What do you have against cesspools? They serve a useful purprose.
Finally had a chance to see it. I loved it. I’ll probably have more to nitpick when I have a chance to see it again, but the only thing that bugged me was that I thought Leslie Jones’ character was underutilized. Also, whenever something scary was supposed to be happening, the jump in volume was really annoying in the theater where we were. My wife noticed that there must have been a scene cut out toward the end where Gilbert fought with the other Ghostbusters, because they seem to be reconciling when they reunite. Also, the dance number that was used under the credits was probably originally part of the actual story, cut because as great as it looked it was fucking preposterous even in the context of the story.
If they can’t swing a real sequel, I hope at least Holtzman can get her own movie.
Oooh! Is there a Kickstarter campaign I can give all my money to?
Just remembered another thing that bugged me:
That sending Bad Guy through to the other dimension acted as a “reset button” for all the destruction in the city.
Surprised that no one else mentioned it (cue someone linking the post where someone mentioned it) since I’ve noticed over the years that Cafe Society at the SDMB collectively hate convenient reset buttons in fiction. Ghost Baddie completely destroyed the hotel from the inside out. Lots of other smashing throughout Manhattan as well. Yet, as soon as he’s banished to another dimension everything is in perfect repair.
In the original movie, all the destruction wrought by Gozer was still in ruins after Gozer’s defeat.
Twitter just seems disgusting to me. I almost started a thread but you hear about this time and time again, people being harassed ceaselessly on Twitter and all the management seems to do is helplessly throw up their hands and say “Sheesh, guys, what are you going to do?”
Bienville, I admitted, that’s the only thing I kind of didn’t like - the reset button. But, it was glossed over so quick I didn’t really have time to notice it. Plus I would have been way more annoyed if the reset button was used to make everyone not believe the Ghostbusters.
There were alt-right lunatics all right, and as usual they were loud and obnoxious, but much of the initial criticism was simply that it was (1) yet another in a long line of reboots, and (2) the trailers, for whatever reason, didn’t seem very funny. And yes, casting it as all-women looked like a gimmick to re-enervate what is, after all, yet another reboot.
Glad to hear the movie is good nonetheless.
But as someone upthread said, why isn’t a movie with an all-male cast a “gimmick”?
There was a ton of criticism that boiled down to “Ick, girls”. It is easy enough to find this stuff, and I’d rather not go trolling around - men like that make me feel disgusted with the human race and fairly unwelcome on the Internet, so I won’t go looking for links unless you really insist.
All of the actresses had a lot of nasty misogynistic things hurled at them (and still are) and Leslie Jones had racist shit in addition.
It’s 2016 and it’s frankly ridiculous that we are still at this stage where people are like, “Her vagina will prevent her from doing a good job! Her vagina means she isn’t funny! To anyone, not just me!”
An all-female cast, with almost no conversations about men except for the flirting with Chris Hemsworth, was somehow seen as an affront. And like Dewey Finn points out, I frankly resent that somehow using members of HALF the fucking population is somehow a “gimmick”. We’re people too, goddamnit.
It certainly can be.
Take a famous movie and reboot it with men replacing women in the roles women had played in the original, and that would be a casting “gimmick”, would it not?
Say, take Charlie’s Angels and have the “angels” played by all men, and Charlie as a woman.
You aren’t reading what I wrote. I never denied that there was tons of obnoxious misogyny.
To quote myself:
As I said, I’m happy that the movie is apparently quite good, and I’d be glad to see it.
But you go too far in asserting that all criticism of what is, basically, a reboot, is rooted in women-hatred.
Some looked that the trailers and said ‘they don’t look that great’. That’s a criticism of the trailers, not the movie.
Loved this movie. Loved it loved it loved it.
OK, valid point. I’ll note that in a few cases, movies have been remade with an all-black cast. (Death at a Funeral, for instance, which in the original was set in the UK with a white cast, but was remade with a black cast and set in the US.) Perhaps a gimmick, or perhaps it’s just a remake designed to appeal to a different audience.
