Ghostbusters 2016: A Review through Answers · 1:44pm Jul 15th, 2016

Dear public. You have asked your questions, and now I answer.

But before we go in, let me talk to you about my perceptions of the movie going in. Normally, this wouldn't matter for any other movie, but this particular movie has been steeped in so much bullshit politics and gender whateverfucks that it's pretty hard to give a neutral review because of the fact that everyone by this point has been negatively impacted by the fallout, be it due to bad trailers, genuine misogyny, or the director and actors calling the fans a bunch of man-children fuckwads on twitter.

Needless to say, I was also one of those affected. At the start, the trailers looked bad, but not TOO bad, and as a long-time Ghostbusters fan, I felt that I maybe should give it a chance. And then a guy called Stanz1984 or something like that leaked a script on Reddit, which I read, and it was pretty awful. At the start, I didn't believe it was true. But as more and more of the content got put into trailers and TV spots, the more I realised that that was what I was getting into exactly. I didn't want to watch the show anymore.

Fast forward to opening day.

I decided to watch it.

Why? Because despite all my feelings towards the director and how Sony handled this mess, I still felt that giving the movie a neutral go would be doing the movie a justice. Not that it DESERVES it, mind you, but still, sometimes it's good to be able to divorce a product from the shit attached to it, as long as that shit isn't actually harming the world in a way that actually makes a difference (because to me, bad movies being made and my 'childhood getting shit on' and big directors calling me an asshole isn't really that bad in comparison to other things going on nowadays.)

So, to sum it up:

1. I am a huge Ghostbusters fan
2. I actually like Paul Fieg and I liked Spy a LOT. I mean, a LOT. Go watch Spy. It's one of the funniest things ever, and this is part of the problem. More on this later. Bridesmaids is still neither here nor there for me, but I can't also say it's not a GOOD movie (for the right audience).
3. I wanted to see the movie, then didn't, then watched it anyway
4. I don't care about the genders of the lead cast.
And to answer most of your questions which were generally about the same thing:
5. The movie is actually not as bad as people are saying, but not as great as people want it to be.

WHOA, WAIT. DON'T DOWNVOTE ME.

Wait. Let me get into it. It's not a bad movie. It's certainly not fantastic or extremely fun, nor would I even call it enjoyable, but it's not a BAD movie. The graphics are okay. Some scenes look great, even. Some scenes I actually liked (namely, the scenes with Kevin and Patty). Some scenes are terrible. The dialogue is typical of a Paul Fieg movie, and it's halfway between extremely clever and extremely pointless.

But there's a difference. And the difference is, how much you care for it to be a ghostbusters movie.

You see, as a ghostbusters movie it's terrible. It's the most awful, unpalatable thing ever. It WILL offend you as a fan, and it will upset you. But as a Paul Fieg movie... ehhh.... it's alright. I didn't find myself wanting to leave the theater like I did after the first half hour of Batman V Superman. It didn't make me feel like killing myself like when I watched Paranormal Activity Ghost Dimension (rental). I sat through it, and I watched it, and then I left.

Now, being both a fan of Ghostbusters and Paul Fieg has given me the magical sparklepower to tell you exactly what's wrong with the movie. The movie is too much of a Paul Fieg movie.

Anyone who's watched Paul Fieg before knows where he shines the best. His movies, from the start of his career, have been parodies. And not only that but cringe humour-based parodies of themselves. His best work, SPY, is just a movie about James Bond if everyone was insane and on crack, and it is the funniest thing ever because it doesn't allow itself to be taken seriously. Nothing makes sense, and the plot breaks apart, and he writes very, very good individual scenes and vignettes for dialogue within circumstances. His dialogue is sharp, a bit risque, very rude, and infantile, but sharp WITHIN it. It's like the anti-Seth MacFarlane movie, where he's just basically being rude and it's funny because it's rude. Feig likes to write jokes but write them in layers, and Ghostbusters 2016 has plenty of these. The jokes seen in the trailer are almost all fragments of larger jokes which actually kinda work in context, I hate to say, because normally there's another reaction shot of a different character which calls awareness to the fact that they KNOW that they're being intentionally vulgar.

I believe the only joke in the movie I didn't like is still the one where Patty slaps the ghost out of Melissa McCarthy's character, and yes, that's unfortunately still in the movie although a lot of other scenes aren't. The reason why I didn't like it is because it's on that same layer - it's meant to be funny because ow someone got slapped and pain is funny.

