Slimered wrote: ↑January 17th, 2019, 2:53 am I disagree with all your points.
There's a clear difference between Batman and Ghostbusters. If you're rebooting Batman, you need to see Bruce Wayne. 'Ghostbusters', however, is just the name of the business - so why can't you have different characters to Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore?
Ghostbusters (2016) was expertly made, with stunning comedy direction from Paul Feig. I loved the improv style, it made the jokes feel natural and from the identity of the actors rather than the screenwriter. It's a sound approach, and one of the reasons why - say - repeats of Whose Line Is It Anyway are so entertaining to watch.
Ghostbusters is an action movie as well as a supernatural comedy. Further emphasising the action is just that: further emphasising the action. You'd be complaining if they weren't trying to do something different, so the fact that they were should be commended.
Also: its failure was absolutely due to the sexists. It was rated 75% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning that most critics agreed it was a great movie. If the vile sexists hadn't influenced public opinion of the film, Ghostbusters (2016) would have been a huge success.
No, a reboot and a re-imagining are two different things. A reboot of a franchise takes the characters you know and does a new story with them that is separate from previous iterations. A soft-reboot takes places in the same universe as previous iterations, but changes things in a similar way as a full reboot. A re-imagining is when you take a concept and re-make it in your own image. Batman and Spider-man are reboots. GB2016 is a re-imagining. Also, by your logic anyone can be Batman or Spider-man. In fact, there are plenty of else worlds stories where that is the case.
If you think GB1984 was just about the action of busting ghosts and not the characters then I don't think we saw the same movie. There is very little busting in it. The movie works because of the interactions between the characters. These relationships carried on into RGB perfectly (for the 1st season anyway). Ghostbusters is about Peter, Ray, Winston, and Egon. You can do a GB movie without those characters, but not by erasing them from history. Also, keep in mind that for 30 plus years GBs WAS only Peter, Ray, Winston, and Egon. In games, comics, cartoons, etc. When EGB came along, they didn't throw out the old canon and replace it, they added to it with new members being taught by Egon (a soft reboot). EGB honored the old while creating new lore. That is how you handle changes in a franchise like EGB that is character driven.
If you think it was expertly made, that's your opinion. Personally, I HATE dumbed down humor and adlibs. Whose Line is an improv show. You know what you are watching and its just people making jokes. A movie requires story, timing, flow, direction. A movie can not consist of random adlibs where literally every character acts like an idiot. Every single one of the characters mugs for the camera, tells dumb jokes, etc. The original Ghostbusters was about dry wit and perfect timing and delivery of well crafts lines. You know, like a movie. The characters took shit seriously and the "jokes" were sarcastic quips based on the situation, not actual jokes and camera mugging.
Ghostbusters is NOT an action movie! What action is there? The first "action" scene is the 3 guys running away, terrified, of the library ghost. The second "action" scene is 3 guys pointing glowing sticks and shooting stuff up for comedic effect. They had no idea what they were doing and that is what made it funny. Then our "action heroes" have to walk up 23 flights of stairs and are exhausted part way through, then they get tossed around a bit, Egon becomes "terrified beyond rational thought", and they point the glowing sticks at each other, risking their lives. Where were they action stars in this? Yes, there was some action, but they didn't do flips and whip ghosts around like they were well trained super heroes. Just because it was different doesn't mean it was good.
Critic scores don't mean a movie is good. In fact, 75% is pretty bad for critic scores considering how much attention this thing had and how much the media was trying to push it along to "combat the evil sexists". I went into this movie WANTING it to be good. I avoided as many spoilers as I could. I NEVER see movies in the theater anymore, but I specifically went to see this movie and was ready to like it. The movie was BAD. It had interesting ideas, and again when a lot of the dumb adlib humor is edited out and some heart edited back in (like the deleted scene where Erin confronts her former boss and Abby and her share a real moment) the movie shows its potential. As it was released in theaters, it was awful. It wasn't the evil sexist trolls that made me not like it.
If you like the style of the movie that's fine. You like it for the same reasons I don't like it. I like Ghostbusters for the dry style of humor that had laser focused comedy. If you don't care about that and think the characters are interchangeable as long as they are busting ghosts then we just disagree on a fundamental level, but don't tell me the movie failed because of sexism. That's an excuse for failure.
BTW, quote any hilarious lines from GB2016. Anything. Personally, I can't think of any.