Ghostbusters Director Calls Out "Assholes in Geek Culture"

[Mikeybb]

Pundit campaign for downvotes? Have they seen the trailer? It sucks! Recut it and people will probably like it! I liked the fan recut featured by the author of this article two months ago.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166715-Ghostbusters-Fan-Recut-Trailer

That version of the trailer was significantly more likable than the other.
My instinct leaned towards 'bad movie incoming' when I heard there was a remake on the way, but the original trailer served to drive it home.
Bad as it may be though, that's no reason to chase the guy over it.
The box office will judge his work.

*spookily snipped by a ghost or something*
I don't even know what geek culture is supposed to mean. What shared culture do we actually have?

Rageaholism, a tendency to get ridiculously excited over advertisements of things we like, a collection of tat that the most committed hoarder would consider trash and the important, life saving skill of being able to tell the difference between wars and treks of the various types?

 

[circularlogic88]

Recently, pundits started a campaign to downvote the new movie's trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ugHP-yZXw] into oblivion. At time of writing, its sitting at 200,000 "likes" and over 700,000 "dislikes.

I don't want to be "that guy" but can we get a citation or names of pundits encouraging this behaviour?

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I mean, if you're against this movie, just don't go see it. You don't need to sit around stewing in your hate for it and SJW's ruining your childhood and wah, wah, wah.

That culture's rather insipid, true (geek culture is rather pathetically antagonistic and insecure, and yeah, I absolutely see that as being a largely male issue), but unfortunately this project looks like it's being handled terribly, and I'm not really making any judgments on the film itself going from the trailer.

Was this the best project to just bring back with a completely different cast and characters? Then say it has nowt to do with the originals, before then explicitly referring to the older films/continuity in a trailer? Was a hip, shouty black woman who knows the city better than the better educated white folk a great idea for a character?

This could've been done well, and then the whiny, entitled nerds would have less cause for a feeding frenzy. But it kinda looks like Sony are serving up the perfect storm for all the wrong reasons.

I can't think of a reboot that would personally offend me as much as some people seem to be offended by Ghostbusters. I guess I don't put that much stock in products.

See, you're not a real geek if you don't get personally offended or insulted by something in a film, game, book, advert, etc that you had no part in. ;-)

My own view of Ghostbusters is one of placid ambivalence. I'm sure I had some toys as a kid, maybe even a lunchbox, but it's a fairly culturally insignificant property.

 

[Bedinsis]

He actually brought the 700k dislikes into play thought and claimed that there is some sort of conspiracy at work here to downvote the trailer...

Looking at the sourced article again there is no direct quote about him bringing up the dislikes of the trailer, that is something the author of the sourced article brought up for context to the reader. The campaign to downvote the trailer is something brought up wholesale by the Escapist article.

 

[AstaresPanda]

lol a shitty reboot cash grab is getting alot of dislikes ? The trailer was horrid and did not make me even smile. It feels very forced.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

See i'm torn, because he IS right - there's a strong 'asshole' element in geek culture - but at the same time, this has nothing to do with the current situation. Assholes are always assholes, this particular movie is just the special kind of bad that inspires nominally non-asshole individuals to treat it like they're assholes. By, y'know, being bad, and cliche, and trying to be a REBOOT of a cult classic. The women themselves are all kinds of talented and funny and I was/am 100% down with an all female team, the issue is the film you've put them in looks like garbage.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

It'll be fun to see how he tries to explain away the reviews from non-geek media when that inevitably happens.

Also, anyone who genuinely thinks that Melissa McCarthy is funny has no business breathing directing comedy. This isn't sexism, she's just that awful. Weren't Tina Fey/Amy Poehler (sp?) originally rumoured for this? Oh, what could have been...

 

[anthony87]

Recently, pundits started a campaign to downvote the new movie's trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ugHP-yZXw] into oblivion. At time of writing, its sitting at 200,000 "likes" and over 700,000 "dislikes.

I don't want to be "that guy" but can we get a citation or names of pundits encouraging this behaviour?

I mean god forbid that many people just dislike the trailer because it looks shit. No, it's a deliberate "campaign" of hate and misogyny.

