But you'll never be able to close my White baby Jesus approved shitter.

Wow. More name calling, insults, and character bashing. Classy.

I could easily refute your asinine sexist accusation, but at this point you've already made up your mind so there's no point.

The original featured 4 guys. Reversing the gender is a gimmick. It is contrived. That doesn't men the movie couldnt be good. The fact that it looks like crap is what pissed me off. They passed for a decade on G3, but they approved this garbage movie. If they were going to go the gimmick route instead of a passing the torch movie they should have only done so if they had a great script and a cast equal to the originals. They had neither but plowed forward anyway. And that is what is insulting to fans of the original.

In all fairness, great scripts are the least of Hollywood's concerns.

This is one of the main things I don't understand. I couldn't be a bigger fan of the original. I got the Ecto-1 LEGO set from my wife for Christmas. And whatever happens with this movie has zero effect on my feelings for the original. I still loved Star Wars even though the prequels sucked. I love the original Total Recall even though the reboot literally put me to sleep. How is this any different? Just don't see it - problem solved, right?

We weren't going to get a good movie with GB3 anyway - they were so far past their prime. Dan Akroyd was a guest on the talk show I produce a number of years ago. All he wanted to do was talk about his vodka.

Refute away, by all means. I know I'm not the only one who would love to see what you come up with.

The Jack Black/Michael Cera movie Year One is probably the best indicator of what we woulda got outta a "proper" 3rd Ghostbusters movie since it was directed by Ramis and written by the two Office writers who were working on the GB3 script under Ramis. That pretty much kills the notion that the unmade 3rd film was going to be any good.

What, people over 50 can't be funny or come up with good scripts?

Sounds agist to me...

Never said that. But hey, way to just ignore what I actually said.

BTW, you can be "past your prime" at any age.

So we missed out on a masterpiece.

^^^This right here. The original is still the original. This takes NOTHING from it. They are not locking it away in a vault and confiscating all copies of it when this new one is released.

Did you miss the fine print? George Lucas is one of the producers.

Fuuuuuck

Oh...then you OG GB fans are fucked.

< never cared all that much for the original.

I collect Ghostbusters merch and if I were to look back on the last 6 months of stuff I've bought it would prove the case that the classic merch is benefiting from the higher profile that the new movie brings with it.

I already found the 4 new Ghostbusters figures from Mattel and they ship alongside reissues of the classic 4 characters (which include a new build-a-figure) which means the very day you're taunted and tormented by their existence you should be able to snag your preferred team. That also means that the one time I spent money on Ghostbusters '16 merch I spent as much money, to the penny, on classic '84 merch. Then there's the LEGO Firehouse, Diamond Select action figures, LEGO Dimensions sets etc. Yesterday I found Ghostbusters marshmallows at Big Lots. Pretty soon the Twinkies and the Ecto Cooler will surface. The Xbox Arcade game just popped up a few weeks ago on Xbox One backwards compatibility with the retail game almost certainly (same publisher, Atari) soon to follow. 4K disc releases. RGB DVD re-releases. There's no shortage of stuff to enjoy, even for the haters.

I get why people are disappointed in Sony for the entire mess.
I get why people think it looks like crap.
I get why people think it might be okay.
I get why people want to talk about how bad they think it'll fail.

What I don't get is why dudes (and it's all dudes) are SO angry about it.

You have a tiny number of those folks here, but I mostly mean... everywhere you see discussions about this thing, there's a lot of anger. Not just criticism, which is fine, but ANGER.

It's just a movie, broh.

God forbid Universal ever greenlights a remake of Back to the Future.

I'm not angry about it, but for me personally what bugs me are two things:

1. There are people who want to defend this new film by mining little nuggets out of the original 1984 film, criticizing those moments, and saying this new film is therefore on par with the original. They criticize a widely regarded and well loved film in an attempt to say, "See, it wasn't really that good to begin with and this new one looks about the same." I keep using the 1996 film Barb Wire as an example. It was a gender reversed remake of Casablanca staring Pam Anderson. There are people defending this Ghostbuster film that are akin to someone criticizing Casablanca and then stating that Barb Wire deserves a fair shake because Casablanca wasn't really that good.

