🐱 We Should Have Cherished the 2016 Ghostbusters When We Had the Chance

CatParty


Setting my time machine (don’t ask me where I got it) back to about early-mid 2016, I am going back to tell past humans two things. The first will be to—after referencing the general state of everything by waving my arms hysterically—tell everyone that it can and will get much, much worse. The second will be that although that is very much true, there will soon be a short-term tonic. That tonic arrives on July 15, and it’s the new Ghostbusters movie. On that day and any day after, buy your tickets, sit down, and cherish every second. Cherish the expertly assembled ensemble of hilarious people making every sequence a riot; cherish the bonkers new take on spirits, spectres, and ghouls that need busting; cherish the titan that is Kate McKinnon stealing every scene and getting her own slo-mo action sequence; and cherish the fact that this is a reboot/remake/whatever that means to respect what came before, but remains 100 percent confident in its new vision. Cherish every fleeting moment, because while it may not be perfect or the new take on the series you were expecting, I was telling the truth when I said what’s coming would be much, much worse.

The necessity for Terminator-style time travel stems from the fact that when the movie from director Paul Feig and starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and McKinnon dropped over five years ago, we didn’t give ourselves a chance to bask in its comedic brilliance. Instead, the entire conversation was dominated by controversy, and by “controversy”, I mean big babies taking to social media. Said babies made the first trailer the most “disliked” film trailer in YouTube history, and in turn made every conversation about the movie have to share space with sexism aimed at the cast, racism aimed at Jones, and general rage that this reboot simply didn’t look like the new movie they wanted. In essence, any praise (or valid criticism) was drowned out by children who opened a box on Christmas, and saw that the toy they got wasn’t the exact one they wanted, and proceeded to pout a la Veruca Salt. And a big chunk of this was all before the movie even came out.

Not even needing these five years for retrospective, it was instantly clear how much of a shame that response was. Had we as a society had the opportunity to have a normal discourse about the movie, and have the foresight to see what was coming after the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens the previous December, people maybe would have better embraced how Feig, co-writer Katie Dippold and the cast delivered the best possible version of a reboot of a beloved franchise. Understanding the inherent silliness of the 1984 original’s premise, everyone involved embraced the lunacy with a modern sense of humor, upped the ante on the supernatural bedlam, and threw out just enough references to function while standing firm that this was its very own beast. It was not beholden from top to bottom with what came before, and even if the plot beats could ring similar, every character, joke, and ghostly figure worked to solidify that this vision was going to be working on its own terms.

And yet, despite making a wildly fun movie that lived up to the spirit of the original and opened a portal to a world of new opportunities, the damage was perhaps done before opening weekend. With disappointing box office that didn’t justify the budget ($229 million worldwide off a $140-150 million production) blending with online vitriol, Sony began making plans that would lead to the current crisis that is a far greater omen for the state of modern series development. The aforementioned “worse” hit theaters last week in the form of the cinematic equivalent of a product recall: Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

The antithesis of what preceded it, Afterlife is two hours of a studio issuing a response to a very small contingent of angry fanboys that reads, “We’re sorry we didn’t make the movie you wanted to see, so here’s some free Easter Eggs, and we hope you remain a loyal customer.” Hiding behind the guise of a young cast being the “new generation” of the series, the movie treats them as the end result of a Stranger Things algorithm who exist solely as catalysts for a story about literally digging up the past. As if gulping down a witch’s brew of ‘80s nostalgia that combines the explosive hit Things, the more explosive box office of The Force Awakens, and the deafening screams of a subset of Ghostbusters fanboys who possessed rage towards the 2016 movie before it hit theaters, Afterlife functions as a feckless, weak-willed studio hodgepodge. It’s like Sony was so afraid of the rage of online commenters and fanboys that they basically made the first piece of safely adaptable fan fiction that came across their desk.

