Ghostbusters (Paul Feig, 2016)

[MichaelB]

I must side with those who don't care for the original, despite loving it (or, more accurately, loving the animated series and all the wonderful toys) as a kid. When I watched it as an adult, Bill Murray just seemed like too much of a dick the whole time, and it wasn't nearly as funny as I'd remembered/hoped. Maybe this is why I'm not immediately tut-tutting a reboot like this?

I was never that fussed about the original, possibly being slightly too old to be its ideal target audience when it came out. In the great Gremlins vs Ghostbusters rivalry of the time, I was firmly in the Gremlins camp, not least because Joe Dante is a far, far better filmmaker than Ivan Reitman.

Which is why I too am pretty relaxed about this reboot, especially as Bridesmaids made me laugh harder than anything that the original team had appeared in prior to 1984.

[flyonthewall2983]

I can't say I think of Back to the Future as a franchise, partly because I'd rather watch Christopher Lloyd's cameo in A Million Ways to Die in the West, than BTTF III, and apart from a Cubs joke, BTTF II misses Crispen Glover severely. The first film is great after the first 15mins though.

Not to steer this too much into a BTTF discussion, but I remember taking all three films in around the same time because I was way too young to have enjoyed it in it's theatrical release. The second and third installments however came out at a time when I could, so for me they've in a sense been three parts of the same story though much later on I could tell how different the first was compared to it's sequels.

[Trees]

I rewatched the original film about a year and half ago and thought it was very entertaining. One of the best comedies from the 80s, imho.

[hearthesilence]

I must side with those who don't care for the original, despite loving it (or, more accurately, loving the animated series and all the wonderful toys) as a kid. When I watched it as an adult, Bill Murray just seemed like too much of a dick the whole time, and it wasn't nearly as funny as I'd remembered/hoped. Maybe this is why I'm not immediately tut-tutting a reboot like this?

I was never that fussed about the original, possibly being slightly too old to be its ideal target audience when it came out. In the great Gremlins vs Ghostbusters rivalry of the time, I was firmly in the Gremlins camp, not least because Joe Dante is a far, far better filmmaker than Ivan Reitman.

Which is why I too am pretty relaxed about this reboot, especially as Bridesmaids made me laugh harder than anything that the original team had appeared in prior to 1984.

Funny, when I first saw Ghostbusters as a six year old, I didn't know Murray at all and it was then that I thought he came off as a dick. I distinctly remember thinking something like "Why do they have that guy around? He's a dumb jerk who doesn't contribute anything useful."

I like his character now, but honestly, I vastly prefer everyone in other films, and when you see what they accomplished in SNL or Stripes respectively, Aykroyd, Murray and Ramis all feel chained down, especially Aykroyd and Ramis. It's still a good film, but the comedy feels like it's suppressed by the spectacle.

[knives]

I think even more then the spectacle, and this is an '80s comedy problem in general, it is being suppressed by a need for a certain degree of realism or at least naturalism in storytelling. There's no ability to make the flights of fancy so common to pre-Landis comedies and even less interest in ignoring drama to accomplish comedy, which is what makes ZAZ thriving in this decade so unique.

[colinr0380]

I'm just hoping that it turns out that the dark twist is that the new squad of Ghostbusters murdered all of the previous Ghostbusters team to take control of the building and the business and have to now fight off and trap the angry ghosts of Murray, Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Weaver et al to prevent them from taking revenge! (hence the cameos, which instead of being the usual thing of passing the baton with grace and goodwill to the next generation all take the form of "I can't believe you killed me! I would have trained you up in how to use the proton pack and not to cross the streams if only you'd just asked!" protestations!)

Of course the biggest showdown spectacle fight will be between Chris Hemsworth and Annie Potts for who gets to be the secretary!

[GaryC]

I must side with those who don't care for the original, despite loving it (or, more accurately, loving the animated series and all the wonderful toys) as a kid. When I watched it as an adult, Bill Murray just seemed like too much of a dick the whole time, and it wasn't nearly as funny as I'd remembered/hoped. Maybe this is why I'm not immediately tut-tutting a reboot like this?