2. As someone who loves film, film criticism, and discussing film on the internet I feel a shifting attitude among audiences and fans. Many people have an attitude now that there is no place for bad reviews anymore. An attitude that is literally, "If you can't say something good don't say anything at all." An attitude that says, if your assessment of a film is negative no matter how well expressed and thought out, you should stay silent.

I'd agree except for the fact that a) no one has seen the movie yet and b) reaction to this particular movie has gone beyond well-expressed and thought-out criticism.

I encounter it on message boards for films that have been out for years. I encountered it here when I wrote a lengthy negative review about Zootopia. It was met by 1 and 2 sentence responses saying I should check my negativity at the door. Strange from supposed "film fans".

You do realize that your two points completely contradict one another, right?

Blowjob ghost is fair game if you're gonna call low-brow humor out in the new movie. Period. You don't get to huff and puff and stomp your feet and pout if you don't like it. Well, you do but it just makes you look like a baby.

I can appreciate that. For me, it's worth noting that there's things in a 'well-loved' film that just aren't funny, or are maybe low-brow. Nothing wrong with that. Films are all a product of their time, and we are the ones that are changing as we view them at different points in our lives. To me, it's fascinating to see how opinions differ on pop culture classics. As such, I think saying that the humor in the new film is "low brow" or "cliche" or whatever is totally valid, and it's okay to compare them, as products of different times, to see what gets a laugh, and what doesn't. I wouldn't say they're "on par" with each other, per se, but I could see how it's considered to be "nitpicking" on either side of the argument.


Wait... are you saying Barb Wire WAS ACTUALLY a very loose remake of Casablanca (like how A Bug's Life is Seven Samurai?) Like... was that the intent of the filmmakers? If so, I seriously need to watch both films again. I don't really have a comment to your point... just want to know if this is true.

edit: googled it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barb_Wire_(film) Holy shit, that's awesome. I'm totally rewatching this soon.

Wow... I... . Well... I see a certain group of folks who do take review scores across all media too seriously. Look at Rotten Tomatoes scores, and people lose their shit when a reviewer says they didn't like a flick that'd otherwise be 100%. THAT kind of thing is scary weird to me. Or people who FLIP OUT because some gaming outlet didn't give Uncharted 4 a 9/10 or 10/10. If that's what you mean, I agree. That's fucked up shit.

But I don't think that's a "common" attitude among the general population. Personally, I like to seek out contrarian reviews because I find them more interesting to read than the ones where the majority gushes about a film or tears it apart.
But I don't see professional reviewers or normal people making a big deal about reviews that they don't like. There seems to be a very specific group of folks who get mad when they're not the target audience, or when something is "universally praised" except for that one 'asshole' who thought it wasn't that great. I don't think that attitude is shifting into average folks, though.

And for what it's worth, I appreciate the reasonable discussion.

Here's the second part of James Rolfe's (aka the Angry Video Game Nerd's) video on the troubled sequels. Basically stuff that's known but still a decent watch. Truthfully his idea about not actually making a third film but doing a film where the actors are playing themselves trying to get Bill Murray to be in a third film actually could have been interesting I think.
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Nice summary of everything UP TO the announcement of the remake.

Odd that he doesn't give any detail after that, though. I'm sure there's just as much behind the scenes on that one.

Two trailers...no laughs yet.

Seriously, you'd think someone would be funny just accidentally. The good news of all this is that GHOSTBUSTERS II is going to look a whole lot better.

The F/X look great. Too bad the rest looks like a awful SNL skit.

I really don't think Ghostbusters II is as bad as everyone says it is. Its one of those sequels where it isn't the classic the original is (really that can be said for most sequels) but it seemingly has gained this reputation among a certain group of elitists of being total shit when in reality it isn't. I know that group of critics includes Murray and I love the guy but he can buy into his own hype a bit too much at times. The biggest flaw I think it has is that it essentially is more of the same but that doesn't make it a horrible film. I still have fun seeing those characters back in action and have never really held the hatred that many seem to for the film.

No. Because they don't.

Hmm that's weird because I'm pretty sure in point 1 you whine about how you don't think people should be critical of the original and then in point 2 you whine about how people don't think you should be critical of the new one.

Exactly. I also get that some just don't like the trailer(s). But like you point out, the anger and criticism for SOME here and in other areas of the interwebs has gone way past that. It's way past just "The trailer sucks" and "this was my childhood favorite".