But one bad joke out of everything isn't really that bad, to be honest. So the jokes, while they hit and missed sometimes, weren't as bad as the trailers.

But therein lies the problem. The jokes themselves aren't meant to be part of a Ghostbusters movie. They're meant to be part of a movie that might have existed one day if Paul Fieg decided to parody the Ghostbusters and made a spirit haunting movie, in the same way that SPY was a parody of all other Spy movies. That's what Paul Fieg does, and when you HAVE to take it seriously on a level that you need to take Ghostbusters seriously, it kinda all falls apart.

So that's for the humour. Let's talk about Characters.

Someone asked me this on another channel: Was Patty (the black woman) really the worst thing in the movie?

Surprisingly, and very definitively, no. She was the best thing in the movie. That's right. She was the one closest to being a character.

Literally all her loud 'black-woman' moments were in the trailers. At EVERY other point, she was being smart, level headed, and quieter than Melissa's character. Melissa's Character, Abby Yates, is the most obnoxious thing I've ever seen for a long time. I hated her. She brought no class to the movie whatsoever, and ended up as a huge shouty thing that overreacted to everything (mostly soup). Kristen Wiig's character was just as 1-dimensional, but had a few good moments towards the end. She is ironically the best when she's not with the other ghostbusters. And Kate McKinnon's Egon stand-in was just a waste. She had so much potential to be a weird quirky girl, but ended up just being a bad fan-fic of one. She acted against her own character, and didn't have anything that made her stand out more than 'trying too hard'. So yes, Patty, the black woman that everyone hated from the trailers, ended up the best thing.

Also there's Kevin, who's just cute because holy shit Thor is cute, and the villain was awful. Like, absolutely awful. He had zero motivations and zero anything to him, and spent all his scenes spewing exposition like slime from the mouth of the faux librarian ghost. Like, so much so that he had to tell the audience "You got bullied. Now it's time for you to bully them back!" as his first line, so that we'd know that he's a loser and that's why he did what he did. Not that everyone else constantly berating him and calling him a weirdo mattered.

And I think this leads us nicely into the biggest problem of the movie as a movie, Ghostbusters movie or not.

The writing.

I'm sorry, but Katie Dippold, the lead writer (along with Paul Feig himself) is just absolutely terrible. Beyond acting, which was fine because I've seen all of these girls in other productions before, and beyond editing, which was choppy at some parts but otherwise very competently edited for comedy beats, sound design was fine, and SFX is okay and even good at some points. But honestly, everything, if you look at it even for a minute, can be dragged down to the writing.

The story is so cut and paste and there is no imagination whatsoever. There are no montages of anything, so everything felt accelerated and happening too quick. I didn't believe that any of the characters were characters, and I didn't believe that any of them were friends by the end of it. Motivations, as mentioned before, were loose and sad, and the writers didn't seem to have an understanding of cause and effect. It was just about things happening and then here's the next thing. This by far was the worst part of the movie, but if you can turn your brain off, then it might not be too bad. Again, this is a big problem of Paul Fieg and a Paul Fieg movie. A normal Paul Fieg movie actually relies on this for comedy, and it works in its own context. Everything in a Feig movie is very throw-away, and very dumb, and very flippant for the sake of it. It doesn't work in a movie when you have to actually believe in what's going on. There was no tension in the movie. There were no dramatic stakes. There was no surprise, and the worst of it all was that there was no imagination. All the shoe-horned cameos were TERRIBLY distracting, too, because they were there for the sake of having them rather than them being meaningful to the plot. So again, bad writing. Just don't have them in if they don't do anything.

And ho boy, when 100% of the villain's motivations come through with grade-school level exposition rather than showing anything, that's bad right there. And I'm not even kidding. The main villain Rowan, his entire dialogue, EVERYTHING he says, is really clunky and really forced exposition. It was jarringly bad. Pacing and showing was non-existent, and this really came down to the same Feig issue.

They tried to give stories to the ghosts, much like how it was in the original, but the problem is that none of the characters felt like they believed themselves. They just threw in a bunch of Egon-type words (Class whatever protowhatever specwhatever) and expect it to mean something, without realising that Egon and Ray had Peter and Winston to even out the nerdism, and to provide a bouncing board. In this movie, it was just random science flying everywhere without an anchor, since everyone was a gung-ho believer. There was no chemistry, because no one fought with each other. There was no true danger, so no one really had their characters and personalities tested. The dialogue filled scenes in typical Paul Fieg style, simply being a long running string of sometimes-smart jokes that just didn't belong in a Ghostbusters film, which should have been more about the buddy buddy nature of them all, rather than them just randomly dancing around (literally) or complaining about soup or return jokes about a sad Indian delivery boy (which was actually funny. I loved this guy.)

