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.
“This total non-tantrum-haver is taking his Legos (which include no Lady Ghostbusters sets) and going home.”
They’re coming! The trailer that they showed at E3 had the new Ghostbusters team (alongside crazy huge numbers of other characters, like Sonic the Hedgehog and the Teen Titans and the Goonies and the A-Team and and and and and…)
So if you want to have a massive Ghostbusters team-up, you don’t have long to wait. Unless you’re boycotting it because you’re a crazy MRA, that is. 🙂
@ varalys
A few years back our old gang all got together at a New Model Army gig for a bit of nostalgia. We’d all had the same thought. Try and squeeze into the leather jeans, or accept we were all now lawyers and accountants and just go for comfy pants and pullovers.
(One of my mates insists on pointing out that he’s a “punk accountant!!!” Smash the state and do your corporate tax returns)
F@ brony
To bring the law in again, it’s a thing here that before you can appeal a judge’s decision you need permission. To get permission you have to show that there’s demonstrable grounds to show the judge got it wrong.
The weird thing is, the first person you must ask for permission is the judge who made the decision. So in effect you’re asking a judge to agree he may well be wrong. But they’re quite used to that, they don’t see it as a challenge to their authority and quite often they will agree with you.
@ Alan: Ahhh, that’s why I think I stuck with the grunge look, not only can you dress yourself via charity/thrift shops, it stays comfy with age.
Just vaguely back on topic, I went to one of the articles linked at the bottom where MRA’s (I keep typing MRSA) argue this film needs to be boycotted because ladies can’t science. I laughed my ass off because my youngest sister just finished up her MSc in a science related subject and is officially a scientist as far as I am concerned. I shall show her the article next time I see her 😀
Reminds me of some other people I know, can’t think who off the top of my head.
tactic? tack? track?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
look at these highly organic and totally representational looking voting breakdowns
edit: for comparison, here’s a recent popular and non-controversial movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2277860/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
or a recent not-so-popular movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1628841/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Kat:
Yeah! If it’s not the Lord Chamberlain’s Men up on stage, it’s just a cynical agenda-driven piece of crap! And some of these Shakespeare reboots even have actual
playing the female roles, unlike the originals! Who wants to see that?
Article about the film from The Grauniad; that doesn’t really add anything to what people have said here, but here’s the link anyway…
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/jul/12/ghostbusters-reboot-reviews-critics-female-cast
@Saraphm
Tack is the word they were looking for here. (Originally from the sailing sense of tack meaning course or direction rather than the sewing or riding meanings.)
@Snowberry
Most of my issue with all the reboots is that they’re being made at the expense of new properties that haven’t been on the screen before, and I have a huge, huge list of things that I want to see on the big screen more than, say, yet another version of Yojimbo (I’m not aware of any new remakes of that floating around, but I know it’s been done at least 3 times).
re: Respect
Part of the issue is that respect can mean one of several things, and only some of them describe emotional states. Respect (1) means acknowledging that another person has the same rights as you do. This is a social agreement, rather than an emotional state. Respect (2) means treating someone as though they have authority over you in one or all areas. This is also not an emotional state, but a set of expected behavioural responses. Respect (3), closely related, is a willingness to abide by a certain set of rules and mores. Respect (4) means a feeling of admiration for someone’s person and/or accomplishments, which may or may not be combined with personal affection.
I probably won’t see this in the theater just because I have to be pretty strongly motivated to actually go out to see a movie. Also, I don’t have the best associations with Ghostbusters because I literally had nightmares about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as a kid.
I think you broke my brain. How is that even possible?
Re: the Downing Street cat: I told my older son about it, and he was confused. “Why would they WANT to get rid of him?” I shrugged and said, “Some people don’t like cats. Some people juggle geese.” Sadly, he didn’t remember the reference.