 

[Davroth]

Conveniently, judging by his twitter feed, Feig is kind of an asshole as well.

That trailer is just not funny. I didn't laugh once myself at it, and I have sat in theaters packed with people and the only thing that got any reaction was the scene of the african american woman slapping her possessed friend back to sense (?) while saying vaguely religious things. I didn't, it felt inappropriate to laugh at those wacky, bible-thumping black people, which is what I attribute those uneasy giggles I heard to.

I can't wait for the movie to finally come out, so we can all finally see it in all its "greatness".

 

[StatusNil]

Edit: Just in case I haven't prodded this hornets' nest hard enough, I genuinely hope this movie is a massive success and smashes all box office records. Will that set a terrible precedent that sets us up for more shitty reboots like it? Sure, but at this point the hatedom surrounding the film has become so obnoxious that the petulant rage and tears would be worth it.
Hey, I never said I'm not petty in my own way.

Well, that's half the business plan of the New Ghostbusters stated eloquently right there, "YOUR Opportunity To Buy Into The Most Epic Malicious Appropriation This Season! Come Pay The 'Fuck You' Tithe And Earn Your Gloating Rights!" What we see here is a positive result: you've been successfully Wedge Marketed.

Of course there is some truth to the backlash being about the way the producers took a classic piece of entertainment and turned it into the kind of girls-vs-boys taunt that many of us hoped to have left behind in the elementary school yard. That's the overwhelmingly dominant context that we've been presented with for this particular work of cinematic art, and Feig has played along with it every step of the way. Becoming part of the "fandom" of this movie has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of delight the original movie dealt in, but it is rather a politicized obligation to join in a petty (your word) demonstration of trendy virtue signaling. Many people resent such manipulative sales tactics, and in my view are absolutely right to. Conflating that resentment with "misogynists wanting to keep the womxn down!" is merely the mercenary fist in the Diversity glove, employed by hacks incapable of conceiving something that stands on its own as a work of merit.

You could perhaps make the claim that it's just various media weasels who are reducing cultural products into mere cudgels in juvenile identity team games and thus making it much, much harder for female performers and creators to be recognized for the quality of their work without the depressingly inescapable grudge dynamics. But as I argued earlier in this thread, it appears that major producers in the culture industries are now quite consciously seeking a symbiotic relationship with the "geek culture" arbitrators of "fandom".

 

[Li Mu]

Conveniently, judging by his twitter feed, Feig is kind of an asshole as well.

That trailer is just not funny. I didn't laugh once myself at it, and I have sat in theaters packed with people and the only thing that got any reaction was the scene of the african american woman slapping her possessed friend back to sense (?) while saying vaguely religious things. I didn't, it felt inappropriate to laugh at those wacky, bible-thumping black people, which is what I attribute those uneasy giggles I heard to.

I can't wait for the movie to finally come out, so we can all finally see it in all its "greatness".

And here is the crux of the problem, the trailer wasn't funny. After reading this article I sat and thought, "If I didn't know about the original GB movie and love it, would I have had a different reaction to the trailer."
The answer is "yes", but not in a remotely positive way.
Rather than thinking, "Jesus, this trailer sucks, why are they pissing on the Ghostbusters?" I would have thought, "This film looks unfunny and dull, I wont be watching this."

So, even if the previous films didn't exist, this version of Ghostbusters STILL wouldn't look good.

 

[RaikuFA]

I like milissa mccarthy probably a little bit too much compared to the next guy, but when the hell did she become so popular? I mean before the string of McCarthy comedies, all i knew her from was gilmore girls.

Gilmore Girls was also the last time I found her funny. My question is how she became so popular. Nobody seems to really like these movies she's done.

"Look at that nest of angry hornets, what would happen if I started bugging the hornets?

The way you framed this, it sounds less like the problem is assholes and more than nerd culture is, by default, angry. If nerd culture is such that it can be provoked like a bunch of angry animals, then there's a problem. Especially since all the hornets needed to be angered was to announce a movie starring women.

1st off The Heat is actually good. And Spy had its moments but it made me realize MM needs a foil cause she sucks by herself. Those scenes where she's with Jason Statham were hilarious.

