The heavy marketing as “the female”/gender swapped Ghost Busters was a huge red flag. Annihilation came out around the same time, had an all female cast of scientists and wasn’t marketed as an artificial culture war movie. They just had a story to tell from the female prospective.
Yeah their whole schtick was 'it’s ghostbusters in spaaace but women !
it brought absolutely nothing new to the table and expected to be lauded for a gimmick. And I don’t mean that casting an all female cast was a gimmick, but they cast an all-female cast and treated it like a gimmick.
They literally built their marketing around it, like we were strange beasts in a zoo, come see the females in their movie! marvel at them! marvel!!! It called itself revolutionary and simply peddled the same tale that honestly got old as hell in the 1990′s of “women are treated like shit and then have to fight for every inch of respect before bringing down straw misogyny”.
I don’t need that shit in my movies. I fucking live that shit IRL.
The special effects were crap and the plotline was paper thin. It dove headfirst into poor comedy over any soupcon of substance. It was a half-baked and poorly executed movie trying to feed off the nostalgia of a legacy franchise with a bit of stirred up contention. It was Ghostbusters II with the genders swapped.
It had a decent cast, and some middling talent behind it, coulda been a fun B-movie surprise (like Spy or Zoolander) and they just went for the lowest effort imaginable to grab a quick buck and fucked it in the arse, then blamed misoggyknees when people called it for the turd it was.
You could do an all female Ghostbusters, but the team should just happen to be all women and attention shouldn’t be over drawn to that idea. They should have launched off of the 2009 video game franchise ad and just set this team in a different city. The 2016 movie was filled in Boston anyway. Have the OG team semi retired to reflect their real age. They want a cinematic universe out of the franchise? Just set different movies with different team in different cities. I would love a Kyoto, Paris, or New Orleans flavored Ghostbusters movies. Also, have the new New York team be based off the Extreme Ghostbusters cast. Don’t necessarily imply that every story from the cartoon is canon, but it was a fun show that’s being forgotten about.
edit: ohhhhhhhhhhh. Mexico City right around Day of the Dead. Make sure to have a Mexican anthropologist on the writing team though.
Making gender a selling point is always a weird vibe. You remember the TLC song No Scrubs? Did you know there was a clapback response song called No Pigeons?
It was put together by some out of touch producer who thought men would rally behind it. But in reality men on the whole weren’t really angry about the TLC song, and Sporty Thievz didn’t have much star power on their own. It hit #12 on the US Billboard Hot 100, got a bunch of radio play for a minute, and then they faded into obscurity entirely.
Shit I was around for that and I don’t even remember No Pigeons. Nobody really cared about No Scrubs because culture war wasn’t really a thing and it wasn’t being shoved in men’s faces.
Now you’ve got Tiktok material dropping right into your feed saying you’re a manlet if you aren’t 6’+ and bringing home 250k or more, and you can see thousands of women (real or bots) agreeing with it. That will sour relations a bit.
I managed to find both the CD and cassette singles at a local thrift store. They’re on a shelf right next to a sealed Slim Goodbody album, and a 1 of 1 promotional Topo Chico vinyl record that does have grooves, but doesn’t actually contain any recordings.
Obscure and irrelevant media is so fucken funny to me.
I think that’s the right take. The original movies had the straight guy, goofy guy, deadpan guy, and regular guy. You could get the wrong energy from an new all male cast too, like casting Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler, and Martin Lawrance together - it would be just too much of the same kind of comedic vibe.
I was trying to come up with an actual example of “It’d be like if you cast ‘x’ in ‘y’ when they’re better suited for ‘z’” but couldn’t come up with an example that truly fit what I was trying to convey.
But that’s pretty much what I was going for. They’re hilarious all in their own right but it’s the wrong type of comedy for Ghostbusters.
That’s a really awesome thing they did and I respect it a lot.
I don’t think that changes the quality of the movie though, right? Unless you mean like, “They wouldn’t have done that if the movie hadn’t been made, so it’s a good movie by merit of having enabled the cheering up of one specific group of dying children”? Because I suppose you could make that argument, but I don’t know if many folks would agree with “the butterfly effect” as a metric for movie quality.
It’s a case of being tone-deaf, along with clearly sexist characters, how much of a bimbo did they make the male lead? Yeah, not as progressive as you want to pretend.
I’m agreeing with you that the problem wasn’t women. Also Hemsworth’s character was incessantly annoying, I’ve literally never heard someone praise that performance.
Agreed, I liked the girls roles they had a spark between them and good characters, but it doesn’t stop the fact people would call the film problematic if it was a woman on Chris’s role. It did have glaring sexist issues.
The neckbeards said it was bad because it had women as the main cast
The movie was bad because it was made bad, not because of the cast
See I always feel like there’s nuance buried in the way people treat neckbeards and their ideologies.
I didn’t think it was gonna be bad because it was a female cast. I thought it was gonna be bad because of the specific women they cast.
Them being women is not my problem but I seem to get lumped in with the incels because if you criticize a woman you’re an incel/neckbeard
The heavy marketing as “the female”/gender swapped Ghost Busters was a huge red flag. Annihilation came out around the same time, had an all female cast of scientists and wasn’t marketed as an artificial culture war movie. They just had a story to tell from the female prospective.
