Ghostbusters 2016 or: How to not write a comedy · 6:18am Jul 21st, 2016
I just went to see this movie, though, with Mad Magazine's Harry Gold, and since I am an award winning comedic screenwriter[1] and he is a professional satirist[2], and I thought you guys would like our educated opinions.
Apparently they were so interesting that a girl following us as we walked out of the cinema and up the street overheard us, and said we were amazing, so I got her number[3]. So if this is cute-strangers-on-the-street-comment-on-how-great levels of entertaining, these opinions, I figured I might as well blog about them. More after the break.
Spoilers (Duh)
First up, life pro tip: Ctrl-F plus the [ to bounce between footnotes.
Anyway. Time for the breakdown.
I want to state a point I will keep coming back to: I don't think this was a Ghostbusters movie. This was not a Ghostbusters movie. This was a Wayans Brother (The _____ Movie guys) parody of Ghostbusters. This was an SNL sketch of Ghostbusters, plain and simple, and should be viewed as such.
First thing we noticed in the first fifteen minutes is that this movie had no subtlety, which is what you'd want out of a Ghostbusters movie. The original movie was about four schlubby dudes being action heroes by way of science fiction, who go into a mundane exterminator business that happened to deal with the supernatural. The humour was subtle. It was normalcy contrasted against supernormal.
This movie is about four comedians being told to be funny in every scene, edited around forced improv where none of their reactions are appropriate to the situation that they're in.
We aren't shown they're smart. They yell science babble, absolutely, but the rest of the time they act like idiots. And that doesn't create an interesting contrast, it just shows a lack of direction. Because the characters don't develop character beyond the actress playing them, and when the actress is just trying to do improv in every scene, they're not... it doesn't work.
None of the Ghostbusters were likable or did likable things except The Black One, Leslie Jones. She is also the only one whose name I remember, "Patty". This is not a coincidence. Patty/Jones is the only non-scientist on the group, the only one with the believable motive, the only one who acts appropriately to any external input. She has the only consistent characterization. She's not pleasant to watch, but of the four 'protagonists', she was the only one I was rooting for. When she wasn't screaming or shouting.
The other three... fuck.
There's no moment they do anything likable that makes me root for them. I don't know that you're supposed to.
Kirsten Wiig, whose character's name I cannot remember, is introduced to us as an awkward, super-serious physicist who used to write ghost books with Melissa McCarthy, whose character's name I cannot remember. Melissa McCarthy is now extorting Kirsten Wiig, who is up for tenure, because McCarthy put their book online without telling her. Because she wanted all the money for their co-authorship. Kirsten wants it taken down because it's ruining her reputation, and Melissa only will if she listens to this recording they got...
Queefing. It's queefing. They jump-scare her with a recording of queefing on max volume. Harry and I are in serious physical pain at this.
In this we are introduced to McCarthy's new friend, Kate McKinnon, whose character's name I cannot remember, who is doing the cool ghost stuff with her and making Kirsten Wiig super jealous while being... deeply unpleasant. She's this wonderful mix of narcissism and sociopathy which means she doesn't care about other people, but she does it in the most oblivious and self-serving way whenever possible. She's just... creepy and unpleasant.
Harry: Her humour is... it's what idiots do to make their friends laugh, where they act like an asshole, but no one else in the room is laughing
McCarthy is McCarthy. If you want jokes about a fat woman who is extremely comfortable talking about her body with people, here you go.
The only time this made me irrationally angry is when this scene:
[Janine opens the front door and sees a policeman]
Janine Melnitz: Dropping off or picking up?
Is replaced by McCarthy instead shouting
Did one of you guys forget your keys again because I told you to pin it to your bra strap like I do.
Criminal. One of the most wonderfully, brilliantly understated punchlines in cinematic history reduced to a joke about a woman obviating the existence of her breasts and lack of social grace.
Kirsten Wiig is, at all times, grotesque. Horrendous. There is nothing more I can say.
Her redeeming character trait is meant to be her huge unrecquited crush on their receptionist, who is mentally retarded. He covers his eyes when things are loud, but he's played by Chris Hemmsworth so it's okay. In one scene they're all dancing and having a good time celebrating their recent success, and she takes the opportunity to molest him. He walks off camera, obviously super uncomfortable, while the rest of the group cheers her on because "You go for it, girl!"
