Busted, by Bob Connally

Over the past several months I had avoided writing or saying anything about this topic because it is absurdly hot button at this point and there seems to be no way to express an honest opinion about it without people from one side or the other jumping down your throat and trying to internet-kill you. But after speaking with a friend of mine, she encouraged me to just go ahead and share my many thoughts because, boy, do I have them. As you may have guessed I am referring to the remake of Ghostbusters.

So for some background, anyone who has been friends with me long enough knows my love for the original 1984 film, which I’ve realized in the past couple of years, really is my single favorite movie of all time. Yes, I rate it even higher than the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Jaws, which are all movies that I can never, ever tire of watching, not because of nostalgia but because they are genuinely incredible movies that seem to somehow get better with each passing year. The reason I rate Ghostbusters just a little bit above those though is that in addition to being just as entertaining and engrossing as those films, it’s incredibly funny. Funny in a way where no matter how many times I watch it I still laugh throughout. It just gets to me even more than it did when I first watched the VHS of it I got for my sixth birthday in 1988. Obviously, many of the jokes go over a six-year old’s head but as I got into my twenties and now thirties it just got better and better. My feelings about more entries in the series for a long time had been that I didn’t think making a Ghostbusters 3 was a particularly good idea. Ghostbusters 2 is fine but I think it just illustrated how the original movie really was a case of lightning in a bottle. It’s a film that blended so many genres and styles that shouldn’t work together and it managed to somehow balance everything perfectly, while primarily being an intelligent, cleverly written character and dialogue driven comedy. The first film is something of a miracle when you really think about it (and God knows I have) and Ghostbusters 2 has all of the same people involved but it never recaptures that magic.

Still, it got to a point where I would find myself on an almost annual basis saying, “Oh, it must be January because Dan Aykroyd is saying they’re going to start shooting Ghostbusters 3 in the spring.” It was always the same story though. The script had been written by people with lousy track records and Bill Murray didn’t want anything to do with it. So I never felt like any movie they made was going to turn out to be terribly good, let alone any kind of worthy successor to the original. I’ve said in the past that as a movie fan I no longer get aggravated if a remake or sequel is made that I think is a dumb idea. That’s just what Hollywood does now and they won’t be stopping any time soon and I don’t want to be an angry film fanatic. If I see a trailer for a movie that I think looks terrible or just doesn’t interest me then all I have to do is not see it. That’s it. It is the simplest thing. So when I heard that Ghostbusters might get remade (which I just assumed wouldn’t happen given the status of making a third film in the original series) I just figured well, if they do it, they do it. It’s a dumb idea from a creative standpoint and would purely be a cynical cash grab but whatever, that’s fine. I was perfectly content to ignore it and go on about my life.

Then it began. As is always the case with remakes of beloved films, a lot of people were really unhappy. Some (I would say most) were people who just didn’t want a movie they love to be remade and thought (as I did) that remaking Ghostbusters was an inherently dumb idea. Others were wringing their hands and saying that it was “ruining their childhoods,” which is one of the dumbest things a person can say. A movie remake can’t retroactively ruin your childhood, so shut up. Then there were the handful of misogynists whose only problem seemed to be that it was going to be four women instead of four men. That’s where the real insanity began and it only got worse when that first trailer arrived in March. That trailer that we all saw and a great many of us (myself included) down-voted on Youtube because for me at least, it was painfully unfunny. Terrible jokes involving projectile slime vomit and lines like, “That‘s gonna leave a mark.” This is where things really started getting out of control though, with Sony and director Paul Feig wanting to paint any and all criticism with the same brush, claiming that it was nothing but misogyny. Feig even called people who didn’t like it “a**holes,” with his frequent collaborator Judd Apatow saying people who didn’t think it looked funny were “Trump supporters.” Media outlets all over the internet began writing article after article about how it was only misogynist “man-babies” who didn’t like that first trailer or the ones that followed which somehow made the film look even worse. Horrendous jokes that no cast could have saved and what looked to be an over-reliance on visual effects that looked dreadful.

