A specter haunts the Internet’s angry men. The specter that the new Ghostbusters movie with all the ladies in it might actually be, you know, good.
Angry dudes have been throwing Internet hissy fits over the new lady-fied Ghostbusters since they first learned of its lady-fied nature early last year; indeed, the fellas at the famously lady-hating site Return of Kings started boycotting the film back in March, even though there was no film yet to boycott.
From RoK to Reddit to YouTube, the Internet’s angriest men agreed that the film was going to be the worst thing to hit men since the ladies got the right to vote, or something.
Now, with the film hitting theaters in the US this Friday, and already playing in the UK and Ireland, the first reviews are coming out.
And so far they’re not bad. The film boasts a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment, and some of the reviews are actually pretty enthusiastic, with more than a few critics suggesting that the Ghostbusting ladies are the best part of the film.
In the Daily Beast, Jen Yamato derided the film’s “lulls in pacing” and “choppy editing,” before hailing the gals at the film’s center:
[W]ith a crackling sense of purpose and a surplus of reverence for their predecessors, new Ghostbusters Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon, and Jones plant their own flag on a beloved sci-fi comedy franchise.
For haters of the Lady Ghostbusters, it’s a nightmare, sweetie, as Patsy from AbFab would say, though I’m pretty sure the anti-Lady-Ghostbusters crowd wouldn’t find her funny either.
On Reddit, naturally, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In Kotaku in Action, Reddit’s main hangout for GamerGate true believers, one of he highest-rated comments in the Ghostbusters 2016 Review Megathread blasts those giving the film good reviews as “cucks for Sony.” Others offered similar explanations.
One commenter accused the critics who liked the film of the apparently unpardonable sin of being … writers.
Over in the Ghostbusters subreddit — because of course there is a Ghostbusters subreddit, and of course it’s full of Lady-Ghsotbuster haters — some of the regulars are trying their best to keep the dream alive, the dream in question being the dream that Lady Ghostbusters will still turn out to really suck, positive reviews be damned!
One irate fellow, insisting he wasn’t rooting for the film to fail, attacked Sony for allegedly throwing a tantrum.
I never wanted the film to be “garbage”, I wanted to have a movie I could enjoy watching. But the moment Sony, Feig, and everyone else involved decided that personal attacks against the public was how they wanted to promote this film, then I simply can’t support it. It could literally be a better film than the original (which it’s not) and I still would not watch it because of the horrible taste left by the filmmaking team’s behavior.
I am not a simpleton who is pursuaded by “like this movie or you’re a misogynist hater”, and since that is the tact they choose, I have to opt out entirely on principle. I do not want this to become a recurring trend with future entertainment endeavors.
I will not be spending a dime on anything related to Ghostbusters 2016. No toys, no movie tickets, no Blu Rays, and no Lego or Lego Dimensions sets. I do not endorse childish tantrums by big studios.
So take that, Sony! This total non-tantrum-haver is taking his Legos (which include no Lady Ghostbusters sets) and going home.
The culture war is weird, man.
Really, why can’t they direct their energy towards something we can all agree is crap, like Michael Bay’s latest TMNT or Transformers monstrosities? Why does this have to be the one they put their foots down for?
Oh, yeah, the womz…
Even more so it’s not a romance pandering film by people who don’t even know how romance works outside of a teen girl’s version of romance.
@Oogly
When I think of Harry Potter, I think of how I used to read those books as a child. But I’d always read them after my mom was done. She’d hide the new book for the few days it took her to read the 700 or so pages, and then she’d surprise me. I was always amazed at how fast she could read. She told me it was all about practice, and, even still today, she can read absolute circles around me
When book 7 came out, I was in New York with my grandparents for the summer. Late July/early August, she comes to get me and my brother and she shows up with Deathly Hallows. I was so excited, I tell ya. She teased me a bit on the ending. Enough that I couldn’t resist and read the last sentence. It didn’t spoil me, so I was relieved. Read the 1st few chapters on the bus ride home
^That. Everyone’s situation is different. What brings nice memories for someone might do the opposite for someone else. But when I think about Harry Potter, especially the last book, it makes me smile. That’s nostalgia! Or, at least, that’s what nostalgia can be when you’re not shouting about feeemales ruining your childhood 🙂
I admit that I don’t quite get nostalgia either. My past was kinda crap; the present is better. I’m looking forward to what the future brings. Never had any issues adapting to changes in the culture or technology; I hope to continue to not have problems even when I’m 80. I enjoy seeing different takes on the same concept/material, so even if the old version was genuinely better (it isn’t always) there’s no sense of it violating my childhood. So while it’s something I mostly understand intellectually, it’s not something I’m likely to ever experience.
@Axecalibur
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbm0y3erUT1r9snt0o3_500.gif
Ok, I think I get it?
I’m with Snowberry here on the intellectual level I get it but experience wise nada. I’m drawing a blank even with your example which is a perfect description of a pleasant childhood memory linked to media.
People with bonafide fascist views, calling out others for fascist tendencies. Guess they don’t get irony over there then.
Their world is a world of false outrage, false dichotomies and the most blinkered black & white world view ever.
Must be great to live there.
