Let's cast our minds back a few years, The Force Awakens was coming, and people were getting their Star Wars on in eager anticipation for this theatrical event. When the trailer dropped in October 2015, it was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions, and as of June 2017 is sitting handsomely at 688'000 likes to 20'000 dislikes, that's admirable. It's important to note that The Force Awakens has a female lead, Daisy Ridley, who wasn't all that big a name, and is now one of the most recognisable actors in film at the moment. It's also important to note that despite having a female lead, the approval rating of that trailer is insanely high, the film is currently sitting at an 89% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed a mind blowing $2 billion in the Box Office. Maybe it's not the best example of where I'm going with this, since it's a Star Wars movie, and Star Wars is doomed to never fail, even the more divisive Rogue One, which also had a female lead, still topped $1 Billion. I knew comparing it to Ghostbusters wasn't fair when I made this argument during the Ghostbusters marketing shit show, sure they're both beloved franchises recognised as significant pieces of film history, but the difference in significance is substantial, and while Star Wars has been kept alive through the Prequel trilogy and TV shows, the most recent anything Ghostbusters of note was the 2009 video game, and the last movie was released nearly 30 years ago. The reason I'm waffling about The Force Awakens however is simple, it's success, both critical and financial, is staggering, despite having a female lead, which completely destroys the bullshit about Ghostbusters being hated because of sexism. Evidently The Force Awakens didn't fail, even with its female lead, and as I will again demonstrate later with Wonder Woman, sexism really doesn't play a part in the failure of Ghostbusters. Well, it kind of does, just not in the way you'd think. One thing I did see that was odd was the claim that Rey is a Mary Sue, which is something I never understood, since a Mary Sue is supposed to be a perfect, infallible character, and Rey isn't that, in fact in that claim I saw people who couldn't tell the difference between a competent character and a Mary Sue. Rey has lived her entire life on a shithole desert planet, rummaging for scrap around Imperial ship graveyards and being paid for her labour in food rations, not a very comfortable life then, being realistic, if in the years she hadn't acquired at least some basic knowledge in self defence, she'd be completely useless. Her being a capable fighter, as well as strong with the Force, doesn't take into account the emotional issues she has from being abandoned on Jakku, the emotional issues that bring her to see a parental figure in Han Solo, why would a perfect character like Rey live such a miserable life and still be a Mary Sue, quite simply, she's not, it's simply that the difference between a perfect character and a competent, capable one was being ignored.
Anyway, let's get back to the meat; things didn't kick into high gear with Ghostbusters until March 2016, when the first trailer dropped, a trailer currently sitting at an Abysmal 298'000 likes to over 1 million dislikes. Unlike Daisy Ridley, the cast of Ghostbusters was already well known; Melissa McCarthy had already starred in Spy, The Heat, and Bridesmaids, all three were directed by Paul Feig, and were decently critically and financially successful, meanwhile Kristin Wiig was in Bridesmaids also, as well as the hugely successful The Martian, and animated successes like Despicable Me 2. Both of these were established actresses before they were even cast in Ghostbusters, and Paul Feig had become a note worthy comedy director. But people were sceptical of his ability to write and direct a reboot to Ghostbusters, for good reason in my opinion, especially when Ghostbusters 3 had died such a tragic death, both with Sony's stupidity, and the loss of Harold Ramis. What I saw however was just that, scepticism, not outright rejection, right up until the release of that trailer people were still trying to stay positive and hopeful, until those hopes were so horrifically dashed. You may already know my thoughts on the trailer, but to summarise, it was fucking shit, first pulling the nostalgia card, and fucking that up somehow, before showing us the hammy looking ghosts, and giving us a taste of the dry, flavourless and vapid humour the film was riddled with, not to mention strikingly ironic racial stereotypes, and on the nose subversions of gender stereotypes. It's as if the film had a series of quotas, since all the oppressed minority classes are here; you have a fat girl, a black girl, and a lesbian, and given the political leanings of the director, that's hardly a surprise. It was also a very poorly edited trailer, but that's excusable given that the finished product didn't exactly give the editors a lot to sell the film with. The claim was made that the gender swap was just a gimmick, I'd actually argue it wasn't, I'd instead claim it was something far more insidious; studio politics. Ghostbusters 3 had been in development hell for years until 2014, with a stalemate between Ivan Reitman and Sony heads, mainly, Amy Pascal, preventing the film from beginning production. When Harold Ramis passed away, and Ivan Reitman stepped down, Amy Pascal brought in Paul Feig to direct, after the failure of The Amazing Spider-Man, and thus Amy's dream of a Paul Feig directed all female spinoff, she still wanted her Go-girl superhero movie. Now might be a good time to mention that I'm getting this stuff from a YouTube channel called Midnight's Edge, who made a fantastic series detailing the rumours and controversies behind the film that I highly recommend you watch, it's as fascinating as it is depressing.