At the very worst, it’s the continuation of a precedent within a studio system to put not even fans, but simply the angriest, most vocal fans first, no matter the cost to creative filmmaking. At the least, it’s flat out lazy. If the 2016 Ghostbusterslived to give its characters their own voice and the world its own tone, so as to carve out its own name in a popular series, Afterlife is all about taking every absurd element of the original and treating them like excerpts from a sort of Dead Sea Scroll, worshipping with utter seriousness a movie in which Dan Aykroyd gets blown by a ghost, as if this fun, low-stakes comedy is the enshrined history of the Holy Saints Spangler, Venkman, Stantz, and Zeddemore. Every beat that isn’t rudimentary childhood antics is dedicated not to telling its own story, but rehashing what came before as a way of appeasing a fan base that needs to be coddled with the familiar, as if to be told their years of dedication to a goofy movie about ghosts actually does mean something, and that their future dollars can continue to be safely spent.

I’m not here to say that Ghostbusters: Afterlife is in itself a completely imperfect movie, and the 2016 Ghostbusters is a perfect one. But between the two, only the latter seems to have understood what the real spirit of Ghostbusters is, and in turn, added to it. The first movie got lucky and became a monster success in 1984, but there’s not much there that hints it was a true movie franchise behemoth. With the 2016 film, we got exactly what we needed to jump start the series: a hysterical time at the theater that could’ve been the start of something wild and increasingly fun, all while respecting what came before and expanding its own horizons for everyone to grow with. But that kind of vision for an established franchise is probably done for, and we should’ve enjoyed it when we had the chance. What creativity was bubbling there is now gone in place of shameless fanservice catered by yet another studio afraid to take a chance on something different with their precious IP, and all for supposed fans who couldn’t be less deserving.
 
Are you sure that the author doesn't doesn't eat dicks though, and with astounding regularity?
Looks more the type to be given a Switch and locked in the cuckshed. I guess I should rephrase my pervious statement to be "I virtue signaled for the grrl power movie! Please let me prep the bull!".
 
Leslie Jones was my least favorite character in the reboot. She's every Black female stereotype: loud, abrasive, "sassy," careless. Even worse, those traits are touted as positives to have.

If you like the 2016 version, more power to you. Don't expect others, especially fans of the original, to share the same sentiment.
 
The 2016 Ghostbusters might have done better if it wasn't massively politicized. In a time when everything was politics, politics, politics it actually could have been a decent enough escape as a dumb movie with queef jokes and Cringe Hemsworth. It could have been a successful if forgettable comedy. But they decided to try to drum up the SJW crowd to see it and...well, they went broke.
 
So I take it the new one is too high on member berries? I think that's a problem in general with tributes and throwbacks. They don't quite get subtlety. Maybe they think people are too stupid to get a reference unless it's in your face.
I wrote this in another thread but stuff like the "I collect spores, molds and fungus" is referenced in a serious way that's meant to make you shed a tear... over a dumb joke.
There are no memorable moments that aren't references to the 1984 movie.
You're meant to clap because you've recognized something old.

The only one of these soft reboots that worked for me is Mad Max: Fury Road because it's a completely different movie from the old 3 that just has the same setting and main character.
It doesn't bring back the Boomerang Feral Kid from Road Warrior, it doesn't drag Tina Turner out of retirement for a pointless cameo, it doesn't rely on memorable moments from the past and instead, it creates it's own iconic stuff like "Mediocre!" or "Witness me!"

I'll be honest, I don't believe Sony Pictures has anybody working for them competent enough to make something as good as Fury Road.
Instead, they give us gems like Men in Black: International, Venom, Angry Birds, The Emoji Movie, Pixels, Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Tower, Smurfs, Sausage Party, Slender Man, Holmes & Watson, Charlie's Angels 2019, the Resident Evil movies and much more trash.
Pretty much their only good movie from the last few years is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and even that is lesser Tarantino, they had to get 1 of the 5 people in Hollywood who still have street cred.
You can justify the existence of any other Hollywood movie studio but Sony could disappear tomorrow and it would be for the best.
 
Leslie Jones was my least favorite character in the reboot. She's every Black female stereotype: loud, abrasive, "sassy," careless. Even worse, those traits are touted as positives to have.

If you like the 2016 version, more power to you. Don't expect others, especially fans of the original, to share the same sentiment.
What really sucks is Leslie got forced into the stereotype role, iirc. She had originally been cast to be a scientist, but after executive meddling her character was changed to "loud obnoxious cabbie". So for a film production that was grasping at every woke straw it could, it still fell back on the ol "Blacks are loud and everything is in the 'hood" bullshit. Even fictional Black characters can't escape the crab bucket.
 