So yes. It's a terrible Ghostbusters film, but it's an okay film. Despite my complaints, I still can't say I hated it or pan it, because there's gonna be someone out there who might like it. And like I said, I met it with indifference and I left the theater with indifference, but if you're able to go into it with your brain off and enjoy it on the same level as, say. Independence Day Respoogence, then there might be something in it for you. Otherwise, raise that black flag or rent it. I don't think Sony needs the money either way.

There are two things that I am legitimately mad about in the movie, however.

First is the use of Slimer. And yes, there is a Slimette, which is just... irritating.
The second is that at the end of the credits they put "For Harold Ramis" and dear god fuck you.

Final rating:
48/1389128 ghost vaginas would watch again

BONUS:
I answer your other questions (I also talk a bit more about CGI and music below, so skip the dumb questions; there are some legitimate answers below too):

NameGoesHere: In a race between a rock and a pig, should you varnsih your clams?
It depends on if you own the pig or not. Everyone knows that varnishing clams will distract your pig, and cause it to lull behind the natural tribulations of the rock. So if you wish to win, plan your varnishing accordingly.

Pickleless: What do you think a ghost busting pony would be named?
Proton Strumplet

Cynewulf: What terrible things live beneath the Googleplex?
Probably a bunch of servers that make the internet go.

Cynewulf: Will Poland ever into space?
Only once they can find a way to fit 300 people into a shuttle.

Cynewulf: What does existence taste like?
Disappointment and Paul Fieg.

Cynewulf: Why does that one Britney Spears song say you have to get with her friends to be with her? Like what does she mean? Why? To what extent?
Because she wants a foursome but she doesn't really want to say it out. That'd be skanky of her. And Britney Spears is, as we all know, a top class lady.

DannyJ: Why?
I wanted to see if there was anything in it I'd like.

Majin Syeekoh: When will your release your Lovegame single?

Timetravelling Pony: Is there any redeeming qualities?
Yes. Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) was consistently funny and a good actor. The CGI wasn't bad for certain parts where they actually didn't go nuts on the CGI. The new tech is actually quite in line with the comics (which is canonical, by the way), so people complaining about punchy things and guns should ease up, because a lot worse has been done in the comics, the video game, and other media, which the original creators have stated many times is canon. The Slime effects were pretty great. I liked maybe 60% of the banter. The opening scene was actually pretty great and had the right pacing, but too bad none of the rest of the movie was like that. There are some genuinely tense and creepy scenes at the start which I Ioved too, before it descended into cartoon bullshit.

Timetravelling Pony: Is it sexist?
No.

Timetravelling Pony: Are there original cast cameos?
Bill Murray played a debunker who tried to denounce the Ghostbusters and ended up attacked by a ghost. Dan Aykroyd was a cab driver. Ernie Hudson played Patty's uncle who owned the funeral parlor who lent them the car. Annie Potts played a hotel concierge. Sigourney Weaver played Holtzman's mentor and she did an incredible job with her 5 seconds of screen time. Hers was the best and most natural cameo. Slimer was awful. AWFUL. Harold Ramis was a bust in the school where Erin worked at. Rick Moranis wisely decided not to be a part of this shit.

Timetravelling Pony: Is it a sequel or a reboot?
Reboot.

Timetravelling Pony: Is the music any good?
Score is fine. It worked well. There were 4 versions of the ghostbusters theme in the movie and all were great except for Fall Out Boy's version which can go fuck a dog.

Timetravelling Pony: Is it all cgi ghosts or are there practical effects?
Most of it is actually practical effects. Basically, what they did was have actors be ghosts and use puppets, but then overlay ghost effects over it. The reality is, what we're seeing are actually real actors there. But they kinda went heavy on the overlay, so it doesn't super look that amazing. All the slime is practical, of course, and only towards the end does it delve into CGI-completely, including a little scene with cartoon animation that I actually kinda liked, too. The ghost mirrors were FUCKING GREAT. The main ghost is terrible. The CGI ghosts are pretty bad. The Parade float ghosts are also great.

Timetravelling Pony: Was it worth the money?
It's worth SOME money. Not full price. Maybe half.