I was never that fussed about the original, possibly being slightly too old to be its ideal target audience when it came out. In the great Gremlins vs Ghostbusters rivalry of the time, I was firmly in the Gremlins camp, not least because Joe Dante is a far, far better filmmaker than Ivan Reitman.

Which is why I too am pretty relaxed about this reboot, especially as Bridesmaids made me laugh harder than anything that the original team had appeared in prior to 1984.

I'm much the same, as the original came out during my first term at University. So I've never got the consensus that seems to exist in certain quarters that it's an all-time classic. Same with The Goonies and several other films widely beloved by people about ten years younger than me.

[mfunk9786]

Approximately how much respect is Ghostbusters owed in 2016?

Are you saying that it's illegitimate for RossyG or anyone else to want this film treated with respect because it is now old?

That's sort of what I'm saying, yes. In other words: The children who will see and enjoy this film weren't even alive in the 1980s, let alone sopping up nostalgia for that era, and therefore shouldn't be making their decisions based on how much respect they should have for an original film which they did or didn't see, and certainly didn't see in its heyday. We can wring our hands all day long about whether or not that's our preference as to how they spend their time, because this is a forum that's bubbling over with appreciation for pop culture that is far from new, but so many film franchises, television shows, comic books, and so on have been either remade, sequelized, and rebooted at this point that I'm surprised that this is even still a conversation topic, let alone something that's in any way a legitimate concert w/r/t a level of "respect" being paid to the original film.

It's obvious that whatever the quality of the end result, the people making this film were not out to sully it - I guess I could only vaguely understand that sort of concern if it was baldly obvious that a reboot were made to trample the legacy of the original work, but that doesn't seem to be the intention of this at all. I mean, shoot - The Wicker Man is one of my 10 or so favorite films of all time, and I still don't think LaBute was out to ravage it and show it no due regard when he made that god-awful remake. At least the intentions were, as they often are in these cases, good - if sometimes misguided.

EDIT: And if we're going with childhood favorites, I even went to see Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the weekend it opened - and I don't think I'm alone in thinking it was completely awful and wondering why he could've possibly found fault with the existing film adaptation, but was it a sacred cow because of my own childhood nostalgia? Of course not. Remake away. If the original film really is as great as one remembers, a remake can't possibly sully its legacy.

[YnEoS]

International trailer with more Chris Hemsworth

[Isambard]

The second official trailer for Ghostbusters 2016.

[Luke M]

The new Ghostbusters isn't bad. It's funnier than the ads would suggest and far, far better than the all the "I'm not a sexist but..." idiots want you to believe. Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones are the best parts to the point where you feel like they could've done without Wiig and McCarthy. The story pays homage to the original and at times too often. It feels like it's trying to appease fans that'll blindly hate them anyway.

All in all, it's good not great. One tweet dismissed the film as a Disney ride; I think that's an apt description. It has a lot of eye candy and should make you laugh if not smile.

[Ribs]

Yes, it's a very good comedy film - I really wish they had done some kind of spin to make it clear it's an (admittedly PG-13) Paul Feig comedy that happens to be a Ghostbusters movie rather than a remake or anything like that. Because the film, beat-for-beat, is considerably funnier than the first movie, but I can't really blame it considering the first one isn't really so ha-ha funny aside from a few choice moments. Paul Feig isn't interested in doing that same movie again, and it's far better for it. It's its own thing.

Spy was a considerably better movie but ultimately I'm so happy with how this ended up and I desperately hope it will do like that movie and have its okay box office numbers multiply on the good word-of-mouth. Whatever Feig does next (whether its a sequel to this, or to Spy, or something all-new), I wish the utmost success and I'll be there opening weekend yet again.

[Quot]

Funny, when I first saw Ghostbusters as a six year old, I didn't know Murray at all and it was then that I thought he came off as a dick. I distinctly remember thinking something like "Why do they have that guy around? He's a dumb jerk who doesn't contribute anything useful."