Yeah their whole schtick was 'it’s ghostbusters
in spaaacebut women !it brought absolutely nothing new to the table and expected to be lauded for a gimmick. And I don’t mean that casting an all female cast was a gimmick, but they cast an all-female cast and treated it like a gimmick.
They literally built their marketing around it, like we were strange beasts in a zoo, come see the females in their movie! marvel at them! marvel!!! It called itself revolutionary and simply peddled the same tale that honestly got old as hell in the 1990′s of “women are treated like shit and then have to fight for every inch of respect before bringing down straw misogyny”. I don’t need that shit in my movies. I fucking live that shit IRL.
The special effects were crap and the plotline was paper thin. It dove headfirst into poor comedy over any soupcon of substance. It was a half-baked and poorly executed movie trying to feed off the nostalgia of a legacy franchise with a bit of stirred up contention. It was Ghostbusters II with the genders swapped.
It had a decent cast, and some middling talent behind it, coulda been a fun B-movie surprise (like Spy or Zoolander) and they just went for the lowest effort imaginable to grab a quick buck and fucked it in the arse, then blamed misoggyknees when people called it for the turd it was.
You could do an all female Ghostbusters, but the team should just happen to be all women and attention shouldn’t be over drawn to that idea. They should have launched off of the 2009 video game franchise ad and just set this team in a different city. The 2016 movie was filled in Boston anyway. Have the OG team semi retired to reflect their real age. They want a cinematic universe out of the franchise? Just set different movies with different team in different cities. I would love a Kyoto, Paris, or New Orleans flavored Ghostbusters movies. Also, have the new New York team be based off the Extreme Ghostbusters cast. Don’t necessarily imply that every story from the cartoon is canon, but it was a fun show that’s being forgotten about.
edit: ohhhhhhhhhhh. Mexico City right around Day of the Dead. Make sure to have a Mexican anthropologist on the writing team though.
Making gender a selling point is always a weird vibe. You remember the TLC song No Scrubs? Did you know there was a clapback response song called No Pigeons?
It was put together by some out of touch producer who thought men would rally behind it. But in reality men on the whole weren’t really angry about the TLC song, and Sporty Thievz didn’t have much star power on their own. It hit #12 on the US Billboard Hot 100, got a bunch of radio play for a minute, and then they faded into obscurity entirely.
Shit I was around for that and I don’t even remember No Pigeons. Nobody really cared about No Scrubs because culture war wasn’t really a thing and it wasn’t being shoved in men’s faces.
Now you’ve got Tiktok material dropping right into your feed saying you’re a manlet if you aren’t 6’+ and bringing home 250k or more, and you can see thousands of women (real or bots) agreeing with it. That will sour relations a bit.
I managed to find both the CD and cassette singles at a local thrift store. They’re on a shelf right next to a sealed Slim Goodbody album, and a 1 of 1 promotional Topo Chico vinyl record that does have grooves, but doesn’t actually contain any recordings.
Obscure and irrelevant media is so fucken funny to me.
Sounds like you have an interesting market there. The thrift and used market where I live are dead.
What was wrong with the women they cast? Good comedy actors. I get SNL isn’t for everyone, but they all have talents that exceed that show.
They’re great actresses for sure.
But they didn’t have the right energy for it imo.
Not the right choices for Ghostbusters of all things. There’s different types of comedy and they didn’t have the right type for it.
I think that’s the right take. The original movies had the straight guy, goofy guy, deadpan guy, and regular guy. You could get the wrong energy from an new all male cast too, like casting Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler, and Martin Lawrance together - it would be just too much of the same kind of comedic vibe.
I was trying to come up with an actual example of “It’d be like if you cast ‘x’ in ‘y’ when they’re better suited for ‘z’” but couldn’t come up with an example that truly fit what I was trying to convey.
But that’s pretty much what I was going for. They’re hilarious all in their own right but it’s the wrong type of comedy for Ghostbusters.
Maybe Robin Williams as Zoolander. Danny DeVito as Deathpool. Glenn Howerton as someone with sincere human emotions.
Actually, DeVito might be able to pull off a Deadpool. Though he’s more suited for Wolverine (he’s got the hair and height).
Is Peter the straight guy, Ray the goofy guy, Egon the deadpan guy, and Winston the regular guy?
I was thinking Egon=straight, Peter=deadpan, Ray=goofy, and Winston=regular guy.
Quick reminder that this cast went to hospital for dying kids in ghostbuster uniforms.
You really gonna stand by that?
That’s a really awesome thing they did and I respect it a lot.
I don’t think that changes the quality of the movie though, right? Unless you mean like, “They wouldn’t have done that if the movie hadn’t been made, so it’s a good movie by merit of having enabled the cheering up of one specific group of dying children”? Because I suppose you could make that argument, but I don’t know if many folks would agree with “the butterfly effect” as a metric for movie quality.
It’s a case of being tone-deaf, along with clearly sexist characters, how much of a bimbo did they make the male lead? Yeah, not as progressive as you want to pretend.
I’m agreeing with you that the problem wasn’t women. Also Hemsworth’s character was incessantly annoying, I’ve literally never heard someone praise that performance.
Agreed, I liked the girls roles they had a spark between them and good characters, but it doesn’t stop the fact people would call the film problematic if it was a woman on Chris’s role. It did have glaring sexist issues.
Having them improv in like every scene really did ‘em dirty.
That doesn’t change that the movie is shit