Why Sony, why? :(

[tuna]

You wrote:

"No matter who started what there is simply no excuse for knee-jerk labeling of people who dislike or didn't want to see the movie as misogynists. And to see this in print is pretty repulsive."

http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/ghostbusters-reboot-movie-critic-refuses-to-review/ (obviously sarcastic title needs no further explanation)

If your reason for not wanting to see the movie is that women are the Ghostbusters (and not because the movie looks unfunny, your bored of CGI, you rather spend your time watching something else, etc) you probably are a bit misogynic.

 

[Exophase]

You wrote:

"Disliking the new Ghostbusters doesn’t make you sexist. Hell, I am not particularly excited for the movie (although seeing an extended scene at CinemaCon made me more hopeful). But if you’re raging about it - if you’re angry enough to call a boycott, to make a video drawing a line in the sand - maybe you should consider where all of this anger is coming from."

So I do not think your first link qualifies.

He said flat out that the root of James Rolfe's issues with the movie is that the leads don't like like him. And I don't think he's saying the problem is that they're not James Rolfe clones.

James didn't rage about it. He didn't call a boycott. He didn't "draw a line in the sand." He wasn't angry. He made a video explaining why he was disappointed after years of following all sorts of news and drama over a Ghostbusters sequel the end result is a total reboot with a new cast that looks pretty shoddy. Saying that he's not going to see it is basically saying that after years of hoping for something out of this franchise he's done, he's lost interest with it. And it's something people were making a lot of fuss over so it makes sense that he would want to weigh in given that I'm sure lots of people were asking him, and lots more were going to nag him for a review later.

In other words, he said he didn't like how the movie looked and wasn't going to see it.

Regardless of whether his reasons were objective, rational, or relevant to anyone, there's nothing, absolutely nothing that would suggest misogyny.

So yeah, I suppose Devin Faraci is saying you're not necessarily a misogynist for not liking this movie.. so long as you keep this to yourself while everyone else talks about how culturally significant this movie is. Meanwhile Devin will be sure to keep you posted with every little thing HE thinks is repugnant with the world.

If your reason for not wanting to see the movie is that women are the Ghostbusters (and not because the movie looks unfunny, your bored of CGI, you rather spend your time watching something else, etc) you probably are a bit misogynic.

What does that have to do with anything? James Rolfe never said anything like this. He gets called a misogynist anyway. I gave you four examples.

A lot of people, many of whom write for popular websites, are more than willing to ASSUME that someone is a bigot because they can't understand or agree with their reasoning for not liking something. Therefore their explanations must be lies and covers.

 

[tuna]

http://411mania.com/movies/the-411-douchebag-of-the-week-the-angry-video-game-nerds-critics/

"Doesn’t that lack of a boycott show that Rolfe is just like all of the other misogynistic douchebags roaming the internets?"

The above article defends the "critics". The above quote is just rhetorics.

 

[tuna]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...he-online-reviews-of-tv-shows-aimed-at-women/

"And then there’s “The Angry Video Game Nerd,“ a misogynistic web show whose sycophantic Wikipedia entry made me pine for hemlock in my coffee."

This last article I find especially disgraceful for all sorts of reasons. It is unfortunately fairly emblematic of much of the media today. Very sad to see it on a site like 538 of all places.

Several other articles hit him with more generic insults like being a pants-shitting man-baby or what have you, without going

That was a really interesting article that had nothing to do with the new Ghostbusters movie.

 

[Exophase]

That was a really interesting article that had nothing to do with the new Ghostbusters movie.

James Rolfe was called a misogynist in the article by someone who clearly hasn't ever watched a thing he's done. Guess why.

You asked for examples.

The above article defends the "critics". The above quote is just rhetorics.

I'll give you that, I didn't read far enough into it to see it was being sarcastic. Poe's Law at work.

 

[zed]

The funny thing about the ghostbusters reboot and all the hate is, why wasn't there this hate level with the hundreds (& I mean literally of remakes/reboots) before? PS Don't bother answering, its rhetorical

 

[milk]

Don't nostalgia fanboys always complain about every single reboot ever made?