When Ghostbusters got it's trailer, and the trailer was disastrously received, Sony and Feig and the Feminist journos did the worst thing they could possibly have done; render the film effectively above criticism by conflating all criticism, regardless of validity, with a backlash against the all female cast, a backlash that was completely artificial. In reality there was no huge sexist backlash against Ghostbusters; there was instead a trailer that sucked, and a studio and director so arrogant that they thought people would still see the movie after being called Misogynists and bigots for simply not finding the trailer funny, which it wasn't. That shit show of all criticism of the film being because of misogyny continued right up until the film's release, and long after, but the film's release definitely put some things in perspective. First up we'll start with the licensing deals Sony made, FireForge Games, the studio that developed a rushed tie-in game for the movie, went bankrupt not long after its release; they were already in a financial hole, and like Sony, thought cashing in on Ghostbusters would get them out, but the game was rushed through development in just a few months, received terrible reviews upon release, and sold abysmally. Sony also had a juicy deal with Mattel, who made a series of toys based on the film, which, like the game, sold abysmally. Before we get to the juiciest part, let's talk about Rotten Tomatoes, where the film sits pretty at 73%, Rotten Tomatoes sucks though, and just looking at the top reviews will give away why it's rating is that high, with such gems as 'oestrogen-packed' and 'daringly progressive,' it's easy to tell the mindset of a lot of the authors of these positive reviews. Now let's look at the Box office, which is where I start laughing my arse off. According to Box Office Mojo the film had a production budget of $144 million, marketing and licensing numbers are hard to find, but at a guess that puts the film's total cost at around $300 million. Also according to Box Office Mojo, the film opened at number two behind Secret Life of Pets and grossed $46 million on it's opening weekend domestically, not terrible, but that number halved with every weekend that went by, until it's seventh week, when it had dropped to 20th place in the charts, and made a pathetic $553'000. In its theatrical run the film only made $128 million domestically, not even making back its production budget, foreign markets didn't help much either, where it grossed another $100 million, still putting Sony at a loss of about $70 million, there's no nice way of saying it, the film flopped. Despite loving the original Ghostbusters, I'm glad this film failed, Amy Pascal and Paul Feig got their delusional dream of a go-girl empowerment movie, and it tanked, and there are many reasons for this. First up, the film is a cash-grab; after Spider-Man failed, Sony needed a big release to stop their string of terminally underperforming movies, and with Ghostbusters now right for plundering, they didn't hesitate. Amy Pascal had a passion project she wanted to see manifested, and it ended up being Ghostbusters, Paul Feig wrote the script, inhabiting it with insultingly pandering female leads, insultingly stupid male characters, and a fundamental lack of understanding and respect for the original film. And when people inevitably reacted poorly to this, they tried to make themselves immune from criticism, and in the process did the one thing you should never do in a marketing campaign, insult your audience; tell them they're bad people simply for not thinking your shit stain of a movie looked good. The film ultimately failed because Sony and the feminist journos got petty and malicious, and insulted everyone rather than handling the criticism they were rightfully receiving, and when the film tanked, that hopefully sent them a message, lazy pandering, greed and agenda does not a good movie make, and audiences won't stand for being called bad names by people who want their money.
With the failure of Ghostbusters slowly being forgotten, there has been an event, the release of a film I was cautiously optimistic for, for a reason I can now explain. I was scared Wonder Woman would fall prey to the same toxic mentality that ruined Ghostbusters; being the first high profile female led super hero movie in nearly 15 years, a time period in which feminism has truly come into its own as a narcissistic, entitled and socially corrosive ideology with power. Yet despite how easy it would have been to go the route of Ghostbusters, Wonder Woman displays a stunning amount of integrity in not doing any of that shit. In fact it's got a lot of feminists pissed off that Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, is a conventionally attractive, slim, fit, straight woman who encounters hardship in her own movie. Never mind for a second how sad and petty that complaint is, yes, Gal Gadot is conventionally attractive, and holy shit is she attractive, and as much as it pisses feminists off, movie audiences like hot women, they just do, it might not be a selling point for a movie, but it's some nice icing. Where Wonder Woman truly demolishes the ideology behind Ghostbusters is in its representation for Men and Women; in Ghostbusters, Women were portrayed as the only competent people in the world, while all the men were just stupid meat heads or villainous to some degree. Rey in Star Wars may have been competent, but Poe was a badass pilot, and Finn was prevented from committing evil by his own morality, these are interesting traits in characters, Kevin from Ghostbusters is a useless idiot, whose stupidity is so stupid that it's not remotely charming or funny. In Wonder Woman however, Diana is the best fighter in the room, hands down, but what makes her character so interesting and engaging is her learning that evil isn't black and white, that everyone has a duality of good and evil in them, Diana is naïve, and is forced to learn the truth, and it's cool. Unlike Kevin or Rowan in Ghostbusters, Trevor is a smart, competent character; when Wonder Woman's fucking up Germans with her sword and magic lasso, Trevor's right next to her with his shotgun, on the beach when the Germans attack Themyscira, he picks up a rifle and starts shooting Germans, and he disobeys a direct order to go and stop the manufacturing of the super mustard gas, ultimately killing himself to stop the gas from killing millions of people, all acts of heroism no male character in Ghostbusters even come close to. Smaller characters like Charlie and Sameer are given layers that no Ghostbusters character gets, and one of the villains is a woman, shacuse. Even the whole island inhabited solely by Women thing is handled well, with Diana's mother telling her that Man is good, but was turned evil by Ares, when Trevor arrives, at no point do any of the Amazons make out that he's inferior to them, and the really funny scene when him and Diana are talking about sex, in addition to being really funny and really sweet, shows Diana acknowledging the value of men from a biological perspective, unlike Erin sexually objectifying Kevin in Ghostbusters, yeah, I went there.