I like his character now, but honestly, I vastly prefer everyone in other films, and when you see what they accomplished in SNL or Stripes respectively, Aykroyd, Murray and Ramis all feel chained down, especially Aykroyd and Ramis. It's still a good film, but the comedy feels like it's suppressed by the spectacle.

This is interesting because at the time of its release, I remember this being the film that made Murray (already well-known and admired) a mega-star. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember Ebert even drawing comparisons from Murray's performance to that of W.C. Fields. And I think the general raves for Murray's contribution really put him over the top in terms of the opportunities the future would hold for him.

[spectre]

For the more bitter and jaded amongst us, you might find this as amusing as I did:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/ghos ... hy-murray/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[domino harvey]

Of all the things I expected to get name-checked, the Lusty Men wasn't one of them

[RossyG]

I'm avoiding this film for now as I don't want to encourage more remakes. I loved the original as a kid and loathed the sequel. I haven't seen either in a couple of decades as, unlike some childhood favourites, Ghostbusters is something I liked then but don't feel the urge to ever revisit. The remake won't rape my childhood; I'm waiting for Pete's Dragon 2016 to do that.

I'm not sure why the Tumblr feminists have hitched their wagon to this obvious flop. They seem to think women starring comedies is something new. Someone direct them to Network's excellent Jessie Matthews collection for a start. And all this "man babies in their mom's basement" stuff is just guaranteed to get backs up and generate negative publicity: and there is such a thing as bad publicity. I expect it from the polarised world of online comment, but when the star and director join it, it showed a lack of professionalism and a mean spirit. Hollywood blockbusters would be screwed without the fan-boys.

Don't reveal your contempt for your audience is the lesson learnt here.

[MichaelB]

But it's not an "obvious flop". It got much better reviews than many had anticipated (deservedly: I was dragged to it by my kids but thought it was much more enjoyable than I was anticipating), and a $46 million opening gross is hardly a "flop". True, they were hoping for something nearer to $60 million, but this is hardly a disaster, especially given the revenue opportunities from any number of secondary markets.

And I'm not sure why you've hitched your wagon to the notion that it's the "Tumblr feminists" who are the villains of this particular scenario. Reading your hugely sanitised précis, you'd assume that it's them picking on the poor little "fan-boys", who've committed no worse crimes than be nostalgic. But you and I both know that this absolutely isn't the case, especially in a week when one of the film's stars was singled out for Der Stürmer-style racist abuse on an industrial scale - which made the usual platitudinous advice of "just ignore/block them" completely unworkable.

Incidentally, I'm not sensing any contempt for the audience. The film was pretty much exactly what I was expecting from the people involved. In fact, since I was slightly too old to be the target audience of the original Ghostbusters (which I saw once, 31 years ago), I suspect I probably enjoyed the new one more, if only because I watched it with my own kids (who loved it).

[RossyG]

I naturally dislike "3rd wave" feminists, but I didn't cast them as the villains here, just as people defending something that probably isn't worth defending. It's a cash grab remake by a huge multinational that has forgotten how to make decent films. Surely there are worthier subjects of their attention.

Feig says this film needed to gross $500m (based on the old costs and advertising budget x 2.5 formula). So far, it's grossed $70m. And with Star Trek and Ice Age here and Bourne and Suicide Squad on the way, it's hard to imagine it breaking even; certainly not theatrically. This was Sony's attempt at a MCU-style "tentpole" franchise, so I think it's fair to describe it as a flop.

But time will tell. Sony announced after one day that they planned a sequel. If it arrives, then it means the film was a success. If it goes the way of Fant4stic 2 - quietly dropped - then it wasn't.

I think the fan-boy slating has been a bit of a spotlight fallacy: highlight the obvious sexists and declare that as the only reason millions didn't like the look of this film. Every faction has embittered sociopaths, but that doesn't make them the norm. It was misrepresentation that was pushed by Sony, who deleted fair criticism from the trailer's YouTube comments but left the trolls and women-haters.

