GhostBLEHsters!

I’m not the biggest Ghostbusters fan. I think the first film is overrated, and I have no interest in the sequel or cartoons. I saw the reboot that came out a few years ago, and I thought it was harmlessly-enjoyable. So when Jason Reitman, Ivan Reitman’s son, announced that he was working on an in-continuity sequel for a 2020 release, my initial thought was “I’m tired”. I still hold that now.

Some of you won’t get why I’m writing about something that doesn’t enthral me, but this is part-penance for my thoughts a few years back. Prior to the reboot’s release, I wrote a blog discussing my thoughts on its trailers. They were pretty mediocre, but it bugged me how people were using them as a springboard for both bigotry and white knighting. Looking back, I not only wasn’t fair to an overall decent-yet-forgettable experience, I also underestimated the toxicity of nerd-dom. Keep in mind that this was also following the arrival of Gamergate and before the 2016 election.

So why am I tired? The obvious answer, like with Ready Player One, Avatar, the newer Star Wars films and The MCU, is that people can’t stop giving their unoriginal hot-takes about something not worth it, and it’s draining. Yet, unlike the aforementioned, I don’t care about Ghostbusters as a franchise. The original movie, essentially, was lightning in a bottle and a by-product of 80’s era Reaganomics, full-stop. Trying it again, especially with what we know about Reagan’s legacy, is bound to fail. Yet since the internet refuses to let it die, I guess I can’t either.

Let’s start with the original movie: the film follows three, washed-up scientists, as well as their token, black tag-along, as they conduct illegal and highly-dangerous ghost-hunting. Along the way, they cause insane amounts of property damage, argue with an EPA member and accidentally come face-to-face with an ancient, apocalyptic prophecy. Also, something-something-Zuul-something-something-don’t-cross-the-streams. If it sounds like I’m underselling one of the biggest hits of 1984, I’m not doing it intentionally. The movie, as I said before, doesn’t interest me, even if there’s nothing wrong with it.

What bugs me is how revered it is. Wish-fulfillment fantasies aren’t necessarily evil, I’m a fan of superheroes, but Ghostbusters, like The Matrix, has become an icon of MRA incels. Simply look at the comments on the trailer for the reboot and compare them to the those on the teaser for the newest movie. The levels of toxicity are so high that you’d need to cross the streams to purge them from your mind.

Which begs the question of “why?”. Why’s this a big deal? Why does it matter if we get an in-continuity sequel, especially when the last one wasn’t well-received at the time? Why’s the rebooted film so widely-despised, when there are better targets to direct your bile? And why, all these years later, is talking about the reboot still “asking for trouble” from people who haven’t moved on?

I no longer care if the 2016 film “was awful”, or if it “tanked financially”. It’s a red herring in the overall discourse. Even if it “wasn’t great”, does it really matter when little girls were connecting to it on a personal level? Why should they be robbed of that? Have we really sunk that low?

I’m tired of arguing my way around the hot-takes, and I’m tired of explaining why these hot-takes are irrelevant. Like the internet’s thoughts on Avatar, I’m not interested in why you didn’t like this movie. It’s boring, and, honestly, I’m far more interested in hearing why you liked it instead. Arguing against the grain is far more intriguing to me.

But even outside of that, the 180-flip over the latest film in the franchise, simply because it’s canon, actually tires me out more. Does this mean I want it to fail? Of course not! But that doesn’t mean I don’t think the internet doesn’t deserve it, either. Because I don’t think they do.

I recognize that I’m generalizing ever-so-slightly, and that some people didn’t like the 2016 reboot for legitimate reasons. For that, I apologize. Even ignoring its strengths, the reboot had inconsistent jokes and story-threads that led to an unearned climax in the third-act. If that turned you off, I sympathize. This is also not directed at you.

But for everyone else, know that the levels of ire actually concern me. They concern me because they’re wasteful, and they concern me because they over-romanticize a franchise that peaked qualitatively with its first entry. They also concern me because they re-enforce a toxic stereotype that nerds are “whiney, irredeemable man-children who live in their parents’ basements”. It’s bad enough that real-world issues are already a dumpster fire, I don’t need that in my entertainment as well. But it’s there, and that makes me sad.

Despite anything else I could possibly say, I think it’s time we recognize, collectively, that whether or not a film franchise is worth talking about is subjective and not worth getting mad over. That doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects of filmmaking that can’t be objective, like the quality of craft, but the enjoyability component will vary from-person-to-person. Besides, if critically-panned movies like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice can retain loyal and passionate fans, some of whom like them for legitimate reasons, then why can’t the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters be the same? And why does the new film “prove” that the aforementioned movie was “trash”?

Something to think about.