Like I said in my review of Wonder Woman, it could have been so much worse than it was, being a female super hero movie, but rather than going for go-girl empowerment and pandering, Wonder Woman went for telling a fun story, with developed and interesting characters, and showed both its characters, and its audience, a great amount of respect. Unlike Ghostbusters, it had a very good marketing campaign, and here is where things get juicy again. According to Box Office Mojo, Wonder Woman had a production budget of $149 million, again guessing for licensing and marketing, that again puts the film's total burden on the studio at about $300 million. it opened at number one domestically and grossed $103 million on it's opening weekend, and since its release two weeks ago, it's grossed a mind bending $453 million worldwide, beating out The Mummy on it's opening weekend, despite a drop in ticket sales of 43%, that's nuts. Wonder Woman has, in less than two weeks, almost doubled Ghostbusters' total worldwide gross for its entire four month theatrical run. Purely on the numbers, Wonder Woman is the single biggest fuck you to Sony and Ghostbusters conceivably possible, this is exactly the kind of movie Amy Pascal and Paul Feig wanted, a female led blockbuster super hero film, and you know that if Paul Feig or Amy Pascal or actually a fair few Hollywood people had their fingers in this movie, it'd become the same train wreck Ghostbusters became. I can't stress how stunned and happy I am to see this, it's not even about Feminism at this point, it's about respect, Ghostbusters had no shame; it took a shit the license, it took a shit on the fans, it took a shit on good writing, and then it took a shit on Paul Feig's career and Sony's bottom line, because people simply weren't interested in a film like that. Wonder Woman treats it's material with a great amount of respect, clearly, but more over it treats its characters with respect, and most importantly, it's audience. There was no sexist backlash against this film, just as there wasn't with Ghostbusters, but no one felt the need to engineer a contrived outrage to boost publicity, which is one of the reasons Ghostbusters tanked. And in the end, Wonder Woman is a good movie; it's fun, it's got good characters, it has funny moments, good feels, and some insane badassery, Ghostbusters sucked, a difference noticeable in both the Rotten Tomatoes numbers, as shit as Rotten Tomatoes is, and far more importantly in the huge disparity in the Box Office figures. In fact, far from a backlash against the film by sexist man-children, you're getting a backlash by Feminists, who are mad that Gal Gadot, a fit, sexy woman, is playing Wonder Woman, and complaining that Wonder Woman isn't fat, black and lesbian, which is a real article by Stephanie Abraham on MS..
In conclusion, my argument that Star Wars renders the Ghostbusters sexism defence null still isn't entirely fair, since it's Star Wars, but Wonder Woman certainly does. After a series of hit-and-miss Super hero films from DC, Wonder Woman had no reason to be as successful as it's become, short of being a good movie that audiences love, which it absolutely is, in fact I'm watching it for a fourth time in a few days. So where is the army of sexists hating on this female led movie? why, it's where it was with Ghostbusters, in the imaginations of Sony people and feminist journos, because they still can't admit whose fault Ghostbusters was. It was theirs; it was them making a shitty movie, and fabricating a desperate and pathetic defence, one that they thought would shield them from criticism, but that instead pushed away the general movie going audience, who weren't fans of be called monsters simply for thinking that shit trailer was shit. Maybe Wonder Woman's team learnt from that mistake, or maybe they weren't stupid to begin with, and instead made a good movie, one audiences love, one I love, and one I hope Amy Pascal and Paul Feig fucking hate, because not only is this the female super hero movie that Pascal always wanted, but it's a movie that fucks her and Paul Feig's deformed creature of a movie into the dirt with it's incredible Box Office success. It hopefully sends a message that the gender of the lead role doesn't matter to the vast majority of cinema goers, that they value quality over feels, and that pandering to feelings doesn't work. And that's my case, as ever, feel free to agree or disagree, if you liked Ghostbusters, I'm glad that you get something out of it that I can't, but I'm sure this won't the last I talk about Ghostbusters, like Herpes, it will just keep coming back, and hopefully I'll be ready.
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