It's also really over the top. At the finale there tossing ghosts around, destroying them and acting like their in a John Woo movie. The original didn't treat them like action heroes. They were out of shape exterminators who in the finale completely screwed up and had to sacrifice to save the world after they caused that mess.

And maybe it's me but I must have missed all the times that Ripley, Sarah Connor and hell pretty much every final girl in a horror film was saved by a man.

Well, you're adding more conditions now to you're initial claim. Aliens fits the first criteria pretty well. As for the added criteria, although Ripley was saved by a man in one scene, she saves the mostly-male marines in the beginning of the film, she saves Newt, and she destroys the xenomorphs and goes one-on-one with the Alien Queen. I guess she could be considered young in that movie (she was 37 at the time) but she's not hot, at least not by conventional standards. She was looking pretty butch.

I agree though, that Alien isn't as good as an example because although Ripley is the smartest character in the film, and take charge, she's young and attractive in the film, and there's a cheesecake scene where she's stripping to get into the spacesuit.

There are points in Alien, Aliens and Terminator where the female leads are saved by men. It's not necessarily always the end of the movie, but it absolutely happens. And those are the BEST examples of strong female roles in movies, which is really saying something about how unusual it is for women to just handle it themselves.

If the only good examples are movies from 3 (or more) decades ago...

I was reading on the Leslie Jones/Milo Yiannopoulos controversy and wanted to see the review which Milo claimed was the source of it all.

The review had so many references and details to the original film that I became a little incredulous, because for some reason Milo never struck me as someone who would be a fan of GB.

Anyway, this part was pretty seemed to confirm my suspicions:

Then in a later post he took a picture of the Ghostbusters promotional Twinkies and said:

I'm guessing he never saw the original movie and had interns help him with the 1984 film's references.

Male action leads are saved by women in films too. It happens in some Schwarzenegger and Stallone films for example.

And there are many films of strong female roles in movies, in which they don't depend on men. Off top, if I'm remembering correctly there is Salt, Nikita, Colombiana, and Underworld to name some. Or do you mean strong females kicking ass, in roles played by older, average looking women?

@Robin2099
I wouldn't count Sarah Connor in either Terminator film since she's way too passive for the majority of the first film, and although she kicks ass in T2, Arnold is the one whose saving the day. Sarah is no Ripley in the Terminator films.

Judge Anderson (Dredd) & Imperator Furiosa (Mad Max: Fury Road) are from films made in the last 4 years.

With a male co-star right next to them that's doing the same stuff and/or more stuff.

That's the point - not that there aren't female action stars, but that they are rarely allowed to do it all by themselves.

Dan, we almost reached the same place coming from different approaches! I'm not outraged by the film and I did enjoy it (haven't decided if I will buy it in home video yet, but I'm not ruling it out).

I thought the Kevin stuff was funny, but the point I was driving to is this: it attempts to be satire but fails. Successful satire has a subtlety and intelligence to it, GB2016 did not. It tried to get there through "in your face, beat you over the head" lowbrow humor. That is the real shortcoming of this version. But by pointing this out, I'm being told I am a misogynist chauvinistic pig.

What made things worse was the piss-poor marketing that went off the tracks. The marketing department really FUBARed it, from poor product tie-ins to really shitty commercials and trailers. The question this begs is: we're they incompetent or did they have no faith in the product and deliberately adopted a controversial approach?

Draven,

All I said was that my female friends were extremely happy to see the new female Ghostbusters leading a film and kicking ass on their own.

Then of course we get the Aliens and Terminator comments, but those completely miss the point that it's not that Ghostbusters 2016 was the first action-type movie to feature leading women, but that it's one of the only ones to basically feature ONLY women. And a big-budget tentpole release at that.

And that's notable to my female friends. And of course their feelings are completely dismissed by men on this board.

I guess it was when you said your female friends cried about a movie featuring women kicking ass who aren't treated like sexual objects, the latter situation not exactly a first in film.

That's a bit different than being extremely happy about an all-female cast leading a film, and kicking ass without male co-leads, or any degree of assistance from males whatsoever.

Were your friends Ghostbusters fans prior to this? My friend didn't like it, one of the criticisms being the use of fat jokes. I agree with you on the importance of having female action leads who are older, and are mostly not conventionally attractive, in film. I wonder if the budget was just too big for the talent involved to make a profit, considering the director and actors previous box office earnings, was it the negative reaction of some and the controversy, or was it just that the GB brand isn't what it used to be?