Things went from bad to worse with Sony and Feig continuing to beat the drum that anyone who didn’t want to see the movie was a woman-hating piece of human garbage. That’s why I got mad. From the comments I’ve read from others and the videos I’ve seen (a great many of which were made by women, whom Sony and the media have ironically pretended don’t exist, including Comic Book Girl 19 who did a fantastic video about the trailer reaction a few months ago), that is why most people who are mad about this are so angry. It’s really hurtful for people to be repeatedly called terrible things over the course of four months for not liking a movie trailer or not having any interest in watching something you thought was a bad idea in the first place, no matter who might be cast or what genitalia they may have under their ghostbuster jumpsuit.

I absolutely want to see more movies that have women in leading roles and I love what Star Wars is doing with characters like Rey and the character Felicity Jones will be playing in Rogue One. I want to see more comedies with women in starring roles and if they had really just had to make another “Ghostbusters” movie I’d have gotten on board for a Ghostbusters 3 that featured the surviving original cast members (God rest Harold Ramis) playing their original characters in small to moderately sized roles rather than in cameos as entirely different characters as they do in the remake. Get a writer-director who knows how to make this kind of comedy, like Edgar Wright instead of Paul Feig. You could cast Emma Stone, Anna Kendrick, Anna Faris, etc. One or two of them could be children of original ghostbusters. Cast an actor in his late twenties to play Dana’s son Oscar, now grown up and a ghostbuster too. Sigourney Weaver said that’s what she really wanted them to do in another Ghostbusters film.

At this point there’s controversy around every aspect of this movie. Sony is banking on shaming fans of the original movie as being an effective marketing strategy, which is beyond sickening. Some misogynist jerks poisoned the well along with a good number of men who seem to just want a pat on the back for supporting the movie (or in the case of Paul Feig, for directing it). Like saying, “Look how especially NOT sexist I am for wanting to see a movie and blindly accusing people who don’t share my sense of humor of sexism.” That’s great. Here’s a gold star. Laughing at Leslie Jones shouting, “The power of Patty compels you!” doesn’t make you a hero for equality any more than not laughing at it makes you a sexist.

In the end, the vast, vast majority of us who aren’t interested in this movie either didn’t want a remake at all and/or found the style of comedy in the trailers to be incredibly unfunny. The reason we’re so mad is that Sony and Feig have lumped us in with a small but vocal collection of jerks and that is the reason why I absolutely refuse to support this movie financially in any way even if I hear from people I trust on movies that it’s great (though I’m not hearing much of that and the solid Rotten Tomatoes score doesn’t stand up when you actually look at the mostly lukewarm at best reviews themselves. The same is true of the recently released Secret Life of Pets. Fandango recently bought Rotten Tomatoes so I have a feeling that borderline reviews will be shown as “fresh” for most movies now.).

I am also fully aware that there are people who genuinely do think this movie looks funny or they’ve seen it and enjoyed it and have just taken it as a movie rather than as a political act. I realize I haven’t really acknowledged that side of it yet because of where I’m coming from but I didn’t want to act like those of you out there who feel that way don’t exist. It’s a difference in our senses of humor which is of course, perfectly normal because everybody’s different.

It’s all really unfortunate though. I feel like I can no longer talk about how much I love my favorite movie with some people without it devolving into some bile-soaked social argument regarding its remake. It’s unfortunate that if the movie succeeds financially (which given its budget and current box-office take it probably won’t really, with Paul Feig saying it would need to make around $500 million worldwide- without China- to be a real success) that a precedent will have been set in which Hollywood executives will believe that shame is an effective marketing tool, because Hollywood can’t seem to help itself when it comes to taking exactly the wrong lesson away from the box-office results of their films. It is also unfortunate that if the movie doesn’t perform well at the box-office that they may take it as, “People don’t want to see female-led comedies,” because again, Hollywood seems to always take away exactly the wrong lesson. When really the lesson if the movie doesn’t succeed should be that people don’t want films they love remade and they really don’t like directors calling them terrible people for it.

The most unfortunate thing of all at this moment in the world though is that with so many horrible things happening every day, that a movie comedy- especially with it being a movie calling itself Ghostbusters– is just another lightning rod for social hostility instead of something that brings people together and makes them feel good. Just like Ray Parker, Jr., “Bustin’ makes me feel good,” but nothing about anything surrounding this movie does.