Ghostbusters 2016

[Elomin Sha]

Looked like 70-30 that those reviews liked it.

[korvys]

Reviews seems to be a resounding "Yeah, it was alright", which is about where I figured it would be.

[Elomin Sha]

An alright seems kind of bad. These days people seem happy that alright is a positive. Especially given the film's franchise history.

[Amake]

Here's two pictures that I suppose covers most of the reactions people are having to the movie


and focusing on how good you think it may be is really only ignoring how much good it does by existing.

[korvys]

I wouldn't say "alright" is bad. I'd say bad is bad. Alright is... alright. Which was me paraphrasing anyway. In any case, I perfectly comfortable with something not being at the extreme ends. It's not like everything less than perfect is terrible. There's a reason we make fun of the fact that video game review scores seem to range from 7 to 10.

76%

Critics Consensus: Ghostbusters does an impressive job of standing on its own as a freewheeling, marvelously cast supernatural comedy -- even if it can't help but pale somewhat in comparison with the classic original.

Sounds worth a look to me, though I couldn't blame anyone for being more discerning with their movie-going dollars.


And also, I'm all for things existing for the sake of positive representation.

[Elomin Sha]

Yep, thought some idiots wo.uld do something stupid

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Huh. Well, I'm glad it's apparently better than I had been led to believe. I'm still not interested enough to see it in theatres (again, films are expensive these days) but I might catch it when it comes to Netflix or whatever.

[Robo4900]

Huh. Well, I'm glad it's apparently better than I had been led to believe. I'm still not interested enough to see it in theatres (again, films are expensive these days) but I might catch it when it comes to Netflix or whatever.

Ditto.

Honestly, I'm really glad it isn't as bad as we thought it'd be, even if it's just merely okay.

[Psyclone]

Yeah, I'd say that picture of the little girls up there is probably the most important thing to come out of this thread. Because in the end, this movie isn't really for us, I don't think. If we like it, that's cool, but our opinions on this one are less important than we think they are.

[AdmiralMemo]

Fair enough, but I personally think that we could've gotten that same type of reaction with the little girls without the movie being a reboot. As I said, I was completely gung-ho on the idea of an all-female Ghostbusters "franchise in a different city" movie.

But what do I know?

[Psyclone]

Yeah, I don't know what the decision making process behind making it a reboot was, but I assume there must have been a reason they thought it would make more money. The original IS over 30 years old, so maybe they thought it was time? I don't know. Large corporations mystify me.

[Amake]

The most obvious explanation, they wanted to focus on making the movie maximally accessible to the three or four billion people who weren't born at the time of the original, trusting the handful of returning fans to piece together satisfying headcanons either way.

[korvys]

I guess there are pros and cons either way. If you make it a sequel instead of a reboot, you get to lean on the established canon to do some of the lore lifting, but you're also tied down to any lore decisions they made before that you might feel limit your ability to make the best movie.

[AdmiralMemo]

Well, the people in charge said they wanted to do a reboot simply because they wanted a world where ghosts weren't a known thing, which they think they would be after GB1 & GB2. This decision seems short-sighted to me and I think it would be much more fascinating to see a world that is minimally tied to the original, but still has evolved from there. Ghosts being a known thing for 20 years and the world having moved on and dealt with this fact would've been more interesting to me. You could've had it where this GB outfit was kind of down on their luck, doing grunt work things to scrape by. Throw in some nostalgia and a wish for something big to happen to show off their skills. And then you get a "be careful what you wish for" thing, and end up with a Stay-Puft-type event that hasn't happened in over 20 years, and people aren't prepared. You could even get some good product placement out of it... Like, giant Colonel Sanders terrorizing downtown or something?

[MotorWaffle]

I barely go to the movies as it is, save for Marvel movies, I'm not making a special trip for a series I'm not particularly a huge fan of.

[King Kool]

I see people on my Facebook talking about how they're going to buy ten tickets just to spite the jackasses who decided they don't like it before they've seen it.

...I wish I had enough money to toss around that I could burn about a hundred dollars to spite someone I don't know and will never meet, and by doing so will contribute about as much as that time Mark Ruffalo talked about how every drop of water mattered and I was so inspired, I spent the afternoon hocking loogies into the ocean... in the defense of a movie they haven't seen yet, either.

I get in for free, so I have no dog in this fight either way, financial or otherwise. I want it to be good because I want to see good movies. I've seen enough bad ones this year.

But even the movies I've despised this year, the ones I hated with the power of a white phosphorous grenade... like, say, The Bronze. I wasn't thrilled or giddy when it didn't do well. I was sad when Popstar didn't connect, because I loved that movie, but... I wasn't like, "Good. You deserve this." when The Bronze bombed. Well, it DID deserve to bomb, but I didn't get any joy out of it bombing.

What I'm saying is that spite flavors practically none of my life. I don't do anything to purposefully hurt or bother people. (I'd sure be a hypocrite if I did and hated The Bronze, which is just filled with cruelty and spite.) And I don't understand why someone would let the opinions on the crappiest people on the Internet get them so riled up.

If someone's buying a bunch of tickets for a movie, sight unseen, just to spite the "No Girls Allowed" Crowd, and that represents the prevalent opinion of that side of the coin (caveat: I don't really think it is, I'm just annoyed right now)...

Then I want this movie to come out and be so punishingly average and unworthy of deep thought or discussion that everyone who had some sort of emotional stake in it either doing extravagantly well or bombing off the face of the earth all turn themselves inside out trying to justify whichever was their years-ago-decided presumptive opinion.

[Psyclone]

See now that sounds pretty spiteful, Kool

[Elomin Sha]

I want the movie to tank so Hollywood will get into their heads to stop thinking that making reboots is a good idea.

[Amake]

Didn't we already go over this? If it tanks it'll only prove to Hollywood movies with girls are a bad idea. Since they have a vested interest in proving remakes work, and new things don't.

[Elomin Sha]

I said that's what 'I' want them to realise. Bridesmaids worked, and that wasn't a remake.

[Amake]

In sequels, remakes and adaptations this week we have:
The Legend of Tarzan
Finding Dory
The Purge: Election Year
Independence Day: Resurgence
The BFG
The Conjuring 2
Now You See Me 2
X-Men Apocalypse
Warcraft
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
Captain America: Civil War
The Jungle Book
Alice Through the Looking Glass
The Angry Birds Movie
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
Barbershop: The Next Cut
Kung Fu Panda 3
God's Not Dead 2

And yet we spend more time complaining about Ghostbusters than all of the above combined. Is it really just because it's a remake? Is this really the movie that's going to prove Hollywood needs original stories?

[korvys]

Also, why are remakes a bad idea again? They're typically, but not universally, bad, but that's just an argument to not make bad remakes, not to not make them at all.

[Elomin Sha]

Making films are supposed to be a creative endeavour. It's not very creative if you have to take something else and redo it. While there is some new elements to it my opinion is it takes a lot away.

[MetricFurlong]

I want the movie to tank so Hollywood will get into their heads to stop thinking that making reboots is a good idea.

Plenty of remakes flop hard all the time. If the failures of, say, the Conan the Barbarin, Total Recall, and Robocop remakes have done nothing to slow down the rate of remakes/reboots being churned out then one more wouldn't make a difference. The idea that remakes/reboots are a safe bet is just too firmly ingrained amongst studio executives to be shifted by pointing to examples of it failing.

[Elomin Sha]

I feel it should get to the point where film goets should vote with their wallets and say enough is enough. But I know that it won't happen. I wish it would.