Timetravelling Pony: Should I just pretend it never happened?
This sounds like a personal problem.

hypervelocity: Were there any good parts?
1. Everything Kevin
2. Half of the dialogue
3. New weapons (although not used well)
4. The concert hall scene (especially the basement)
5. Parade floats scene
6. Ghost Mirrors!
7. The whole opening scene
8. Patty (comparatively)
9. The lack of the stupid possession dance scene (which ended up in the credits so whatever)
10. Indian delivery boy (but that's subjective because it's like... just something and doesn't belong in Ghostbusters)
11. Holtzman when she's actually doing interesting stuff
12. Some of the covers of the theme song
13. Sigourney Weaver
14. The wrangling effects were terrific.

hypervelocity: Did you discover the secret to warp drive?
Warp engines are fueled by the reaction of matter (deuterium) and antimatter (antideuterium), mediated through an assembly of dilithium crystals, which are nonreactive with antimatter when subjected to high-frequency electromagnetic fields. This reaction produces a highly energetic plasma, called electro-plasma or warp plasma, which is channeled by plasma conduits through the electro-plasma system (EPS). The electro-plasma is funneled by plasma injectors into a series of warp field coils, usually located in remote warp nacelles. These coils are composed of verterium cortenide and generates the warp field.

hypervelocity: When will Kingdom Hearts 3 come out and will you buy me a PS4?
2017, and not until I buy myself one first. But fuck that because Nintendo NX.

Skywriter: Who is murderpone?
A banana.

horizon: What piece of ponyfic gave you your most awkward erection?
Wheely Bopper Rides On

horizon: Ummm, I mean, totally staying topical, something something cuck SJWs triggered, question mark.
Yes women can't fire proton packs down with vag exclamation slut

Forderz: Any reflections on modern society in the film? Anything of substance at all?
Honest answer. No. This is again because of the nature of Paul Fieg and how he writes his films. They're kinda vapid, and the honest quality of them is in the fact that they're just multi-layered self-reflectionary fun. Like seriously? Go watch SPY. It's actually one of the funniest movies I'd ever watched in the past 10 years, and it's a Paul Fieg movie through and through. 94% on RT, and it's the movie that made me realise that Melissa McCarthy actually can act outside her range. His movies just tend to shed light on the ridiculousness of certain genres of other movies, and are very self-referential in that manner. This is why it didn't work for Ghostbusters and he was the absolute wrongest director/writer to pick. Hell, I'd have settled for fuckin' Max Landis at this point. At least he has the love (no one let him direct though, and give him a good editor to cut out the crazy). Paul Fieg doens't DO introspective cultural or social commentary. All that woman bullshit was part of the marketing team at Sony. The movie itself is just more self-parody, but it didn't do it well because Paul knew he couldn't DO that with ghostbusters. So he had nothing left to give the movie itself.

Komodo23: Please list ten ways you decided, once you got out of the cinema and let the film and its lessons settle in your heart, you might have better spent your money.
1. 2 bars of Ice cream
2. 1/4 of Monster Hunter Generations
3. A small starbucks Frappe
4. The quickest hooker session in history
5. Watching The Legend of Tarzan in the other theater
6. Giving it to the homeless (this one's actually genuine)
7. Electricity on doing this stupid blog
8. I dunno, other funny things you can do with money. Wiping your ass with it.
9. Turning it into 1 cent coins and throwing it at Paul Feig's face to give him welts
10. Fuck, this list is dumb. Why the fuck do you make me do stupid shit like this just go watch the fucking movie you fucking hack fr

NexusDragon: Why don't you look me in the eyes anymore when we play putt putt golf?
Because I don't want to catch the herpes.

NexusDragon: But seriously, Was there more too it than Melissa McCarthy carrying the film?
Melissa McCarthy brought the film down. The film was carried by Patty (Leslie Jones), Erin (Kristen Wiig) and Thor (Thor). But yes, there's more to it. See above for a list of 'good things'.

BlueBastard: Would it have made a difference if the Ghostbusters were all men instead of women?
Genderwise? No. But specifics? Yes. Simply because there are more male actors that I fucking can't stand than female actors. If the movie had starred Adam Sandler, Seth MacFarlane or Seth Rogen (a lot of Seths, really), I wouldn't even consider watching it for a second. That's the main difference. Otherwise, the genders honestly weren't distracting at all. What was more distracting was the bad characters.