 

[Exophase]

The funny thing about the ghostbusters reboot and all the hate is, why wasn't there this hate level with the hundreds (& I mean literally of remakes/reboots) before? PS Don't bother answering, its rhetorical

I know you said not to bother, but there really is a substantive difference.

Not because Ghostbusters is perhaps the beloved movie to be remade during this craze, although that may be true. But because there isn't this big back and forth between both sides that escalates everything further and further. When people were complaining about how terrible the TMNT or Total Recall or Robocop remakes/reboots looked - and lots of people did - there wasn't any outcry about how it was a product of whiny entitled baby fanboys or disgusting bigotry, or about how the movies were social progress and people hating on it were on the wrong side of history.

This stuff is seriously not one-sided, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. If the media didn't have a hernia over this the whole thing would have stayed much quieter. Most people wouldn't have even known that it was a thing.

 

[Clukos]

Isn't it really obvious why the movie is getting such strong support and hate? It's not even about the movie. The pr people knew exactly what they were doing, they put the crazies from each side to fight it out on the internet, then label people accordingly to invalidate any form of constructive criticism and you got a winner. Too bad it didn't really pay out in terms of box office success, but at least it generated some buzz, eh? More than this movie deserves anyway.

And to clarify what i said above, the main reason i find this "gender war" disturbing is because it is highly exploitable. It's just too easy to make people angry at each other nowadays, and it's mostly all done for monetary profit, so easy to forget about that when you are so invested into it too. I highly doubt Paul Feig and Sony wanted to change social views on lead women characters with this movie, else they would have put more care and love into those characters instead of putting so much effort into the pr political agenda this movie seems to be all about; hence, internet drama.

 

[Exophase]

Isn't it really obvious why the movie is getting such strong support and hate? It's not even about the movie. The pr people knew exactly what they were doing, they put the crazies from each side to fight it out on the internet, then label people accordingly to invalidate any form of constructive criticism and you got a winner. Too bad it didn't really pay out in terms of box office success, but at least it generated some buzz, eh? More than this movie deserves anyway.

And to clarify what i said above, the main reason i find this "gender war" disturbing is because it is highly exploitable. It's just too easy to make people angry at each other nowadays, and it's mostly all done for monetary profit, so easy to forget about that when you are so invested into it too. I highly doubt Paul Feig and Sony wanted to change social views on lead women characters with this movie, else they would have put more care and love into those characters instead of putting so much effort into the pr political agenda this movie seems to be all about; hence, internet drama.

Yeah, I think anyone could have predicted all of this would happen exactly the way it did the second the movie was announced. And I definitely think the studio (if not necessarily the director or actors) were betting on it. There are even people who are seeing it only to prove that to themselves that their hate is legitimate.

I don't really know what Feig's motivations were with this. Everyone already knows he's done movies with predominantly female leading casts that are fairly well received without getting him scorn as some kind of feminist agitator. It seems like he was making a political statement with the casting, but it's hard to really say that either. On the one hand, it could have been a slam on the original series for making all the Ghostbusters men, to get people to ask why this was considered normal and acceptable all along. On the other hand, it could just be that he thought if someone was going to go for another remake cash grab may as well shake up the formula.

 

[orangpelupa]

It's just too easy to make people angry at each other nowadays, and it's mostly all done for monetary profit, so easy to forget about that when you are so invested into it too.

isn't its been like that since the dawn of mankind?

at least it was always like that in my country as far as I remember. Albeit the method was much more in smaller scale due to internet hasn't come.

doh my english

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Don't nostalgia fanboys always complain about every single reboot ever made?

Yes.
But if a particular reboot swaps the gender of the main characters to female, nostalgia fanboys become misogynists if they complain.
At least that's the course that the movie publisher's PR machine tried to impose.

And it backfired splendidly, if I must say.

Though I'm sorry for all the actors/staff involved that had nothing to do with these marketing moves (except maybe for Leslie Jones who is a stupid racist bigot asshole).