Imagine if these genders were swapped. The male employer just took the opportunity to grope his sexy female receptionist, who he employed only for her looks and being too stupid to understand why he employed her, then his male coworkers, also her employers, cheered him on as he molested her in front of them. It makes my fucking head explode. And it's meant to be a positive character moment to show she's becoming braver and more confident! THE FUCK.
And this isn't a throwaway joke. This is the character beat that's meant to emphasize she's grown more confident in who she is and what she does.This is a key moment in her character arc!
The exposition moment for why she believes in ghosts is just as bad. It's handled as well as that Julian Assange movie, the Fourth Estate, Benedict Cucumberpatch? Where every time he does something horribly unsympathetic, he sob-story monologues? If you haven't seen it, check it out, it's laughably bad and a fantastic example of what not to do. Which Ghostbusters did, because sometimes it still tries to be a legitimate movie. It just... fails.
The need for such hamfisted moments also comes down to character motivations. There aren't any. They want legitimacy because everyone thinks they're frauds and loudly talks about how they're frauds, and it feels incredibly stock. If they were frauds, why would anyone care so much? You know what would have been a better way to do this? If people loved them because they thought they were an extravagant troupe of performance artists.
Which hammers home that this isn't a real movie, it's a parody. A Movie Movie. Because their motivations are token enough to keep the thin plot going as a vehicle for more improvisation scenes. It never really impacts the characters in any meaningful way, because the characters aren't meaningful enough to be impacted. At no point do you ever separate the character from the actor playing her.
I think the very best example of this is the mayoral scene. Kirsten Wiig has to tell the mayor that New York is in serious danger!
She thinks a bunch of windows are sliding doors. She tells him not to be the mayor from Jaws. Her proclamation of doom is underscored by dramatic rumbling, which turns out to be a bin being wheeled outside. She is then dragged out by security like a whiny toddler, dragging a table behind her. This is meant to be a serious turning point in the movie, and it's-
They are never wanting for money. The government antagonists are the only people in the movie who actually believe them, which renders that moot. Their academic careers are obliterated anyway, which was the original reason Kirsten Wiig wanted respect. So they want to be believed because they need that respect...?
Why? There's never a really convincing reason for them to do anything. The government believes them, says there's official coverups, and pays them to not do anything. Which, again, is blatantly a Movie Movie joke: "Yeah we've been doing this since Roswell". It doesn't make sense! If they're holding coverups so people don't know about shit, why do they hire the people who could sweep the supernatural under the rug to not do that. Because... contrived screenplay reasons obviously next scene.
Next scene is making Ghostbusters bazookas great.
The complete lack of personal motivation is probably why they don't catch a single ghost in this movie.
Seriously. Seriously.
On top of that, there's never any stakes. They're never at the risk of losing anything. Not financially, not academically.... They just sort of float through the movie until the third act where... Jesus.
There's an action scene where they fight a bunch of ghosts with their proton packs and improvised other weaponry but, holy shit, no. No. There's no ghost traps and proton packs have never been established as ghost-murdering tools. So what are they doing with them? Just... it's awful and I hate it. This movie simply didn't warrant this scene and it still happened and it's awful.
Honestly? I was rooting for the villain half the time, because as Snidely Whiplash cartoonish as he was -- See this being a Movie Movie, where there is no room for subtlety on any level -- he was the only character with any actual drive.
Hemmsworth the Receptionist is pretty solid. He's mentally retarded, his existence is never justified, but he just floats around being gorgeous and he sticks to his character. Hemmsworth also gets the only laugh of the movie out of having McCarthy throwing his sandwich away. He just says to someone offscreen "Little help, mate?" and the sandwich comes flying back. And he just winks and smiles. Gorgeous people have an easy life.[4]
Which also gets me to another point (AND ANOTHER THING!!! angry old man shouts as he waves his cane), they're never shown to be smart characters. They just technobabble a lot. They throw around big sounding technical words as if it means jack shit. The audience is meant to not understand them, which is meant to make you go "Oh so they're smart." No. Fuck that shit, I understood what they were saying and it was complete gibberish. "Beta radiation will cause a 180 degree shift in the polarity"? Go fuck yourself with that lazy pseudo-science bullshit.
You know what was great about the original movie?[5] Dan Akroyd genuinely believed in it. It wasn't a joke to him, the science was treated as absolutely real to him, and so he makes it work. You believe it like he believes it. Here? "How do we justify these women as scientists without ever getting them to stop ad-libbing comedy". It's the laziest, tell-don't-showiest, most contrived bullshit that works severely to the movies detriment.
