconic roles should be fluid, natural, not by genderbending and copy-cating the same roles. If we had four females with their own unique personalities that didn't feel like they came out of a can I'd be very excited, instead this whole cast seems really forced. I am lead to believe that the producers sincerely thought less that they could make a statement and instead wanted to gain money purely off the novelty of switching genders, which is almost as sexist as not casting any females.

I'm also going to point a finger to the female actors here, because I do try watching female comedies and find them pretty repulsive. Why? because they always seem to hit the same tired notes. All of the main characters there are worn-down tropes that you see in every chick-flick, making me think this movie will be just another piece of scrap like them with a shiny Ghostbusters tin. I was hoping for something original, natural, and awesome to come out of a female cast Ghostbusters and now it just seems lazy and destined for the bargain bin.
 
OH! And one more thing. We as a culture need to quit complaining about "there not being any original ideas any more!," or "They need to stop re-booting things!" Look, Human culture has been copying ideas from itself for millennia, and it's still produced brilliant fiction. You like Star Wars? That's a sci-fied retelling of the classic Hero's Journey with blatant ideas stolen from Sci-Fi serials and old Samurai films. Does this pose look familiar? If we look hard enough we can trace almost all of our modern stories back to elements from Renaissance works, which all lead back to Greek stories, which were inspired and stolen from earlier Mesopotamian cultures. Seriously! This shit is always happening, just sit down and enjoy the good ones, hate the bad ones, but understand that we recycle old ideas for good reasons, and sometimes we make something unique out of them while other times we end up with shit.
 
Someone re-cut the trailer to make it look soooo much better.


 
The trailer does not inspire me with confidence. Part of it is that I've always had a soft spot for Winston Zeddemore. Ernie Hudson played the character as quiet, practical, down-to-earth, yet with a hidden spiritual side. Winston is sort of the Straight Man to the other three. He's not a university professor, he's just a good guy getting a paycheck. So to see that apparently replaced with a sassy, crazy black lady really bothers me.

I'm also sort of bothered by the action movie notes they seem to go for. Locking and loading, twirling pistols, punching ghosts... it feels wrong. The original Ghostbusters was about three white-collar university professors starting a blue-collar job and ending up being the only people qualified to stop Gozer. They aren't action heroes. So shooting for those notes without any hint at immediate subversion like happened in Ghostbusters rubs me the wrong way.

That said though I think I would probably really enjoy it if they flipped Dana Barret into Danny Barret but just hit all the beats from Ghostbusters without trying to call attention to them. If they tried to be self aware and draw attention to it they would ruin the joke, but it would be funny if it worked.
 
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I'm not a fan of remakes. But I have faith that humanity hasn't devolved to simple "This is a girl/boy cast, so only girl/boys can enjoy it."


Even if the main characters aren't conventionally attractive.


So radical. Someone stop me.
 
Someone re-cut the trailer to make it look soooo much better.


This is way better. I agree.......see if THIS was the official trailer I'd be real tempted to see it.
 
I'll refrain from making a long reply mostly because I hopped up on pain meds for my hand right now and I doubt I'd make it the the end without ranting about eggs or some shit, but I will try to make a point here.


This movie looks like shit, it really does. In that way you can just tell, your instincts as a regular citizen of the internet tell you it'll be awful even though you know the sheep will still elevate it to record sales because of name recognition. I could be wrong and hope I am, I remember seeing trailers for The Lego Movie and thinking it was going to be a stinking commercial turd only to be blown away. So here's to being wrong...maybe.

Now here's where we get the tricky part, where I walk the growing battle lines in our modern pop culture trying not to fall into one of the trenches. Holywood's abuse of female talent is real, just as real as sexism is in many aspects of life, but it's not a terminal issue, at least not one that can be treated suddenly. So many trends are picking up now, portraying female characters outside of the "defenseless damsel in distress," and "stone cold badass chick." Every step of the way you have idiots who look at these and somehow think that studios are "pandering" to "SJW's" and on the opposite end you have people who never think it's enough. I'm not saying that pandering doesn't happen, but I am saying that it's not the illness to society many seem to think it is. So to get with the point here, I think that the involvement of females in iconic roles should be fluid, natural, not by genderbending and copy-cating the same roles. If we had four females with their own unique personalities that didn't feel like they came out of a can I'd be very excited, instead this whole cast seems really forced. I am lead to believe that the producers sincerely thought less that they could make a statement and instead wanted to gain money purely off the novelty of switching genders, which is almost as sexist as not casting any females.