Re: music and fashion and nostalgia: I remember the modem noises! I can still do a passable imitation, and occasionally do it in my husband’s direction, which makes him laugh and join in. I still probably fall into the “grunge” category, because it IS super comfy. I mean, I have a pair of One Stars, although they’re not like my original ones. (I wish I could get a pair like that, they were comfy and didn’t give me blisters. These ones do.) I have a fondness for 50s music, as my friend group in high school went through a 50s music phase, plus, of course, Fallout. My older son knows and likes some 80s music as a result of video games, so that’s kind of fun when Queen comes up on my mp3 player. Unfortunately, he’s 17 and can get really grumpy, so he doesn’t always sing along. (It would help if he went to sleep before 4 am, but you can’t tell him that. 😛 )
re: the movie: On reflection, I might take the kids to the drive-in to see it? Kind of depends on what it’s paired with. The younger one and I watched the original on Halloween and he liked it, and I am interested. On the other hand, if we go to the theater, it’s air-conditioned, which is a serious consideration given that 90 degrees with 64% humidity feels like 102, according to my weather app, and I don’t do well with heat.
The GOP platform is officially going MRA now
http://bluenationreview.com/gop-platform-draft-includes-hostility-to-campus-rape-survivors/
Instead of responding to everybody who took the time to try and explain respect to me, lemme just say thx. I asked and you answered. I think I have a handle on the concept now 🙂
@Alan
If I showed you a picture of an elephant and asked what it was, you would rather quickly respond ‘an elephant’. If I asked you to describe an elephant, what would you say?
‘An elephant? Uhm, OK. An elephant is a… it’s a big gray animal… It’s got big ears and tusks and shit… I dunno, it’s wrinkly… 3, no, 4 toes. It’s 4, right? Makes that noise with the trunk… Oh, I forgot to mention the trunk…’
It’s the difference between ‘have you seen this movie?’ and ‘what movie(s) have you seen?’ The 1st is a simple yes or no. Where do you even begin with the 2nd? I think that’s probably where that phrase is getting at 🙂
@EJ
Can one mansplain to another dude? It’s nice you’re concerned anyway. Hugs 🙂
@dlouwe The 2013 Evil Dead reboot: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288558/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
The main character is female, there was a significant backlash from the fandom, and the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores are slightly lower than for Ghostbusters 2016. The votes still look fairly normally distributed or “bell shaped.”
The probability that a movie has a rating distribution like Ghostbusters (under usual conditions) is going to be pretty low even if we grant for sake of argument that the critical reviews were purposefully inflated. Other “bad movies”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118688/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120389/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287978/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1872181/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120667/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
@WWTH
Armored skeptic, Logicked, Sargon, Thunderfoot, Black Piedgeon Speaks, Aurini, TL;DR and such are now the new Rush Limbaughs. Called it.
There’s an episode in the latest season of Orange Is the New Black where one of the black prisoners arranges a screening of “The Wiz”, creating a division between the prisoners who are against the screening because they’re white supremacists and the prisoners who are against it because they hate “The Wiz.”
The movie’s not that good (though the stage version is great), but I have a stubborn fondness for it.
Thank God we didn’t get Adam Sandler. 🙂
Last years travesty, ‘Pixels’ was an absolute abomination. The public saw through the sham and voted with their feet. Chris Columbus is a very good director for this sort of thing, and the concept film it was based on was solid, how they managed to piss it up the wall is squarely the fault of Mr Sandler. The script is abysmal, embarrassing, racist, anti British, cruel, ableist and above all shockingly misogynistic. In other words, this was the movie that the MRA fanboys really wanted Ghostbusters to be. What Serena Williams and Martha Stewart’s agents thoughts were is beyond me (£!) Peter Dinklage’s character was without any redeeming features, but had true MRA entitlement issues. The relationship between Josh Gad and Lady Lisa, a mute video game character who was actually a reconfigured QBert was disturbing. And Sandler himself, typical entitled man baby who doesn’t have to put in any effort to ‘get the girl’ – the way women are treated as subhuman objects in this movie is off the chart.
