Ghostbusters Director Calls Out "Assholes in Geek Culture"

[Elfgore]

And people still have yet to realize that every fandom is filled with assholes. I just listened to a podcast that averages about a hundred or so listeners an episode get "attacked" by the leader of a fan club of a band they disliked. Who then had all of his fan club members do the same. For a practically unknown podcast. I've seen football fans practically fly into a blind rage during drafting season or when a referee makes a call they dislike. You see the bad side of geeks so much because you interact with them more than any other. It is is no worse than any other fandom or culture in the world. People are assholes, you will never change it.

Bro, you made a shitty trailer for a shitty looking movie. Not only did it fail as a comedy since I didn't even crack a smile, you're using an IP's hard earned success to get people into theatres.

 

[RaikuFA]

Then why is Paul Feig at fault for kicking the proverbial hornet's nest? Everyone was riled up already.

It's not just kicking it, its kicking it when the hornets were already pissed. Pissed for whatever issue they had with the movie.

 

[Something Amyss]

And people still have yet to realize that every fandom is filled with assholes. I just listened to a podcast that averages about a hundred or so listeners an episode get "attacked" by the leader of a fan club of a band they disliked. Who then had all of his fan club members do the same. For a practically unknown podcast. I've seen football fans practically fly into a blind rage during drafting season or when a referee makes a call they dislike. You see the bad side of geeks so much because you interact with them more than any other. It is is no worse than any other fandom or culture in the world. People are assholes, you will never change it.

Disproportionate example aside, Ithink Thunk covered this pretty well.


The fact that spanking is his example is irrelevant, it's a similar methodology.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

Hey comment section, thanks for proving Paul's point. I didn't even have to lift a finger.

 

[DefunctTheory]

A lot of stuff going on in this thread. Amusing, mostly, and nothing I think I can add to.

I would just like to point out how hilarious I find it that the director points out that Melissa McCarthy, and presumably the rest of the cast, are a joy to work with because of how professional they are, just moments after showing how unprofessional he is by calling a huge portion of his potential customers a bunch of fairly bad words. It doesn't really matter how true or not it may be - It's Business 101 - Don't say bad things about your customers to their face. Hell, don't say bad things about anyone.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

And you know what the scary part is?

He's right. Geek culture is terrible and needs to be ended,

It doesn't so much need to end, as it needs to mature and leave the freaking basement. You *can* be a proud geek while still defending women's rights, and it's possible to be as huge a dork over some franchise or another while admitting that what you love so much could be approached differently.

"Four academic misfits tackle the paranormal using quantum physics and lots of moxie" in no way needs a four-man cast. Unfortunately, there's a chunk of folks out there that look at anything Ghostbusters-related and think "Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson or Bust". Seeing as Ramis bit the big one, these same folks are all set to enshrine the original two movies and declare any potential re-imagining as anathema.

I'm pretty sure that any hypothetical Gremlins remake would involve a couple shrill voices demanding that Howie Mandel reprise his role as Gizmo - nevermind how there's a berjillion different actors that could manage cute squeaks and various heart-melting coos of indecision.

Give it a couple weeks post-release. You'll hear previously incensed fans admit that it wasn't that bad. Fast-forward a couple decades, it's someone else's cult classic.

 

[Bat Vader]

There's no right side here. Both sides are equally terrible. Fieg for being an ass and generalizing and the people hating on the movie and judging it before seeing it. Ghostbusters didn't need a reboot but it got one so instead of just hating on it how about we judge it when it comes out.

Everyone thought Affleck was going to be a shit Batman but what happened? He made a great Batman and people who hated the movie said so too. Let's just wait until it comes out and then let's judge it. Can we do that?

 

[Roboshi]

There's no right side here. Both sides are equally terrible. Fieg for being an ass and generalizing and the people hating on the movie and judging it before seeing it. Ghostbusters didn't need a reboot but it got one so instead of just hating on it how about we judge it when it comes out.

Everyone thought Affleck was going to be a shit Batman but what happened? He made a great Batman and people who hated the movie said so too. Let's just wait until it comes out and then let's judge it. Can we do that?

Honestly it's probably fine to say a trailer is terrible, after all this is what they're using to sell a movie and I often remember a rule with comedy movie trailers; "These are the GOOD jokes to lure you in".

I'm sure a bad trailer has lead to a good movie, but I can't think of a single good comedy with a terrible trailer. (though I'm sure it's possible I've missed one)

 

[WeepingAngels]

I don't know too much about all this but is it one of those "girl power" movies?

 

[Mikeybb]

Okay, followup question: what's worth defending about geek culture?

Because that sounds pretty awful.

Yeah, but given that it was mostly a bit of self depreciating snarkiness pointing out my own foibles that stem from geekiness, I'd hard pushed to find cause to defend it.
Well, aside from my tat which for some reason is oddly... precious to me.
Try to take that and I'd likely bite your finger off.