Because they cannot deliver the lines believably, because they can't act like the people who would deliver those lines.
Do you want a sitcom-style scientists who actually know what they're talking about? I'd do what Big Bang theory did. Hell, Amy Farrah Fowler would be a legitimately fantastic replacement for Egon Spengler in quite a few ways. Not the same character, but her actress definitely has the range, intelligence and, at times, comedic timing to make it work in its original intended format.
It's a Movie Movie though. They're not having scientists play comedians, they're having comedians play scientists. It's awful.
It's why the first fifteen minutes are just a buildup to a queefing joke. It's why Zach Woods is in this movie whose sole purpose is to "toast his pants", when Silicon Valley proves he would have made an exceptional weird receptionist. It's why none of the acts or actions tie together. THEY CATCH ONE GHOST, RELEASE IT TO PROVE BILL MURRAY WRONG, KILL HIM IN THE PROCESS, AND IT DOESN'T TIE INTO THE PLOT AT ALL. IT'S JUST A THING THAT HAPPENS. IT'S NOT EVEN MENTIONED LATER ON BECAUSE IT HAS SO LITTLE RELEVANCE.
NO I'M NOT SHOUTING YOU'RE SHOUTING.
FUCK.
So Harry and I are going to watch the original again tonight, together. Should be good. Get the taste out of our mouths.
I'm going to calm down for it.
[1] Technically true!
[2]
Seen here with a jawline that could crack a walnut
[3] I then got a second girl's contacts on the bus home because I was on point tonight. I needed the pick-me-up living in the post-Ghostbusters-2016 world.
[4] There's also part of the scene here that's meant to illustrate he's so stupid by having him say he went upstairs and fiddled with some electrical switches and doing that closed the Mysterious Hell Portal, and McCarthy says those two things aren't related. But... we're never shown anything about the hell portal that tells us what did close it, so... maybe he actually did? Like I actually stared dumbfounded at the movie trying to work out if that was the joke or not, the plot was that loose and poorly constructed.
[5] Besides subtlety I mean.
Thanks to my wonderful patrons, who had nothing to do with this if you're mad at me.
Im really glad i gave up on watching this movie. Ive yet to hear anything from any one whose opinion i can usually say mimics my thought, say anything positive other then this movie is meh.
Don't compare it to the old Ghostbusters, and don't put the old Ghostbusters on such a pedestal. Ghostbusters isn't an unassailable classic, it was fun and weird and occasionally scary with pseudo science and technobabble thrown around. It was a product of its time, just like the new Ghostbusters film was a product of its time. The new Ghostbusters isn't great by any standard, but it also was fun and weird and occasionally scary with pseudo science and technobabble thrown around. AND Ghostbusters had some body humor jokes in it, too. I enjoyed the old Ghostbusters in equal amounts, if not a little bit more thanks to the lens of nostalgia. But let's not kid ourselves about the old Ghostbusters being so much better. Tell me where any character development happens in the old Ghostbusters. Very little, isn't there? New Ghostbusters had very little as well, but the core of the story was about two friends who had parted ways coming back together and reconciliation. There's absolutely character development in New Ghostbusters.
I stress, New Ghostbusters wasn't an incredible movie. But it did a good job of being fun and accessible, and it is a movie that, if I had kids, I could see them enjoying. Just like we, as kids, enjoyed the original Ghostbusters.
MrNumbers, I get the feeling you didn't enjoy this movie.
I fucking hate Melissa McCarthy.
Which sucks. I've seen the one where she goes on a road trip with her grandmother and the one where she accidentally a spy, and they were good.
Also, there's a black lady because she's black. They're all women because feminism. Third Wave, to be exact. Where rape is a joke if perpetrated on a man.
I had less than zero interest in this film before this.
Now? NOW!?
According to Einstein, the level of hyped for this film I have you'd think it was Pacific Rim. (For the unfamiliar, I'm invoking the theory posited wherein if you travel far enough in a straight line you'll come back around eventually. As In my level of fucks given has hit such a low number that the universe freaked out and it's come back as infinite fucks. Much like Ghandi's aggression.)
I also heard that the "funny" ones were the two that weren't the black lady or Melissa McCarthy.