Just a side note – there’s a small typo in the text about 2/3 of the way through:
(just in case you’d like to adjust this)
I liked the original Ghostbusters movie, and I’m hearing enough good stuff about the reboot to check it out. I don’t usually go in for reboots because they often don’t work out very well, though there are some notable exceptions.
Rocobop reboot felt too tame not lacked enough biting satire of the original film. Total Recall the masses can’t recall much of it, and that goes the same for most reboots. It ends up being something people tend to forget sans very few gems. Like the animated Prince of Egypt to the original and the Peter Jackson version of Tolkien over the animated one from before for example.
@Alex
What a nice world that would be. Where really there isn’t any problem and black and white thinking is the norm and useful. It’s like living in a 90’s children show. Instead we got things like war crimes, people who delude themselves into thinking they are the good guys, corruption of money in politics, and people of better social standing kicking down the ladder the minute anyone tries to change the status quo.
I enjoyed Disney movies in my childhood.
Partly because they were magical. And partly because the female characters had much more of a chance to speak up for themselves than I did at home. And even when they were pretty much completely oppressed (Cinderella), they were able to communicate their oppression to the audience. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen these films, so I’m speaking from long past experience.
It was a wonderful thing to see girls speak up for themselves.
I’ve officially never seen anything coming from farther away than bitter manbabies accusing any critics who give this movie a good review of being SJW white knight cucks or whatever. These guys act like they get money every time they say something stereotypical.
I had a feeling this would be better than the trailers made it look, because the trailers for Spy didn’t make it look any good either, and that turned out to be pretty damn great. But I agreed that the trailer sucked, and I understand that people are sick of reboots, if only that’s all it was, but I think all of us here know that’s not all it was. As many times that people told me “the REAL reason” people are so mad about this movie, they all gave different reasons, and while half of them insisted that it had nothing to do with sexism, which would only make sense if all sexism mysteriously stopped existing on the internet right around the time the trailer for this movie came out, the other half always said something about the political/social/feminist agenda or propaganda in the movie, based solely on the fact that the cast is all female.
But all the people making excuses about how this is just about reboots and nothing more can’t explain why people are so much madder about this than that terrible Robocop reboot. Remember that? They made it PG13, completely crapped all over what the original was about, and somehow, with all our new technology, they made a Robocop who looked much less like a real robot and much more like a guy in a crappy plastic costume than the original version! You almost have to TRY to suck to make a less realistic looking robot than what they could do in the 80s. And yet people didn’t get anywhere near as frothing mad about that trainwreck or accuse it of ruining their childhoods or whatever. But I’m supposed to believe that the excessively hateful reaction to this movie has nothing to do with the female cast…except for when it does.
The whole thing reminds me of the gamergate fiasco, they wanted us to believe that nobody in their group was a misogynist, except for maybe a handful of trolls who have no real connection to them. We all know misogynists exist on the internet, but we are supposed to believe that they all conveniently didn’t get the memo on the gamergate issue and they were sitting that one out. Same thing here, nobody is saying EVERYONE who has a problem with this movie is a misogynist, but EVERYONE who is a misogynist definitely does have a problem with this movie, and people somehow think it legitimizes their cause to deny that there are any misogynists on their side but it actually has the opposite effect because we know they’re either blatantly lying or willfully ignoring it.
But those aren’t the only problems. Even besides the obvious misogynists, the thinly veiled misogynists spewing verbal diarrhea about feminist propaganda, and those refusing to accept that anyone on their side just happens to be garbage, there’s also a problem with those who never stop complaining about how anyone who says anything bad about the movie is just called sexist. Not only is it a tired and overused exaggeration, it’s also wildly hypocritical! They say we aren’t really listening to their criticism and we’re just passing it all off as sexism, and in doing so, they aren’t really listening to our criticism of them and they’re just passing it all off as accusations of sexism. Am I the only one who noticed this?
So if there’s anyone who’s mad about this movie who doesn’t clearly hate women, doesn’t think anything with women in it is automatically feminist propaganda, isn’t any angrier about this reboot than other much worse reboots, accepts that there are misogynists who are also mad about it because OF COURSE THERE ARE, doesn’t think that anyone who disagrees in any capacity is a white knight SJW, and realizes that there’s a difference between saying maybe people are over-reacting a tiny bit to what is just a trailer and defending a movie they haven’t seen just because there are women in it, THEN I would understand and respect their opinion. Unfortunately I haven’t seen anyone like that yet.
Sorry for the long ass rant, but I’ve just been seeing far too many of these people lately and I’ve kinda been bottling this all up for a while.
@Dr. Thang
Don’t worry dude we feel you here. I understand completely about how much sexist conspiracy nuts just love to use purple prose and pretzel logic in order to hide their thinly veiled hatred of women.
They don’t care about hypocrisy because ironically they feel angry about their safe internet space being sullied by outsiders.
“It appears that the Ghostbusters reboot might not suck. This is a problem, because it makes it harder to persuade everyone that it sucks. Any ideas?”
@EJ
UHm oh, I got it! We’ll use vague criticisms like poor plot and characterization to make it sound like those newspaper critics. That’ll defeat the Feminist World Order.