The 2016 Ghostbusters might have done better if it wasn't massively politicized. In a time when everything was politics, politics, politics it actually could have been a decent enough escape as a dumb movie with queef jokes and Cringe Hemsworth. It could have been a successful if forgettable comedy. But they decided to try to drum up the SJW crowd to see it and...well, they went broke.
The politicized stuff was the marketing’s fault. The queef jokes was the director who never had to make a big budget movies fault. The movie was broken pretty much every step of the way
 
I wrote this in another thread but stuff like the "I collect spores, molds and fungus" is referenced in a serious way that's meant to make you shed a tear... over a dumb joke.
There are no memorable moments that aren't references to the 1984 movie.
You're meant to clap because you've recognized something old.

The only one of these soft reboots that worked for me is Mad Max: Fury Road because it's a completely different movie from the old 3 that just has the same setting and main character.
It doesn't bring back the Boomerang Feral Kid from Road Warrior, it doesn't drag Tina Turner out of retirement for a pointless cameo, it doesn't rely on memorable moments from the past and instead, it creates it's own iconic stuff like "Mediocre!" or "Witness me!"

I'll be honest, I don't believe Sony Pictures has anybody working for them competent enough to make something as good as Fury Road.
Instead, they give us gems like Men in Black: International, Venom, Angry Birds, The Emoji Movie, Pixels, Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Tower, Smurfs, Sausage Party, Slender Man, Holmes & Watson, Charlie's Angels 2019, the Resident Evil movies and much more trash.
Pretty much their only good movie from the last few years is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and even that is lesser Tarantino, they had to get 1 of the 5 people in Hollywood who still have street cred.
You can justify the existence of any other Hollywood movie studio but Sony could disappear tomorrow and it would be for the best.
In terms of "reboots that worked", nothing beats 2004 Battlestar Galactica imo.
 
Then they're pulling on your heartstrings by literally using the dead Harold Ramis in order to make money.
While doing Egon dirty. I spent the first half of the movie annoyed that they made him a deadbeat dad for literally no reason.
I wrote this in another thread but stuff like the "I collect spores, molds and fungus" is referenced in a serious way that's meant to make you shed a tear... over a dumb joke.
There are no memorable moments that aren't references to the 1984 movie.
You're meant to clap because you've recognized something old.
About the only thing that's unique to Afterlife is the lib "I love science!" bullshit, which of course they flog to fucking death.
 
I didnt bother to read that mentally ill article, but did see the term "time machine" in scanning it, did this article happen to mention Trump somewhere?
 
"Overthinking" seems to be a common woke trait.

Or more accurately, seeing problems everywhere.
Also known as sperging out/autism. And not the funny or relatable kind, the sad, self-imposed kind, like MovieBob interpreting blue curtains.
 
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lol it's the Ghostbusters movie that did so poorly they renamed it to "Ghostbusters: Answer the Call" for home video releases, as to not cannibalize the original movie
You know what's funny? If you Google Ghostbusters they will bring up the synopsis of the 80s film in the side bar but the video it pulls up is the trailer for the 2016 film. Someone at Google is desperate to trick people into thinking the remake is the "real" Ghostbusters.
 
I don’t know what movie this soyboy watched back in 2016, but fembusters doesn’t deserve adjectives like ‘hilarious’ and ‘comedic brilliance’. It was as funny as Will Ferrell oscarbait, and was created using the ‘riff it and build it in the editing suite’ that so many comedies suffer from these days.
The original GB and GB2 worked because they were plausible people taking on an implausible situation and playing their characters ’real’ or ‘straight’.
GB2016 was just far too self-knowing. Look, the scientist chick has a wacky cyberpunk theme! The secretary is a himbo! Shoot the big bad in the crotch! Comic genius!
Everyone attached to the project had their egos rampantly handjobbed to the point that they genuinely thought they were as funny as the original and were shocked when audiences dissented. It was the emperor’s new clothes without the little kid to exclaim upon the enperor’s nakedness. It was a great example of disconnected elites trying to force a worldview from their hollyweird bubble on society in general and society turning away.

I still get a laugh to this day at dipshits like OP’s author seething and blaming GB2016‘s failure on anything but it’s true faults- overinflated egos, a yawning gap between creator intentions and audience desires, and a lack of script and structure that are the bones that character development is built upon.
 
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