Fair.
But on the other hand, I’m pretty sure the makers of this movie were hoping for a universal audience - the ‘blockbuster’ audience. They may well get it, too, if word of mouth is good, as it apparently is, judging by this thread.
Saw it day before yesterday in IMAX 3D and sitting a bit too close to the screen by my normal standards, and I absolutely loved it.
It was fun, silly and spectacular, enough of the old to make me giggle with glee, and enough new to make me constantly interested to see what came next.
My only problem was the overly spectacular, final four-against-billions battle and the baddie controlling all the police and military and then just having them standing there like statues. It deflated my suspension of disbelief somewhat, with the odds being so overwhelmingly against the heros immediately and no one taking any notice of that, just wading into an insane battle instantly transformed from academics, engineer and MTA employee into martial arts experts with technomagical weapons.
Spectacularly fun to watch, but I fear it leaves nowhere for a sequel to go except into having half the movie be ridiculous fighting.
I liked this movie a lot. I loved Kate McKinnon and Hemsworth was hilarious as the idiot. I think I’m more used to modern movies and their pacing, as this one was faster than the original (which I caught on TV again this past weekend). The original is a classic, but to 2016 me, its slower, the jokes are not as funny, and Peter would be considered a creepy stalker by modern standards.
I like that despite all the hate some people have regarding the female cast, they didn’t really do much to say “Yeah, we’re women, feminism, whoo hoo!”. They were just quirky, weirdo characters that happened to be women, which, though it doesn’t shut up any of the sexists, deflates their claim that this was some affirmative action movie
i have no horse in this race. my fond memories of ghostbusters is pretty much limited to ecto-cooler.
that being said, the fact red letter media added sitcom canned laughter to this scene without seeming out of place is damning to me. I mean, I never found anything ghostbusters-related really funny, but this is that painful anti-funny that plagues the likes of tweenage sitcoms on cable. I mean if you like that kinda toothless improve, more power to you, but yeesh.
i dunno, maybe my sense of humor is too dry and gallows. but if your jokes lack a sardonic bite in the face of cosmic horror, then isn’t that kinda inappropriate for the context?
I have trouble seeing why you find the damnation falls on Ghostbusters. You really don’t think you could make a similar effect adding a sitcom style laugh track to anything at all? Then you and I probably have very different definitions of anything at all. Remember this video demonstrating how post-production can have a profound effect on how a film is perceived?
The people you are getting this criticism from are pulling a cheap trick. That’s on them. The humor of the actual movie is actually often quite subtle. They don’t talk about Gilbert embarrassing herself with her crush on Kevin, they give each other cringing looks. They move coffee cups. They try to change the subject. The scene that has been made to look sitcomy by adding a laugh track was actually a surreal deadpan discussion in which Patty never denies she might have borrowed the hearse without checking for bodies, and asserts without umbrage that of course they’ll have to return any corpse found. What sticks out about the scene is how low-key it is given the subject matter, and your informant has dicked with the scene to destroy that.
Next question.
all right mugs to camera
One thing some people seem to be forgetting is that this new movie, IIRC, is NOT a remake. The original characters still exist, and the original two movies still happened.
So seeing as how these are completely new characters in the same universe, what about the casting is a “gimmick”?
Yes it is, it’s a hard reboot. Pretty much everyone who has seen it has said as much. Most of the original actors make cameos, but in roles completely divorced from their original characters. The thing that’s confusing people is that one of the trailers started with “30 years ago”.
I was willing to go along with the ‘gimmick’ label, though I’m not married to it if it bothers people. I don’t take a ‘gimmick’ as a criticism. Call it a twist? A spin? The movie’s elevator pitch is “Ghostbusters with all women” which is no less a gimmick than “firefighters, but they fight ghosts”. But once you deliver the product, the gimmickness wears off and it becomes just the regular thing that the next idea bounces off of.