Leslie Jones got a small amount of indefensible comments, but a lot of the "trolling" was down to her retweeting stuff to fans with the comment "get her." This film's anti-fans retaliated and also pointed out some of her less savoury remarks, like how white people are shit and all look alike.

On the other side, one online critic who declared that he was not going to bother this film got a load of hounding. Ironically, Comicbookgirl19, who said the same and has a similar high profile (in YouTube fandom circles) was left alone. She said herself it was obviously because she was a woman.

So instead of a pointless remake with a twist, this became a silly sex war squabble that, as always with these things, has gone nowhere. Sony tried to use this as part of their campaign, but it doesn't seem to have worked.

[Ribs]

I'm avoiding this film for now as I don't want to encourage more remakes. I loved the original as a kid and loathed the sequel. I haven't seen either in a couple of decades as, unlike some childhood favourites, Ghostbusters is something I liked then but don't feel the urge to ever revisit. The remake won't rape my childhood; I'm waiting for Pete's Dragon 2016 to do that.

You mean the version of Pete's Dragon with universally positive buzz that will be one of the overall best-reviewed movies of the Summer? Here's the rub: there is no reason to make Ghostbusters out as the line in the sand, the point where Hollywood has gone too far. It's a good comedy film that has been well-reviewed and has an all-star cast with the support of the original filmmakers. They bothered to spend money to get top talent to do their own version of it. It's not a remake, it's a new Ghostbusters film.

I'm not sure why the Tumblr feminists have hitched their wagon to this obvious flop. They seem to think women starring comedies is something new. Someone direct them to Network's excellent Jessie Matthews collection for a start. And all this "man babies in their mom's basement" stuff is just guaranteed to get backs up and generate negative publicity: and there is such a thing as bad publicity. I expect it from the polarised world of online comment, but when the star and director join it, it showed a lack of professionalism and a mean spirit. Hollywood blockbusters would be screwed without the fan-boys.

Don't reveal your contempt for your audience is the lesson learnt here.

As has been expressed above, it's probably going to break even or do a bit better than that. Your expression they wanted it to do as well as an MCU-style tentpole is a little bit laughable, I'm sorry; it was supposed to be a hit and do a bit better, ideally, but it was never going to do what the first Iron Man did. What so many decriers of the new mega-franchise cinematic universes seem to forget is that aside from the Iron Man movies, pretty much all of the build-up movies Marvel made in their first "phase" broke even or even lost money. They were investing in these characters and positive word-of-mouth, however, and it soon blossomed into the perpetual hit machine it has now become. If this gets just past the break-even point, it's probably a go for a sequel, which will in turn probably make a little bit more once all the sexism's had more time to subside and more have seen this on cable and the like.

Ghost Corps (the production company) is of course actively seeking development of future Ghostbusters sequels and spin-offs, but Sony already had to deal with the Amazing Spider-Man fallout and so has been playing it slowly, with pretty much all that's on the docket being a potential sequel for this and an animated feature. But they presumably have the talent all under contract, and that's really what's important; McKinnon and Jones are on their way to being huge comedy stars, and Feig is, other than Apatow, the single most successful comedy director working today, and I expect they'll be trying to utilize these talents to maximum effect while they can.

[RossyG]

Sony in the leaked emails have said they wanted Ghostbusters as their tentpole franchise. The plan was to have individual teams in different locations who would then team up for an Avengers style film. It might be laughable, but I'm just repeating what's been said. And I'd have thought Ghostbusters had a much bigger profile than Iron Man had before the film.

As for whether this is a hit, well here are the stats so far.

