mad825 said:
Oh look, there's the obligatory black guy girl. Seeing as we're all playing the SJW card on this issue, couldn't they at least made it more diverse?
The SJW within me can tolerate that there might have been some sentiment of positive discrimination in a 1980s film. Why should they follow this when they seem to be on a course to fuck-up every Ghostbusters was?
Well, the big thing that gets me here is that none of these ladies seem like they have the right kind of talent to pull this off. Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd can, and have, headlined movies numerous movies on their own and did this at a time when they were pretty well known for being able to put out a solid product which got people interested. Having Ray Parker Jr. turn out the "Ghostbusters" song which was genuinely catchy and promote it heavily via video on MTV when it was still a music powerhouse also played a role.
Don't get me wrong, they might wind up being great, but when you consider the big title being mentioned is "Bridesmaids" (different type of comedy) and SNL chops (which is no guarantee in of itself as we've seen) I'm not impressed. All I get is some PC stunt in terms of "hey let's do Ghostbusters with a team of women!". They are steering towards some awfully big boots with that as the team that pulled off that quirky success was one of talented writers comedic actors who were also themselves writers.
This doesn't mean that you couldn't do a similar kind of movie with these actresses, but the trick to me would be to NOT call it "Ghostbusters" and while they might keep the basic premise of paranormal researchers they probably want to try and define their own schtick with it as opposed to trying to retread someone else's set up.
What's more the whole "Ghostbusters" thing worked in part because at the time the movie was made very few people had any real awareness of this kind of thing and that experts in the paranormal did indeed exist. The hobbies of some of the cast members allowed them to also add a bit of authenticity to it just by the meters and such (while a bit different IRL the principles of real ghost hunting through measuring electromagnetics and such are *fairly* accurate). Nowadays simply having a bunch of ghost-hunters isn't that big a deal, amateurs head to towns like Jerome that do a tourist trade off of it, and "pros" get TV shows and there are so many of them that they compete with each other. What's more the idea of "ghost hunters run into more than they can handle" is a stock horror movie plot nowadays, a few of which have been decent (I thought "Grave Encounters" was fairly well done... I think that was the name). It would take more work to have this function, since you can't rely on the absurdity of people actually LOOKING for the monsters in a "horror movie" type situation as standing out. What's more part of what made Ghostbusters work was that despite all the funny men, they mostly played it straight in regards to increasingly ridiculous situations.... and of course finally one has to remember that even the supporting cast had Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis who did a lot to carry the weight for the film.
I guess the point of my rambling is that I just can't see this working particularly well, especially if all they have to go with is "Ghostbusters but with girls".
To be honest if I was going to be doing horror comedy nowadays I'd do it by simply camping everything up but using a fairly high budget and high concepts rather than trying to steal someone else's idea this directly and imitate it. "The Evil Dead" and "Cabin In The Woods" succeeded in the long run (albeit as a bit of a slow burn) by not setting out to create comedy outright but to let the absurdity of their own premises play themselves out for the most part with the occasional "WTF" joke scene thrown in. Of course then again I suppose most don't want a slow burn success, but an immediate, huge, box office payday, and I suppose even if the movie is horrible you can at least play the feminist spin, and reboot hype for initial ticket sales even if they movie tanks out after the first wave.