(Also, before anyone says anything, Pacific Rim is one of the greatest movies of all time. From the get-go, you're informed the entire point of the movie is to have Getter Robo punch Godzilla in the face. There's just enough extra to justify the plot point of "giant robots punching giant monsters". The only promise made by the film is that at some point Godzilla is going to get his shit wrecked by Optimus Prime. It follows through on all promises 100%. The rest of the film is literally an assemblage of tropes to push together a giant robot and a giant monster.)
4104256
If it didn't want to be a Ghostbusters movie, it should not have been a Ghostbusters movie.
I've been referring to this movie to friends as "Pixels 2"
Again, watching the original tonight, I'll get back to this comment when I've refreshed my opinion on the original Ghostbusters. But let it be said that I was comparing it scene for scene in the cinema with Harry, so my knowledge of it isn't just a nostalgic blob and an impression of an emotion.
4104256
Also, as an aside, this movie was eleven years old when I was born. I'm only 21, mate.
Just for a moment, I want to appreciate the irony of calling this an SNL sketch of the original. xD
I get what you are saying, though as I have not seen the movie I will not say whether I agree or not. But your choice of wording there kind of tickled me.
4104274
There are tons of big comedy/action films where all or most of the main characters are male. I have no problem with movies daring to do what this remake did. Some of them will suck and some of them will be okay and some will be great! But we aren't going to get female-led movies that don't suck if there aren't any being made.
4104252
Yeah, of the reviewers I trust, the highest praise I've seen of this film is "C+, not worth getting worked up over" with many others more negative.
I mean, yo, that's some pretty impressive dexterity right there, but for real, she needs those to see, you should probably give them back
4104387 That's stupid.
It has a female cast because feminism. It wasn't decided on because it would work or make sense, but because they'd be badmouthed if they didn't.
4104274
You have just made me want to watch Pacific Rim more than any review has made me want to watch a movie ever. Mind you, I'm still not expecting a good movie... But I do expect a fun one now.
4104427 It's Guillermo Del Toro.
It has Jax, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, and Idris Elba in it.
4104416 I'd say I see what you did there, but MrNumbers got my contacts too.
4104423
How is that a bad thing? Have female actors did not kill this movie. Shitty writing killed this movie. In fact, shitty writing is what kills most movies. Because writing is easy; writing well is hard.
4104439
You had me a Ron Perlman. Actually, you had me at "Godzilla is going to get his shit wrecked by Optimus Prime," but Ron Perlman seals the deal.
4104256 ,
The original Ghostbusters was funny. It was funny because the writers set up a set of assumptions within which there was a very real and serious threat to Mankind, and then created a very odd group of characters to fight it. The humor stemmed from the characters being their own quirky selves against this background of cosmic horror. It actually worked the same way that the humor in Hellboy does, even though there the humor is pure comic-relief. In neither case was the humor forced.
The pseudoscience was employed consistently, which is how one establishes verisimilitude. Even the techno-fix at the end ("cross the streams") was foreshadowed earlier in the movie, thus keeping it from being an Ass Pull at the end.
Actually, rather a lot does. Peter, the cynical con-man, discovers that there are real things out there worth fighting for. Ray, the dreamer, discovers that he has to be serious about his dreams lest they become nightmares. Egon, who has insulated himself behind hyper-intellectualism, makes real friends and falls in love. Winston, who comes in totally naive about this whole world, learns about it, being a standin for the audience there.
Eh, I enjoyed the first two thirds of the movie as just a Ghosbusters-themed comedy, though it going all BIG-EXPLODEY-ACTION FILM!!! all of a sudden at the end really felt off. There were lots of individual moments that I really did enjoy, and Chris Hemsworth was hilarious in many of his scenes (even though I felt like they were excessively leaning on the "stupid" button for his character).
But, no, it wasn't as clever or subtle as the first movie.
The first Ghostbusters felt like the story came first. Like, they sat down and wrote the best movie they could first thing, and then found the intrinsic humor in it. Ghostbusters wasn't a comedy, it was an adventure/horror story that happened to have a great deal of humor in it. The reboot did the opposite. It was a comedy movie that happened to have ghosts in it. That's why it didn't really work as well, in my opinion.
The one thing that annoyed me the most, honestly, is that it's a reboot. The events of the first two films didn't happen in this movie. Which made it feel a little awkward every time they threw a reference from the original at me.
4104443 if it weren't female cast because feminism, it wouldn't have Melissa McCarthy and might have had a chance at being decent.