I still stand by the fact that I believe it is stunt casting because they have not used this opportunity to do anything new with the creativity because, apart from their names, they are female carbon copies of the male cast of the first two films. It's obvious as to whom the Egon, Ray, Winston, and Peter are because they have even gone so far to make the cast look like their male counterparts. When you think of it like that, shouldn't the feminists be pissed off that the women are not their own characters?
 
I think people are looking waay too far into the all female casting thing. Does it really matter if the film turns out to be good? I feel like people are getting really wound up over nothing. After all, a new movie doesn't diminish the original; case in point, original Robocop is still amazing and nobody on Earth has seen the remake.

Pander this, feminists that, who gives a shit? Internet outrage over the tiniest little things doesn't have to be a thing in your life. Don't like something, don't pay to see it, don't click on links related to it. Arguing on a message board won't change anyone's opinions, let alone the people making the movie. There's literally millions of more enjoyable things you could be doing with your time, like binge watching Street Sharks or finding out how to build medieval siege weaponry out of sex toys.

The Internet can be a wonderful thing if you avoid the angsty people.
 
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I've been super excited from day one. Girl power! But the trailer looks a bit too silly, I think. Trailers usually suck though, so I'm hoping this is another one of those cases.
 
Street Sharks

I can still hear the pixelation.

Anyway... Why are we talking about a movie at all? Because it's a way to kill time, one way or another. This still looks a lot like "gender quota: the movie" to me. Does that make it inherently bad because I don't like the trailer? No. I don't think anybody's proposing legislating concrete taste. It's okay to talk about parts of a movie that the movie itself makes as a central point. The fact that it's an all female ghostbuster's squad is a point the film itself is drawing extraordinary attention to: They went out of their way to do it.

"Pander this, feminists that, who gives a shit?" People who watched the first one that feel as though the sequel is no longer being made for them.

It's okay to talk about the fact that this appears to be pandering to an audience that differs from the original. It's okay to voice an opinion about it. Hell, it's even okay to say "I don't want to watch it because it feels like a cheap attempt at gender equality." It's okay to talk about the casting choices, even for the simple fact that they're women instead of men--it's different, and the film draws attention to it. One of the first jokes you hear in the trailer is a joke about "goo getting into every crack." It's not exactly subtle. :ferret:

I mean, ultimately, why do people talk about any movie? Movies are giant wastes of time and money. They don't make anything. They rarely service educational needs. They cost millions of dollars that could be spent on medicine, or infrastructure, or so many other things. Even as a form of entertainment, there are more monetarily efficient forms of it. (Like pretty much every other form of media, really.)

We talk about movies because we're emotionally invested in them for whatever reason. So long as people do it in a civil way (ex: not saying "FUCK YOU PICARD IS BEST CAPTAIN I HOPE YOU GET TRIBBLES SHOVED UP YOUR ASS FOR DISAGREEING WITH ME!") what does it matter to you if you don't care? If it matters to you that it's an all female cast, talk about it. If it doesn't, talk about something else about the movie. :ferret:
 
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I'll admit, I chuckled at the "The Power of Pain compels you!" bit (But admittedly "The Power of _______" jokes are a weak spot of mine in general).

The rest of the trailer though?
Everyone else already said what I was thinking, it seems like people just forced four women into it, and fell back on 'safe' tropes and gags as a way to bring in quick cash while bringing in extra cash/views from the "We want more female characters!" crowd

That being said though, I was never that into Ghostbusters as a kid. I saw it, it was funny but I didn't see it as a Marvel or anything either.
 
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