2nd I hate to admit it but nerd culture needs to tune it down big time. I remember back in 2011-2012 I was getting harassed for... not liking what others liked. Whether it be JRPGs, manga or Nintendo I would get hate mail nearly every day for it. Even my friends growing up were like that. Just trying to play a fighter or a MOBA got me death threats for being new. There are times where I wish the community would die off or get a huge shift because despite it supposed to be "those people who accept the rejects" I have yet to see it or experience it.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Edit: Just in case I haven't prodded this hornets' nest hard enough, I genuinely hope this movie is a massive success and smashes all box office records. Will that set a terrible precedent that sets us up for more shitty reboots like it? Sure, but at this point the hatedom surrounding the film has become so obnoxious that the petulant rage and tears would be worth it.
Hey, I never said I'm not petty in my own way.

Well, that's half the business plan of the New Ghostbusters stated eloquently right there, "YOUR Opportunity To Buy Into The Most Epic Malicious Appropriation This Season! Come Pay The 'Fuck You' Tithe And Earn Your Gloating Rights!" What we see here is a positive result: you've been successfully Wedge Marketed.

...

No such thing has happened. Despite what I said, I'm not going to pay to see it, nor am I going to waste my time even pirating it. I described the movies as a "dumpster fire of cringe", and I stand by that, I simply think it would be amusing to see this film succeed because the absurd, over the top hatred for it has reached the point that despite finding the movie a complete pile of shit banking on nostalgia and gender politics, I somehow dislike the creators less than the people who have an almost religious devotion to being upset over it.
I was actually on board with rolling my eyes at this movie right from the gimmicky sounding concept, but over time I've grown to resent the hatedom around this movie for their over the top reaction.

I can assure you my schadenfreude over this situation has nothing to do with the politics involved, and is simply about being absolutely sick of people within "geek culture" taking this type of thing so fucking seriously. It's not as if most of these people were just waiting for a new Ghostbusters movie and are disappointed over the results; most of the people who are mad about this seem to think the franchise should stay dead.
I get it, we're all part of geek culture whether we like that label or not, and we probably all take videogames/movies/comics/whatever too seriously sometimes, but this entire thing is giving me flashbacks of the whole ME3 ending; yet another example of people taking things way too far.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

As neither a Ghostbusters fan nor a Paul Feig fan, I choose to wait until the final product is released and shown before I pass any sort of judgement on the film. I have been mislead before on films; I've seen good trailers for bad movies and bad trailers for good movies and everything within the possibility spectrum. It could be entirely possible, if unlikely, that the finished product is much superior to what the trailer showed us.

If the film were to fail on a narrative level, let us cast blame on the factors that truly matter: character, plot, themes, structure, things that should be the focus of attention.

But, just as there is warranted criticism of the film, we must also call out and criticize the sexism the film has received for purely casting female leads in its roles and push back against it.

 

[Gorrath]

Ahh yes, the old "Geek culture is full of ASSHOLES" shtick. Is he wrong? Nope, sure isn't, geek culture is full of assholes. You know what else is full of assholes? Music culture, sports culture, car culture, hip-hop culture, fashion culture, furry culture, goth culture, anime culture, ect. ect. ad nauseum. I roll my eyes endlessly at the parade of "geek culture is assholes" quotes. People make up every culture, people are assholes, every culture has assholes.

I get that geek culture needs some self restraint but it's not as if this is some special problem unique to geek culture. I mean hell, with the meteoric rise of geek hobbies into the mainstream the only cultural force that has been greater in the past 30 years is Hip-Hop. So until an East Coast development studio has a West Coast development studio gunned down in the street lets keep a little perspective here.

 

[Gorrath]

He's absolutely right, and you don't have to look further than this very thread to see it.

Feig: God, these geeks that have been all over me since before the casting for making a female Ghostbusters movie are real assholes.
Responders: Well you shouldn't have made a shit trailer!

Oh come off it. AS IF he's referring solely to the trailer's reaction. He's been getting shit from geeks for "ruining" Ghostbusters from the very beginning, and he's absolutely right that those geeks are assholes.