4104450 An oil tanket is used as a baseball bat.
4104443
I think the point Dieselpunk is trying to convey (not taking sides here) is that the driving reason the cast was female was because they wanted to get female actors, not that they wanted to get good actors.
Even if the original Ghostbusters crew were female, it wouldn't matter (much) because they were actors that worked well together, just happened to be female.
4104256
Just got back from watching Original Ghostbusters, can confirm laughed at every beat I was supposed to, thoroughly enjoyed the construction of the movie.
Peter Venkman was a conniving con artist with a crush on Sigourney Weaver. His drive to legitimize himself and his business was an attempt to validate himself for her and win her over.
Egon Spengler was a dead serious nerd who quietly engineered their equipment offscreen. He was dry, monotone, and always deadly serious.
Ray Stantz is a huge goddamn supernatural geek who reacts to everything with childlike wonder and enthusiasm, and rattles off technical jargon in a manner that is instantly digestible and relatable to the audience: It's not there to confuse or intended to go over their heads to show he's smart, but more a precise vocabulary for things the audience understands to emphasize his passion and enthusiasm for his work.
None of these characters are straight men. However, they're all three-dimensional enough that they act as straight men to the other, one at a time per scene, depending on whose quirks are most at play. For instance, consider:
Like, the joke isn't that they don't care about the wellbeing of their friend: They care more about him, arguably, than he cares about them. The joke is that their reaction to the situation is completely appropriate relative to their characters, but not to Venkman. And it only works because Venkman had a moment of genuinely fearing for his life and we, as the audience, were apprehensive of it. The sliming moment is treated with the format of a horror scene.
Then this pendulum will swing back the second Venkman is in the presence of a female, and suddenly they're the reasonable and responsible ones.
This is opposed to Kate McKinnon, who had no discernable character beyond 'obnoxious sociopath', who reacts inappropriately to every situation. There is no contrast or established normalcy for her inappropriateness to scale off. There is no seriousness or danger for her inappropriateness to seem inappropriate to. And there is no situation where she is capable of playing the straight man for someone else to bounce off of.
I could do this sort of breakdown for literally, and that is not an exaggeration because that's what I've spent the last four hours now doing, every single scene of these two movies.
Considering doing a for-Patron stream somehow at the end of the month, watching both movies side-by-side and contrasting them, explaining why my opinions are so black and white. Have some live chats so people can tell me why I am wrong. I need some humility in me, I reckon.
4104508
1) Those references to the original were usually outright insulting, as a kicker
2) I just didn't laugh. None of the humour, I found, was tasteful or clever. Which is what I wanted out of a Ghostbusters movie.
Just... lines like that. It's absolutely serious. The formality of it underscores a lot about his characterization. And the juxtaposition of it made me guffaw raucously.
In the 2016 take, when confronted by the Stay Puft man, he's a balloon that squishes them. There is no sense of danger or tension about it. And they're saved by a non sequitur and a Swiss army knife. And we're supposed to believe the badass statement coming from the girl who just got dragged kicking and screaming hysterically out of a restaurant.
3) In the original movie, they were universally nice to each other. They were unabashed friends. There was none of that chemistry in the reboot.
4104529 I don't know, I feel like you and I watched a very different reboot to the Ghostbusters. I think the new movie IS weaker, overall, but there was still good chemistry between characters. Kate McKinnon is a bit of an aspergers type out-of-touch character, but I never got "sociopath" from her, she just has a set of interests and she's ultra devoted to her engineering, without really considering things realistically. Her moment at the end where she admits that she's never had people she considers friends and the awkward delivery speaks volumes.
The old Ghostbusters had much more subtlety, but I tried really hard to not compare the two. Maybe I walked into the theater with such poor expectations and so determined to NOT let it "ruin" the old Ghostbusters that I allowed it to just be another movie. Actually, I may have done exactly what you're doing now by calling it "Pixels 2". I separated myself from the old Ghostbusters. I didn't watch the original in preparation. I'm glad I didn't, because if the old Ghostbusters was fresh in my mind, I'd have problems enjoying the new movie.
I have to agree, though, that Wiig and McCarthy kind of fell flat for me with a few exceptions, and the movie rode on the shoulders of Leslie Jones. She was good, and her moments were super funny and solid. And Chris Hemsworth was a surprise for me, and was pretty much hilarious. The villain was pretty "eh", but it's not like Gozer or Zuul got up to very much.