BlueBastard: Is Mrs. Slimer actually a thing?
Yes. I'm so sorry. But she is. She has no purpose in the film whatsoever except for a throwaway gag about partying. I can't even say that the scene was meant to be a dig at manhood and how Slimer needed a female or whatever. Basically, Slimer steals the Ecto-1 and goes on a joyride with it with a bunch of other ghosts. He then returns later with a Female Slimer in the front seat next to him and drives past the crew, eventually leading to a third scene where he actually kinda sorta helps with saving the world (of course, since he didn't get a single iota of character, it's not like anyone cared, including the people in the movie). It didn't feel like there was anything except for the fact that that's what you do when you joyride -- you pick up chicks and act like a tard. Didn't feel malicious, but it didn't feel necessary either. Slimer's entire scene was developed and ended within the span of 5 minutes, rather than being a threat or something to study ala the original Ghostbusters. His was a cameo through and through, and no time at all was spent on actually giving him a purpose outside of being a Deus Ex Machina easter egg.

BlueBastard: How many people were in your theater? And how many can you even guess may have found an iota of enjoyment worth the ticket price?
About 20 other people. The theater was fucking empty. And it seemed like some had an okay time. There were laughs. Audible laughs. Mostly at some dialogue. Things got very quiet near the end, though. The dick shot scene with Rowan got a couple laughs, although in its defense, that scene had an extra layer of joke on top of it. The trailers presented it as 'oh that guy got shot in the dick haha' as the joke, but really it was another thing over it. So yeah. It wasn't that bad, and it got a laugh. I think most of the people there were like me, bored and kinda just... willing to give it a shot, so why not enjoy what you can?

Nonagon: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Five

Ant-ithul-e: Was it bad at all beyond the standard boring sequel that happens for every movie, this one just happens to be a remake with girls so nerds are getting angry?
No, actually. It was slightly better than the standard boring sequel/reboot/remake that happens for every movie. In fact, I can name here a list of reboots/remakes of the last couple years that are significantly WORSE than Ghostbusters, and some which are BETTER (imho):

WORSE:
- Total Recall
- Poltergiest
- Robocop
- Batman V Superman
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Transformers
- Godzilla

BETTER:
- Star Wars The Flub Aworkens
- Star Trek
- Jurassic World
- Dredd 3D
- Cinderella
- The Jungle Book
- Godzilla (It's complicated)

Also the thing about nerds being angry about it because of it being all female has been blown out of proportion. The main reason why nerds hate it, if you follow reddit (and I have been, extensively), is that the script got leaked and the trailers are just awful as they are. Only a very small portion of people are mad about it being all women, but Sony decided to use that in their marketing strategy to make it A Thing. They also deleted all of the negative comments on their trailers that DIDN'T have to do with sexism, so that they could further this agenda of 'it's about gender' in order to distract the investors that they had simply made a bad movie. Everyone involved knew they had a turd. Everyone. Paul Fieg knew it. Melissa McCarthy knew it. Hell, even Bill Murray looked like he wanted to die on Jimmy Kimmel after they showed a clip to promo the movie. But it's easier to make up a fake reason for hate than actually fix things. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

==========

Anyway, that's it. Thanks to everyone who sent in a question. I loved answering them and ~~wasting my time on you FUCKING INGR~~

It was a lot of fun! Thanks and see you next time.

P.S. Honestly, if you're bored and have nothing better to do, this isn't a bad thing to waste your money on. It's not gonna be great, but if you lower your expectations, there are SOME parts that will at the very least, make you go 'I want to go home and watch the originals again'. And that's never wrong.

I mean... uh...

yeah. Or rent it. Whatever. I don't care. Watch SPY instead. It's far, far, far better.

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Skeeter The Lurker

Skeeter The Lurker #1 · Jul 15th, 2016 · · ·

SO, not good, not bad, just meh?

Somehow that sounds worse.

A massive disappointment that couldn't even be unbelievably bad.

~Skeeter The Lurker

KitsuneRisu

KitsuneRisu #2 · Jul 15th, 2016 · · ·

4093125
Nah, it could have been MUCH worse. There's a movie in there somewhere. I guess I'm happy because it's kinda what I expected.

I just wish that that other one came true. The one with Channing Tatum.

Casca

Casca #3 · Jul 15th, 2016 · · ·

Haven't watched it, but I loved Spy, and I second your rec of it. Based on what I know of that, you gave me a pretty clear idea of the movie, so great review!

Cynewulf