Just because those geeks in question saw the mile tall writing eternally on fire on the side of the mountain before the trailer came out does not make them assholes. This baby was always gonna suck with Feig at the helm, the fact he went with a genderbent reboot just made it suck that much harder. The only director that would make it worse is Uwe Boll.

I may be a terrible person, but I would much rather have seen what Uwe Boll would do with the property than Feig.

 

[StatusNil]

No such thing has happened. Despite what I said, I'm not going to pay to see it, nor am I going to waste my time even pirating it. I described the movies as a "dumpster fire of cringe", and I stand by that, I simply think it would be amusing to see this film succeed because the absurd, over the top hatred for it has reached the point that despite finding the movie a complete pile of shit banking on nostalgia and gender politics, I somehow dislike the creators less than the people who have an almost religious devotion to being upset over it.
I was actually on board with rolling my eyes at this movie right from the gimmicky sounding concept, but over time I've grown to resent the hatedom around this movie for their over the top reaction.

I can assure you my schadenfreude over this situation has nothing to do with the politics involved, and is simply about being absolutely sick of people within "geek culture" taking this type of thing so fucking seriously. It's not as if most of these people were just waiting for a new Ghostbusters movie and are disappointed over the results; most of the people who are mad about this seem to think the franchise should stay dead.
I get it, we're all part of geek culture whether we like that label or not, and we probably all take videogames/movies/comics/whatever too seriously sometimes, but this entire thing is giving me flashbacks of the whole ME3 ending; yet another example of people taking things way too far.

OK then, I stand corrected on that score.

The rest of your elaboration reminds me of something that I was kind of dismayed to observe happening in myself once, a while back. In 2003, I was very much of the opinion that the proposed US invasion of Iraq was an absolutely disastrous idea, but at the same time, I was totally resigned to the fact that it was going to happen, no matter what. Then I happened to find myself stuck in traffic because of a protest against the invasion, in an uninvolved country that wasn't going to be in on the war. As I sat there watching the protesters, they just struck me as kids out having a good time, laughing and yelling with their friends because they had the power to stop traffic that day. Like they fully understood the futility of the gesture, but were determined to get everything out of making it anyway. And I came really, really close to just snapping and getting out and yelling at them to get their fucking hippy asses out of the way so I could get to whatever important place I was going to that day. And never mind that I was actually in agreement with them on the issue at hand. Or even that I myself looked more hippyish than those kids.

You can take that as you will. To me, it was a learning experience about our tendency to react with contempt when confronted with blatant displays of futility. It's certainly something that can be taken advantage of, simply by refusing to acknowledge the substance of criticism people are trying to articulate with varying success, making them increasingly shrill and insistent. After all, we've all been sold on the idea that the magic of the Internet will allow Our Voice to be heard, and it will matter somehow.

 

[Diablo2000]

He's absolutely right, and you don't have to look further than this very thread to see it.

Feig: God, these geeks that have been all over me since before the casting for making a female Ghostbusters movie are real assholes.
Responders: Well you shouldn't have made a shit trailer!

Oh come off it. AS IF he's referring solely to the trailer's reaction. He's been getting shit from geeks for "ruining" Ghostbusters from the very beginning, and he's absolutely right that those geeks are assholes.

Just because those geeks in question saw the mile tall writing eternally on fire on the side of the mountain before the trailer came out does not make them assholes. This baby was always gonna suck with Feig at the helm, the fact he went with a genderbent reboot just made it suck that much harder. The only director that would make it worse is Uwe Boll.

I may be a terrible person, but I would much rather have seen what Uwe Boll would do with the property than Feig.

At least it would be a 50\50 chance of being so terrible that's good. As for the new Ghostbusters... I won't be seeing it. Instead gonna grab my popcorn and watch the internet torn itself apart over it.

 

[Razhem]

Maybe it's getting so much crap because it looks like the equivalent of Adam Sandler remaking Back to the Future.

 

[The Lunatic]

Ah, yes, the old, "You don't like X, therefore you're Y, Z, B, D and every other insult I can think of".


He just comes across as being bitter that his crappy movie is going to flop.