I guess I'm not trying to argue that the movie is great. It isn't. But I think it has merits.
Super finally, as to you being younger, that's actually a surprise to me, as the majority of people I see vehemently decrying the new Ghostbusters are in or around 30, and remember the old movie far more fondly.
I think, though, that part of your problem with the film was that you went in as a critic and went with someone also acting as a critic. I propose that, perhaps l, you both fed on one another as critics and did not allow the movie to just be an experience. I don't think you would have enjoyed the movie THAT much more because of it, as it was a only middling experience, but I think that, by placing yourself as a critic and sitting alongside a fellow critic, you both may have colored the other's experience. That, and of course, taste, which cannot be accounted for. I will admit that I do not have a great taste in movies, and you probably have at least a better taste in film than I. I maybe just find the good in an otherwise bad film? Maybe.
4104427
The Honest Trailers Guy had a great take on this one, calling it "either 'the most awesome dumb movie ever made', or 'the dumbest awesome movie ever made'."
It was a good movie because it did exactly what it was supposed to. It had giant robots fighting giant monsters. It payed homage to the giant robots and kaiju genre insofar as it is a genre - to the point of calling the giant monsters "kaiju". It has a cast of interesting and varied characters which get a surprising amount of drama and development, while not distracting from the giant robots and monsters (I'm looking at you, Godzilla). There are probably plotholes, but (with one possible exception) you won't notice until after it's done because you're too busy watching a giant robot beat a kaiju with a freight-ship.
4104581
It absolutely would have at the start of the movie. It was not, so instead it was just jarring and inconsistent.
I just graduated with a film degree this month I need to validate my existence
4104529
Oh, I agree with your every point, don't get me wrong... but I did find myself mildly entertained through some of the movie. It's just that it works better as a mindless* comedy than it does as a Ghostbusters reboot.
*Because it's a movie that aspires towards being smart without actually being smart.
It probably helps that I had extremely low expectations going in.
Speaking of Chris Hemsworth's character... Kevin, I think? I'm reminded of the film Tropic Thunder. In that movie, Ben Stiller's character (Tugg Speedman) was an actor who tried to make an Oscar-bait film called Simple Jack (spoiler alert! He ended up not getting the Oscar).
There was one scene I recall where Simple Jack was trying to catch butterflies... not with a butterfly net, like you'd expect, but with a hammer. I would assume this was Tugg's attempt to underscore how "simple" he was. Simple Jack is how an idiot sees the mentally retarded.
Kevin reminds me of that. The entire time, I was expecting a third-act reveal about how he was actually very clever and was secretly working with the main villain. I was mildly disappointed that it didn't happen because, as predictable as that might have been, it would have been better than Kevin really having that level of plot-enforced stupidity.
Hemsworth did a great job selling it, though. Kudos to him for being the funniest person in the movie.
I really should go re-watch the original... I haven't seen it in quite a few years. I wonder if it's on Google Play?* I should check that... The only copy I currently have is on VHS, and I honestly don't even know if my VCR still works.
*Yay, it is!
This rambling post brought to you by an early-morning lack of caffeine.
4104627
Thank you for reminding me of the existence of Tropic Thunder
We're s'posed to be mad at you?
4104643
No problem. It was the best comedy that came out that year, in my opinion. So stupid, but in such clever ways.
4104611
That is totally fair. I'd imagine if I knew more about film, I'd enjoy dumb blockbusters like this way, way less. I took one solid film class in college, so I know a few things. Modern film has nothing on classic film, I have to try not to think about the camerawork in new films because that's what really stuck with me from the class. Nothing is allowed to be subtle anymore.
The film is a nothing. It's mediocre at best, outright insulting to my intelligence at worst. There's nothing beyond the two-dimensions of the film to any of these characters.
However, there's great fanfic potential, since they gave me absolutely nothing to root for an expansion on in this movie.
I'd like to say I was surprised the movie was so terrible... but I can't, because there is no way I could expect anything passable from any of the actresses of this movie, let alone all four of them.
Words cannot describe how awful I find all these actresses to be. I literally hate the acting careers of each and every main actress in this movie, and whichever monster gave these women the main roles deserves to be flogged.
RIP Ghostbuster Franchise. You will be missed.
This review reminds me that I should probably get around to watching Sucker Punch.
I think that that was a movie with female protagonists as well as having robot-samurai with miniguns.