And that's exactly the problem with that mindset... you're willing to write off 50% of the target audience (with a property that is heavily male dominated to begin with!) - they deserve every bit of this embarrassment. The sheer stupidity of the business and marketing approach here should serve as film class fodder for years to come. They made the 2nd biggest bomb of the year, congratulations...hope the message was worth it. In the wake of Kill Bill, Underworld, (even Resident Evil for crying out loud!), Hunger Games, Mad Max, Star Wars...this just looked stale beyond belief... nobody bought into the trailers... a complete failure from the top on down. Female heroes were far better served and portrayed in those other films. Where are the misogynist comments about Rogue One, or Wonder Woman? I must've missed them... maybe because those films look good, and make sense...

Every example you shared has one or two women surrounded by men, so you are actually making my case on how unique GB2016 really is. This whole line started with me stating a fact that women in my life got emotional seeing a team of women kick ass in a movie. That is not up for debate - that's what they say happened to them while watching the movie.

Why is everyone so bound and determined to explain that reaction away or diminish it? Do you have a problem with a woman getting emotional watching GB2016? Do you think you have insight into how other women have been portrayed in other films that they have somehow missed? Why can't a woman say they loved watching this version of the Ghostbusters because it made them feel something they hadn't felt before?

For fuck's sake, it's not even an argument. Just because YOU didn't see it that way doesn't mean that they are WRONG to react the way they did.

Uma Thurman did pretty good all by herself in the Kill Bill movies.

Agreed. But even that one still features things like "she's also hot" and "a man teaches her everything she knows". But of the listed examples that's probably the best and it still falls back on some common tropes.

Oh, so we have to have ugly, fat ass kicking women who have only learned how to kick ass from other ugly, fat women? No hot women allowed in the chain, and no male teachers, right?

Come on...

(You do realize that at some point that becomes absurd. "Well, there was a male character who helped watch her back when she was outnumbered 10 to 1, so it doesn't count.")

How about women who are just women and aren't subject to the male gaze.


Who taught James Bond how to kick ass? How about Captain Kirk? Mad Max? There are tons of male characters who kick ass simply because they're ass-kickers. But a woman in that position requires a backstory, nine times out of ten.

Well, then you'll need theaters that don't allow men. I mean, how ludicrous to expect men to NOT view an attractive woman as attractive. Men will always judge the looks of women - it's biology.


His instructors in the Royal Navy, among others (instructors in M16/SIS).

Starfleet instructors.

Social justice warriors, UNITE!!!

Look, most male ass kicking characters had some kind of training. Dirty Harry? At the Police Academy (and probably the military before that, given the era). John McClane? Police Academy (and maybe the military). See how that works?

But it's absurd that some people want to bitch because female ass kickers get the same training - and from men! How dare they!

Come on, this has gone so far beyond the pale that complaints like that can't even be taken seriously. I mean, who cares HOW a female character learned how to kick ass? What does that matter? Who cares if a female ass kicker needs someone to watch her back? A lot of male ass kicking characters need backup. How is that suddenly demeaning if it's a female character?

This has just gotten stupid. The Politically Correct Social Justice Warriors are out of control and impossible to satisfy.

What's stupid is posting 55 times in a thread of a movie that you give your opinion of...yet refuse to watch.

I did the same thing with Fant4stic last year. So what? Neither one of those movies were close to the movies I was hoping for for several years. I have had opinions on both based on what has been reported about the making of the movies, and the facts people have provided about the movies.

You don't have to watch a movie to know you won't like it. I see tons of trailers for movies I know are shit - I'm not going to waste my time and money verifying that they're shit.

It's just with movies that I had hopes of being good, of being the types of movies that I wanted to see when those movies turn out to be something completely different I will have an opinion on it. If you expect someone to keep their opinions to themselves you're in the wrong place...

Jesus...

Just give it a rest already. Move on.

Right?

He's not saying they have to be ugly, but just not necessarily eye candy. Compare the looks of female action leads to the looks of male action leads.

To be fair though, wasn't Mel Gibson and William Shatner kind of sex symbols in their day?


I haven't seen the new ST films, but the show, nor the original films show Kirk being trained. It's assumed, but the audience doesn't need to see it either. Whereas many female-centric action films featuring show the heroine being trained, typically by male/s, as if we need to see her being trained to believe she can be a heroine.



I disagree. If we're going by action films with female leads who don't rely on men, aren't hot, and don't have to be seen trained, then that narrows it down quite a bit. I mentioned Nikita, and that assassin film involves a whole training montage and backstory. The Killer didn't have that, The Replacement Killers didn't have that, The Professional didn't have that. Neither did The American.

Now granted, Nikita is a different kind of story, but the point is, it's rare for studios to put out films where the female heroine is assumed to be a bad ass without walking us through how something "crazy" like that happened, AND have her not be some bombshell.

Anyone who wants to see a dominant female action hero should check out The Long Kiss Goodnight. The males are all villains, helpless, or incompetent (with the exception of that one moment during the climax). I think it aged well, and I can enjoy it even more alongside Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Good Guys.