Anyway.
Primarily this lack of defense stems from the following.
The factors which make up geekiness (esoteric and ephemeral as any definitions may be) aren't really the kind of things that are attacked all too often, if they can be at all.

Sure, people sometimes perceive things as an attack, but that's more about their own hang ups than a genuine all out assault on all that is nerdly and good in the world.

Take the feller in the article.
He's not attacking geeks with his movie, nor with his statements.
He's certainly not happy with the assholes who happen to be geeks, but he's not laying about with the accusation to all and sundry.
Even if he was I'm not sure it'd even really be an attack, just an ill thought out expression of disappointment that his vision of the movie wasn't lighting the fires of excitement he expected an especially dedicated element of his target audience.

An aside.
There was one thing I genuinely hoped would happen in the movie.
That Bill Murray would turn out to be playing the new busters "slimer".
Either as Venkman continued or a parody of his own cocktail swirling schmoozer persona.

 

[kris40k]

Right. So why didn't Amazing Spider-Man get such a reaction? AMS2? Man of Steel? Batman v Superman? Green Lantern? Fantastic 4?

Most of those trailers are sitting at over 90% approval ratings on YouTube.

For the same reason that Flappy Bird made its creator a metric shit-tonne of money while other, better games languish without being seen.

It went viral.

The others suck, they just didn't catch fire like Ghostbusters did.

Possibly because you don't see other groups freak out and react like this.

Yeah, no other groups freak out and act as bad as geeks. [http://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/football-violence]

Edit:

[image height=200 width=300]http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article7649879.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/PAY-Daniel-Boylett.jpg[/IMG]​

Holy shit, this guy tried to punch an eagle [http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/charlton-fan-accused-punching-crystal-7649960]?!?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

So I wanna call him a huge jerk that's generalizing an entire culture based on the poor reception to some dumb movie trailer, but....

Recently, pundits started a campaign to downvote the new movie's trailer into oblivion. At time of writing, its sitting at 200,000 "likes" and over 700,000 "dislikes.

...I wish we wouldn't make ourselves so gahdamn hard to defend....

Oh the dislikes were already around those numbers before the "pundits" started their campaign. It was the most disliked trailer on YouTube of all time before this campaign, if you can call it that, started.


OP:
Paul Feig and a good chunk of the usual blogs masquerading as news sites pull this "they hate the movie because its an all woman cast" out of their asses. Considering that the majority of Feig's movies have female leads and didn't get hate based on that, I find that narrative hard to believe. If Feig's logic held weight, The Hunger Games, Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars 7 and Rogue One would all have negative views "because womyn".

Ghostbusters has already had a rough history when it comes to making a modern movie with Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd effectively saying fuck you to Hollywood for 20 years when it came to making it. They wanted Bill Murray to be in previous Ghostbusters 3 scripts as a ghost, then they had other scripts featuring the Ghostbusters in Hell. They went with a remake because making a 3rd movie wasn't going to happen.

This movie looks bad all round. When you spend 152 million on a budget and the special effects like as bad as the live action Scooby Doo movie it spells trouble.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

He claims that the all-female cast is a mere co-incidence: the funniest people he knows just happen to be women, which is why he has cast them in the movie.

So if I made a Ghostbsuters reboot and cast only white guys for all 4 of the main characters, and said I did it because "they're the funniest people I know", no one would lose their shit?

 

[Naldan]

TBH, I was more surprised about Mr. Bogos. I thought you were dead.


Mr. Feig is Mr. Feig. Have you ever seen this guy? He's like a neo-feminism-geek, working hard to prove himself right, right here, right now (in the article).

Just try to follow the leaked conversation between him and that SONY CEO. Holy shit. The more you read those emails, the more crazy this article here gets.

 

[Naldan]

I'd be offended by this if he wasn't so absolutely, 100%, spot on correct.

"Geek culture" has shown the world that most people who adhere to it act like massive children if they don't like things. Game didn't end the way you liked? Screech from the rooftops, demand they change it. Blizzard changes the pose of one of their characters to not concentrate on their ass so much? Screech from the rooftops, demand they change it. All women cast in a dead franchise? Screech from the rooftops, demand they stop it.

Terrible.

Know of any entertainment industry where this isn't the case? Or is geek-culture synonymous with hardcore fans?

I think the problem is more that through the internet, everyone could potentially hear everyone. And most people can't handle that.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I'd be offended by this if he wasn't so absolutely, 100%, spot on correct.

"Geek culture" has shown the world that most people who adhere to it act like massive children if they don't like things. Game didn't end the way you liked? Screech from the rooftops, demand they change it. Blizzard changes the pose of one of their characters to not concentrate on their ass so much? Screech from the rooftops, demand they change it. All women cast in a dead franchise? Screech from the rooftops, demand they stop it.

Terrible.

You don't think the feminists would be raising hell if the film had 4 white men as the Ghostbusters? They raise hell when Milo shows up to speak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86uGGkkycg