Daaaah Whoosh said:
As I recall, the original Ghostbusters were more about being New Yorkers than being men. If the new cast can keep that up, rather than focusing on women's problems, then it might be something I'd watch. Otherwise, maybe I'm not the target demographic, and I'm fine with that. Women need more role models, and maybe some of them will be Ghostbusters now.
EDIT: Oh no. Fuck no. There's going to be a scene where they're looking at the old uniforms, and maybe the fat one will try one on, but they're going to be like "Nope, they're ugly", and go on a shopping montage. Argh it's going to happen, and it will cause so much rage.
Well, that's not true actually. I think the gender and the location were secondary. At the end of the day the thing that drove The Ghostbusters is that they were all underappreciated scientists who were not taken seriously, trying to make a business out of something that nobody else took seriously if they had even heard of it. Every one of these guys was supposed to have a degree, and they were all professionals. Even Venkman who was the closest thing to a team goof was at the end of the day a doctor (as in he had a legitimate doctorate in parapsychology) and wanted the business to succeed. The whole story arc of "Ghostbusters" was that they started out broke and hated, and really had to dig to find any work, their first serious client even tried to screw them on payment (which they dealt with by threatening to led the ghost go again). The whole second act is about their success, and how they have to rally to become heroes of a sort when things suddenly get really serious, their success being due to a rising evil that only they can barely confront. It's a sort of "rags to riches and beyond" story. One of the big problems with "Ghostbusters 2" was that it pretty much just retreaded the same story as the first one, inventing a reason for them to be mocked again, and then having them get their groove back, right in time to save the world from yet another major evil in the 11th hour.
The guys who created "Ghostbusters" and understand we're actually dealing with some major comedic geniuses here, almost all of whom have had massively successful careers writing and performing (the success can't be argued with even for people that don't like these particular guys). One of the reasons I've been reluctant on any revival of this is because if Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Raimis, and Rick Moranis can't come up with decent ideas for it, I doubt this team is going to do anything better, especially if it's true that a shopping montage making fun of the previous movies is to be taken seriously. None of these ladies is that talented to begin with, and I'm not even sure with that crew who is supposed to be writing this. That said I get the basic idea you have the pudgy girl to be Ray, the smart wallflower girl to be Egon, the pretty girl to be Peter, and the black girl to be Winston by way of analogy and have them do a similar schtick. However having someone act like a female version of Bill Murray to be "hilarious" is more sad, I'd rather them just get Bill Murray and do some thing where they bring the REAL Ghostbusters out of retirement. Indeed I'd argue they could actually recycle the old story a third time and have it work by simply playing up the age of the characters. Indeed that is the movie I'd probably try and make. I'd have most of them retired, successfully as opposed to sadly, having made tons of money, but having run out of Ghosts to bust (going with the theme that the Supernatural tends to come out in force when some major evil is rising). When the ghosts start coming back they need to rebuild the team to confront the threat knowing from experience that something big has to be coming.... but this is a major digression.
At the end of the day part of the "fun" of Ghostbusters is that as absurd as it is the characters are consummate professionals (except for maybe Venkman who tends to be sarcastic and piss people off). The Ghostbusters go for functional not "pretty uniforms" which basically means that this movie is doomed to failure if that's accurate as it's an attempt to make things not only girly, but faux-girly, in an almost humerous direction implying that in the movie the girls aren't being taken seriously in these roles and stepping into the initial shoes. For the Ghostbusters, the uniforms were part of the charm, they were basically wearing exterminator outfits, replacing the stereotypical back tanks of bug gas and stuff with proton packs... which was amusing because that's what they were... a pest control service for ghosts... that's why you can't mess with this, it was actually pretty well thought out which is why it came together. By playing it straight it made it possible to suspend disbelief (well partially, in context) in a way that few things this absurd have even been able to achieve.
At any rate, the big test here if they want a girl ghostbuster team would be to ask... could any of these ladies convince you they would logically have at least one Doctorate, never mind possibly multiples (Engineering and such as well as Parapsycology, remember The Ghostbusters made all their own stuff). They could make a joke out of how unlikely seeming it is, but that's not really Ghostbusters... all of the characters, including Bill Murray, were portrayed in a way you could see them as intellectuals. The exception being Winston who was largely brought in as muscle at the end.