Well somebody just watched Half in the Bag.
4105829
Let it be said my only flaw as a human being is that I could not agree with them more, and theirs that they couldn't argue some of these points as specifically or in an Australian accent.
4105376 Don't. It's actually worse.
I have no idea how Zack Snyder still finds work after producing that videogame-cutscene fever dream.
4105837
Yeah they were pretty much on the money with this one, as usual.
I saw it with a friend of mine and was similarly disappointed. I loved Spy a lot, and liked Other Space quite a bit, so I thought this might have a chance, but nope! It was a frustrating mess. So many elements that could've worked, but didn't, or weren't allowed to by the constraints of one of theeee most generic action shlock storylines I've seen since... Sony's last disastrous attempt at a franchise.
Ugh. I don't get how Spy could have so much shit done right - with character moments kept consistent and jokes set up for satisfying payoffs and weird, unexpected gags - and THIS to just hurl everything into a blender and drop the mess halfway through for a slapped-together finale to drive it right over the edge.
Also holy shit did that Slimer thing cime out of nowhere. What the fuck was that?
4112265
I get the distinct impression you have mistaken both the tone of and conclusion drawn by my post - maybe due to replying before reading the entire thing. I'd suggest you take a moment to reread, maybe check out the video I mentioned so you can better understand the points being made - his and mine - and get back to me when you're not nursing a superiority complex.
4112374
While I may well be mistaken - and indeed, would welcome being so - the superiority complex was indeed directed at the "offending part" you mention, and the following. I hope you will pardon me being frank when I say that the entire sentence read as presumptuous and self-aggrandizing.
You opened with an assertion about the depth of the film - which I may well agree with; we've not yet fleshed that out. But your follow-up, the second sentence, didn't defend the notion; there was nothing you put forth to try and demonstrate depth. Instead, you attacked those who take the opposing position. And when you did so, you phrased it as their opinions necessarily being from a lack on their part - if not in intellect, then in their assumptions. You attacked those who disagree with you rather than their position while trying to make it seem like your own position must be the correct one by default. To make it sound like your views or expectations were the correct ones, and any opposing conclusions can only arise from being mistaken in that.
I'm afraid your reply has not dissuaded me of these impressions, especially thanks to its final sentence:
You've implied the same thing here, assuming that folks could have no better reason to call it "stupid" than that it's an action movie and they're not giving it a chance. Indeed, if you're talking about what I've posted, you've rather made a straw man of my point.
If you'll forgive a bit of playful sarcasm, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when someone mischaracterizes my position and commits Bulverism rather than supporting his own position.
So glad I didn't see it; am I allowed to cry though?
4112486
A bit late I suppose, and I'm sorry for that, but I'll see what I can do. To make a long story short, there is a fair bit that can be argued to be style over substance, or just plain silly. The scene with the Newton's cradle, the three-armed mecha that doesn't do anything, a surprising number of scenes with the badass black-market dealer, the reveal of the sword especially after beating the thing with a cargo carrier, basically every unaligned three-color holographic computer monitor, the amazingly slow-charging plasma cannons - that sort of thing. Now, that's not to say it doesn't have substance to it, or excuses for some of these things; I want to stress, I quite enjoyed it, and it was nice to see the level of world-building they put into the setting. But when folks call it "dumb", it's going to be because there's a lot of silly and awesome things which aren't the most sensible - but the film would be worse without. The entire thing was a glorious love-letter to the kaiju movies of the past, has fun fight scenes, surprisingly well-developed characters, and enough meat that it doesn't ever feel like an excuse plot just to get the giant fighting robots out.
Now I agree, some folks probably didn't appreciate some of the cerebral aspects, pun intended. But I'd still say there area few things in it that are stupid or silly, but are awesome enough to let by. I still highly recommend it.
4137922
Glad to help. Sorry if I was a bit terse in my earlier posts.
My sister went, said it was more or less just taking the name and then doing whatever they wanted with it, with some weak cameos to try and tie it into the franchise.
Uwe Boll-like in nature really
Are you kidding me?! All those years of him being a holdout and he finally agreed to be back in the movie just for a cameo like that??
Aughhh..... I just died inside.... Not 'a little', I just fully died inside.... ;~;
4277972
In Bill Murrays defence he enters the scene, sits in a chair and stone faces the rest of it. This is the closest he could get to outright protest without violating his contract.