DOMESTIC TOTAL:

PRE-SCREENING: Thursday, July 14, 2016: $3,400,000 (estimated)
Opening Night: Friday, July 15, 2016: $13,729,166 + $3,400,000 = $17,129,166
Saturday, July 16, 2016: $16,395,482 -4.3%
Sunday, July 17, 2016: $12,494,107 -23.8%
Monday, July 18, 2016: $4,906,793 -60.7%
Tuesday, July 19, 2016: $6,319,332 +28.8%
Wednesday, July 20,2016: $4,253,349 -32.7%
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Current US Total Box Office: $61,498,229

===============================================================

FOREIGN TOTAL:

7/11/16: OPENING WEEKEND: $15,556,696

7/11/2016: UNITED KINGDOM: OPENING WEEKEND: $3,545,878
AS OF 7/17/2016: $5,789,444
7/13/2016: NETHERLANDS: OPENING WEEKEND: $258,763
AS OF 7/17/2016: $321,541
7/14/16: AUSTRALIA: OPENING WEEKEND: $3,565,312
AS OF 7/17/2016: $3,681,477
7/14/2016: NEW ZEALAND: OPENING WEEKEND: $456,423
AS OF 7/17/2016: $467,304
7/14/2016: BRAZIL: OPENING WEEKEND: $2,153,194
7/14/2016: CHILE: OPENING WEEKEND: $273,750
AS OF 7/17/2016: $275,238
7/14/2016: COLOMBIA: OPENING WEEKEND: $445,772
7/14/2016: EGYPT: OPENING WEEKEND: $3,449
7/14/2016: LEBANON: OPENING WEEKEND: $27,813
7/14/2016: MALAYSIA: OPENING WEEKEND: $1,014,222
7/14/2016: SINGAPORE: OPENING WEEKEND: $742,611
7/14/2016: TAIWAN: OPENING WEEKEND: $578,336
AS OF 7/17/2016: $699,701
7/14/2016: THAILAND: OPENING WEEKEND: $250,952
7/14/2016: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: OPENING WEEKEND: $424,694
7/14/2016: URUGUAY: OPENING WEEKEND: $46,972
7/15/2016: PHILIPPINES: OPENING WEEKEND: $821,153
7/15/2016: POLAND: OPENING WEEKEND: $117,638

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CURRENT FOREIGN TOTAL BOX OFFICE: $18,113,674

Figures updated here: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?pa ... rs2016.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MichaelB]

Why should a film made 31 years (Ghostbusters) or 39 years (Pete's Dragon) after the original "rape" anyone's childhood?

Seriously, unless you have some pretty heavy-duty emotional stability issues that would be better discussed with a therapist than an online echo chamber, who gives a monkey's?

I saw the new Ghostbusters with my eleven-year-old daughter, for whom the original Ghostbusters is as relevant as a kids' film from 1946 would be to me. (Or rather, I might find such a thing historically interesting now, but I certainly wouldn't have done when I was eleven.) She wanted to see it because she saw the trailer and fancied a film about an all-female ghost-hunting team - in fact, I'm not even sure she was aware that there was an earlier Ghostbusters film. Which, let's face it, is hardly a masterpiece that resounds through the ages - if it was, satirical pieces like this wouldn't make sense.

I'm pretty sure I saw Pete's Dragon back in 1977 but I honestly can't remember anything significant about it. So if my kids want to see that, I'll happily take them - especially given what seems to have been a very positive reception.

[jbeall]

I saw the original Ghostbusters in theaters when I was eight years old, and it was one of my favorite childhood movies. That said, I don't see how my feelings about it need to be affected in any way, (ectoplasmic) shape, or form by the new film. Feig's version isn't a classic, but it was pretty damn funny. I thought Kate McKinnon and Chris Hemsworth were particularly good. McKinnon's character was such an unabashed oddball that she's easily my favorite ghostbuster.

[flyonthewall2983]

If it does well as hoped in international markets, it will still be well below "breaking even" at $300 million.

[Ribs]

The piece Hollywood Reporter put up is premature and discounts other revenue streams - there's basically no way this doesn't break even, even if it isn't a runaway hit making boffo bucks for the studio.

[Brian C]

I don't understand why the movie was so expensive that it needed to be a runaway blockbuster to be profitable. There are no top-tier stars, there are no apparent complicated sets or location shooting, and the CGI doesn't look appreciably better than the effects in the 1984 film. So what the hell's going on?