The MRAs whining about their ruined childhoods has really cementing for me that something to watch out for are people who hold their childhoods sacred. Too many people holding this view have turned out to be assholes in my experience, and before that I learned that excessive nostalgia is another big warning sign of a jerk. These things go together frequently. It was depressing when I saw someone lament that some jokes in children’s animation from the ’90s to the early 2000s would be considered racist by 2010, and this person was significantly younger than me. It’s bad enough when people my age or older are pining for some bygone golden age, but it really disturbs me when I hear that from people younger than I am (30).
The truly insidious nature of nostalgia is that it’s an uncritical love of the past, idealizing or ignoring the problematic elements. It’s a sign of truly unexamined privilege to claim something of your past is utterly perfect and is above criticism.
@Oogly
S’all good! There’s feelings I don’t get either. For years now, nobody’s been able to adequately explain ‘respect’ to me. Literally no idea what the fuck that actually is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have it in me. I’ve also been told, on multiple occasions, that I don’t mourn correctly. Like I’m not sad enough, or something. The worst is when people try to tell me how I’m supposed to feel (Sorry if I’m doing that with you, BTW. Not my intent)
@Axecalibur
It’s all good. Personally aside from nostalgia I never got pride. Self assuredness sure and happiness to be yourself yes I see that in others, but pride eludes me. I get constant ones where people tell me to take pride in your work, and all I can think of is, “I’m just getting this done and over with.” Nothing more or less. Fortunately it’s just a minor thing that comes up.
I am honestly just ridiculously happy that the movie seems to be decent. I love Melissa McCarthy and I’ve been looking forward to this since I heard about it (due to an article about all the manbabies complaining about wimmenz ruining their childhood, naturally).
I’ve never watched a single Ghostbusters movie, but I can’t wait for this one.
Ah yes, we have the old ‘critics don’t actually think what they say they think’ allegation. Because remember, even if someone says they like something, if that thing is a thing that you don’t like, the obvious conclusion is that they are part of a worldwide conspiracy, endorsing supposedly bad movies to enforce the doctrine of… I don’t know, maybe communism?
Also, the plural of ‘Lego’ is still just ‘Lego.’
Well then, how about “if you conclude this movie cannot possibly be any better than shit having only seen one bad trailer of it you’re probably a misogynist asshole”. Persuaded by that?
And he still hasn’t seen the damn movie. But because it has WOMZ in it, clearly everyone who likes it is a biased agenda-driven SJW puppet cultural marxist or something. LOGIC.
When most of the people around you are SJW fascists that don’t reflect the views of normal people. Then you’re probably the one who isn’t normal.
@Axecalibur:
To me the core concept of respect is the assumption that another person’s choices were made for good and sensible reasons, even if I wouldn’t have made the same choice.
For example, Dalilama is someone I respect enormously, although though her views on economics are to the left of mine. If she and I disagree, then my immediate assumption is not that she’s a fool being foolish for foolish reasons, but that she has reached a sensible conclusion which works for her, and which may well be closer to the truth than my own. If she picks a different path through life from me, I shall assume that it’s based on sound reasoning and her own lived experience of her circumstances, and so is the right thing to do.
On the other hand, I have no respect for Davis Aurini. If he disagrees with me or picks a different path through life, then I will not assume that he had a good reason for it. Instead I will mock him roundly for it.
Some people confuse the issue by being unable to tell the difference between “respect” and “bootlicking subservience”, and expect the latter. Ironically, this generally results in less respect, not more.
Noting the IMDB rankings, a whopping 3700 dudebros have downvoted this movie, while only 440 women have given it a vote.
Also, well over 50% of the votes allllll gave it a “1”.
A “1” out of “10”. My guess is that if they could have given it a negative 5 Million, they would have.
@ axecalibur & EJ
Re: respect
This tallies a bit with what Brony and I were discussing on another thread; whether disagreement necassarily implies conflict.
I think there are two aspects to respect which we should avoid conflating.
There’s respect in the ‘admiration’ sense and then in the ‘I don’t agree but your position is not unreasonable’ sense.
Although they’re separate one can sometimes influence the other of course.
So for example, I think a lot of the decisions and views of Micheal Foot were naive and unsustainable in logic; but I as admired him as a person and so I still respect him. I suppose it’s a ‘he might have been daft but his heart was in the right place’ sort of thing.
Then there’s what might happen in the event of a Trump victory. It would be a terrible result that would put an odious person in charge of the US with probably disastrous results, but, in a democracy, we’d have to ‘respect’ the decision.
That make sense?
@alan
Nasty little Michael Foot story from last week’s news.. Nazi fan bros thought it was fun to deface his gravestone with swastikas and offensive profanities. Because he was an anti Fascist. Whatever you thought of him, he did not deserve this. I can imagine how proud the Nazi babies were going on Facebook going, ‘Look how awesome we are, we wrote c–t on an old mans grave! Hi five!’ Sick.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/686054/Memorial-former-Labour-leader-Michael-foot-vandalised-graffiti-swastikas
http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/14596364.Right_wing_extremists_vandalise_Michael_Foot_memorial/?ref=arc