If this movie had been handled well, we would have had a ‘new’ Ghostbusters. There have been so many failed attempts at that. R.I.P.D, Men in Black, Evolution and just a handful of examples. And yet, even the original Ghostbusters has not aged as well as some believe, whoever pointed that out about Dr Venkman’s sedatives for his potential dates, you’re right, yada yada it was the 80’s is no excuse. They said the same about Jimmy Savile. We have moved on to a more enlightened future. (Unless you’re Adam Sandler)
I’m hoping to catch the new movie tonight, so I can give you my full opinion on it. I don’t want to make it some diatribe on gender politics, because really I just want a fun film that makes me laugh and brightens my day. 🙂
To be fair, I think I can deal with the supercuck SJW feminazi liberal pansy ratings conspiracy and the hundreds of thousands of YouTube trailer dislikes. I’m still going to watch it this weekend (I’m in the UK so it’s already out). On a side note, I loved the AbFab movie! I never actually watched the TV series, but now I definitely think I will. Laughed my ass off – well, via very stifled laughter. But still.
@History Nerd
Additionally to being pretty much absent of a bell curve, the demographic charts are also completely wacky. Even something that is explicitly targeted for women and pretty widely disliked by men, like Sex and the City 2, has a smaller rating disparity between genders: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261945/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt
Also if you compare just the male ratings (which have almost identical averages, 3.5 and 3.4) you can see what it looks like when people are more genuinely rating a movie they dislike.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1261945/ratings-male
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/ratings-male
@Alan: The Guardian had a great article on old punks: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/07/never-mind-bus-pass-punks-look-back-wildest-days
I like that Jordan still rocks spiky, colorful hair.
As for the Ghostbusters film? I haven’t felt an itch to see it, but then I just haven’t felt much of an itch to go to movie theatres these days, unless it’s an event (like Trash Film Orgy, though my husband and I are having a harder and harder time recovering from triple features that start at midnight) or are oddball films that certainly NOT going to show up at a local RedBox dispenser (like the documentary on Jack Pierce we saw last October).
@ Her Grace Phryne
Juggling geese? I got the reference (I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I … collapse in tears because I’m still not over it).
I think the issue with Larry is, is he a family cat (as No. 10 is arguably a residence) or is he a civil servant (as most of it is offices)? The answer is the latter, so he stays. Which is just as well, as cats are quite territorial, so he wouldn’t necessarily enjoy being swept off to Chipping Norton.
“Back in my day we had music with danceable beats and understandable lyrics, like Cabaret Voltaire and Front Line Assembly!”
I still have a probably misplaced fondness for the old Wax Trax! stable.
See, I was born after all these 80’s horror flicks came out, and I didn’t see many of them until I was an adult. However, it does look like many of my childhood favorites are being rebooted as of late.
And I’m already experiencing the “Ugh, let’s not watch this because it’s a reboot!” stuff with things like Sailor Moon Crystal, and some actual genuine awfulness with The Powerpuff Girls reboot.
I am looking forward to the Samurai Jack reboot though, because that’s being done by the same people who made it originally, from my understanding, and it’s going to be done for the kids-who-are-now-adults who were fans of the original, and Cartoon Network’s putting it on their Adult Swim block.
I am a little sad at the thought of the Courage the Cowardly Dog reboot that was (or is?) in the works, because the original voice of Eustace died earlier this year. ; n ;
Fun story: Jackie and I went to see Deadpool for our first date. We accidentally waited until the last day that a theater between the two of us was showing it, which happened to be very out of the way and secluded, and we went to the first showing in the morning.
We had the entire theater to ourselves for the whole movie. It was amazeballs.
Fun Fact: My aunt buys every movie she can get her hands on on DVD usually, and since she has the old Ghostbusters, she’ll most likely get the new one (though she thinks it won’t be good, not because it’s an all-women reboot, but because it’s got so many advertising deals with like Papa John’s and stuff and they’re all over TV.)
How can anyone hate such pureness?!
@PI
The new PPG is bad? I’d heard it was terrible from some ‘girls, eww!’ types. I saw a few episodes, not as good as the original but fine. I’m not disagreeing, I’d actually like your take on it. Did I just luck out by seeing the better ones, or is it just a ‘different strokes’ deal?
@ Axecalibur
I found the new PPG insulting with how they handled an episode on transgender issues, but outside of that I haven’t had much interaction with it.
Also, 6 year olds twerking while on drugs. I have also encountered that. Just not my thing.