BTW, it seems there's a fart-turned-to-queef joke in the movie. That makes me around 46% more glad I didn't spend money or time with the movie.

 

[upnorthsox]

Yes.
But if a particular reboot swaps the gender of the main characters to female, nostalgia fanboys become misogynists if they complain.

Has this happened often? Has it ever happened?.............I'm drawing a blank.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Has this happened often? Has it ever happened?.............I'm drawing a blank.

You should read the original post...

 

[upnorthsox]

You should read the original post...

There's nothing there, I'll assume then that this is a first and is thus subject to typical first time scrutiny.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Oh I see now. You took that single sentence out of context.
Here, I'll help:

But if a particular reboot swaps the gender of the main characters to female, nostalgia fanboys become misogynists if they complain.
At least that's the course that the movie publisher's PR machine tried to impose.

 

[upnorthsox]

Oh I see now. You took that single sentence out of context.
Here, I'll help:

Well if you want to edit your post then go ahead, that's fine with me. Just don't call people out for misquoting you...... And no, your update didn't help as I still know of no other movie reboot where the male cast has been replaced by a female cast. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just am saying I'm drawing a blank in coming up with one.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well if you want to edit your post then go ahead, that's fine with me. Just don't call people out for misquoting you...... And no, your update didn't help as I still know of no other movie reboot where the male cast has been replaced by a female cast. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just am saying I'm drawing a blank in coming up with one.

This post came up 8 minutes after my last edit (which was for another additional paragraph and didn't touch that one).

How about stopping all that (not at all) subtle pseudo-intellectual hinting and write what you're seemingly dying to write?

Do you disagree? Do you think all people who didn't like the movie are misogynists? Do you think the knee-jerk reaction of the movie's director to online trolls and subsequent marketing pushes were justified?

I simply wrote the exact same as the OP, which is that the movie's marketing department tried to somehow censor any criticism to the movie by saying "anyone who doesn't like this movie is a misogynist".

Why target my post alone? What exactly was in my post that triggered you so much, unlike all the others before it with the same opinion?

 

[Exophase]

Has this happened often? Has it ever happened?.............I'm drawing a blank.

I don't think there's ever been anything quite like what happened with Ghostbusters.

The closest thing I can even think of is the second Battlestar Galactica series, which changed a couple major characters from male to female. I don't think anyone had a problem with this, it was a highly regarded show and the characters in question were well liked. But I don't think the original show was ever that well known to begin with, and the new one substantially changed it in general.

There's stuff like "The Next Karate Kid" that switched a previously male role to a female one.. but it wasn't a reboot. That movie was also poorly rated, but not very much for reasons of "a girl can't be good at karate!" I'd say audiences are generally pretty receptive to roles that push against the status quo and general expectations of roles men and women play, at least when it's done well. Since it can make for more interesting stories.

The thing with Ghostbusters is that there's all sorts of baggage behind it beyond the gender swap thing. A proper sequel had been in the works for decades and fans were constantly being teased with it; the whole concept was practically a meme. Bill Murray didn't want to do it (for good reason, he has avoided shoddy sequels his entire career except for GB2 and Garfield 2, and he wasn't happy with GB2 at all) and Aykroyd and Reitman kept pushing for it. No one, let alone Aykroyd himself, was saying to just go ahead and cast a new ghostbuster since Bill Murray clearly didn't want to do it. Which really goes to show that people associated the movie heavily with these actors, not the setting or story concepts or world mythos. So it's understandable that when they totally shift gears, throwing the whole thing out to a new cast and flushing the old characters entirely, that people are going to take it worse than they usually take meh looking remakes.

When that's combined with the perceived political intent behind the casting and the statements from the director it makes it really hard to nail down exactly what people are railing against.

I do think if another remake comes along with a massive gender swap people will take it worse than they would have if this debacle hadn't happened. It's going to be hard not to see it cynically as a marketing ploy.

 

[milk]

They should have had Bill Murray do a sex reacinment surgery and make a movie called Ghost Busty, and I'm sure it would have been a success with both feminists and misogynists alike. Make it happen sony.