Ghostbusters: Alive Again

A few years ago, Sony tried to breathe life back into the Ghostbusters franchise, and I, as a huge fan of said franchise, should have been very happy about that, but through a long and unfortunate series of events, the Ghostbusters film I'd hoped to see seemed doomed to never happen. I wanted Ghostbusters 3, just as I'm sure many others did, and just as I know Ivan Reitman did, but after many years of development hell, convoluted studio politics and the death of Harold Ramis, that dream was effectively dead, and in its place was a reboot, written and directed by Paul Feig and starring an all-female cast. I'm sure you know my feelings towards that film, but if you don't, I wasn't a fan, to put it nicely, but the gold mine of frustration and comedy came more from the endless controversy surrounding the film before, during and after its disastrous release, because the film's marketing and media reaction was a spectacle; the film was turned into a symbol of feminism and female empowerment, the franchise's credibility be damned. This wasn't the Ghostbusters anyone wanted, but naturally, it quickly became a lightning rod for a swarm of new Ghostbusters 'fans' who loved it and thought it was hilarious and amazing and were determined to protect it from the misogynistic man-child backlash, because if you didn't like the film, you hated women, no exceptions. The politicisation of the film might have been the second biggest factor in its failure, behind it just being a very forgettable, mediocre and completely unwanted reboot which, in the shadow of the 1984 film, might as well have been the worst film ever made. The film bombed, losing Sony millions of dollars and, I feared, killing the Ghostbusters franchise once again, ensuring that we'd never get Ghostbusters 3, and that whatever form the franchise took moving forward would be unrecognisable and mediocre. Whatever happened in the future, it was certain that for long-time fans of the series like me, the reboot would forever be an open wound, a thing you wouldn't want to bring up for fear of an earful.

If my blog still exists in 2020, I'll be going back and looking at the 2016 film again, looking at both the controversy and the film itself in greater detail, but before that, there was an announcement in January of 2019, and it was a good one. Even before the 2016 reboot released and bombed, the studio and director were already talking about a sequel, either as a result of delusional confidence in the film, or a desperate effort to get more people in seats by promising a sequel in advance. Either way, it didn't work, and Ghostbusters was cast back into obscurity, a dead brand that had been Frankensteined back to life and killed again by corporate greed and political agendas. Then in January 2019, a fifty second teaser for a Ghostbusters film appeared online, and it, at first glance, appears to be everything I wanted from a twenty-first century Ghostbusters 3, at first glance; rumours have naturally been circulating and I hope to god that not all of them are true. Now apparently, Dan Aykroyd has been letting slip that a Ghostbusters film was in development for months, but since I don't keep up with the day to day of Dan Aykroyd, I hadn't heard a peep, so when I saw the trailer, on IGN's YouTube channel, incidentally, I was taken completely off guard, and as you'd expect, tumbled into an intense state of excitement. Very little is currently known about this film, though it's being directed by Jason Reitman, fittingly, and will ignore the 2016 reboot entirely, which has me very excited, but also has another faction not so happy. You probably already know where this is going, with the amount of venom surrounding the 2016 release on both sides, the announcement of a sequel that ignores that film's existence would inevitably bring out some of that venom once more, and this time the shoe is on the other foot, which is going to make the build up to this film's release an absolute blast to watch, because now the SJW cunts who ruined everyone's fun three years ago can get to know how it feels. Now I'm going to discuss a few articles on the topic from a handful of outlets, I'd highly recommend you check these articles out because, with the way I write, you'd only be getting half the story if you didn't.


The Cost of Progress

So let's take a look at a couple of articles written by salty people who are mad that their precious movie's being tainted by deranged bigots, what a familiar feeling, I get it, I really do. Since the final vote on the EUCD and Article 11 were delayed, I feel comfortable supplying a link to the article in question, but I'll also include the details because I'm not a fool; the first article comes from the Hollywood Reporter from one Kyle Zizu and is titled "'Ghostbusters 3': Why Ignore the All-Female Reboot?" It's not hard to find with a google search:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/why-is-ghostbusters-3-ignoring-all-female-reboot-1177318
The article starts like most articles do, with an introduction to the topic; talking about how the 2016 film "battled online trolls" and "sparked debate" before it "fizzled" at the Box office. That's a very nice way of looking at the situation, isn't it. "Sparked debate," it started an internet war; people on both sides were at each other's throats for months, with the progressive media belittling all their enemies as man-baby sexist trolls and losers, while the other side expressed their anger that not only had Ghostbusters 3 been killed, but that it'd been replaced by a film whose very existence was motivated by greed and ideology. And "Fizzled?" what I think you mean to say is bombed; it lost Sony tens of millions of dollars, becoming a gold standard example of the 'Get Woke Go Broke' phenomenon. Our Author then links to another article by one Hannah Woodhead titled "An Open Letter to Jason Reitman." An article where Woodhead talks about the "fierce innovation" of Ghostbusters (2016), and that the crew weren't just Ghostbusters, they were 'women', which I don't think she realises was kind of the problem; nobody wanted a Ghostbusters film with four wamen in the lead roles, the issue wasn't that they were all women, the issue was why they were all women and what they did with it, but that's a distinction that every defender of that film happily ignores. Case in point, Woodhead then talks about how the film pissed off men, yeah, because no women were mad about it, none, it was all men, that way you could chalk it up to sexism and nothing else, ignoring the real issue.

Her open letter then rambles on about how innovation can be mistaken with tokenism, which only shows how shallow and stupid their "innovation" is, and how Jason Reitman isn't the man for the job because of his "nostalgia for a better time... when movies were movies," obviously unaware of how bad that actually sounds; like movies today aren't just movies. This is a bit of a funny statement since some of the best films ever made were films that had something to say, films that reflected the culture of the time, my go to example of which being Godzilla (1954), a story about the horrors and evils of nuclear warfare at the dawn of the Cold Wa told through the lens of a Monster Movie. The problem with Ghostbusters 2016 is that it isn't saying anything; its defenders may say it's important and meaningful, but the only thing Ghostbusters (2016) is saying is "Wamen," and that isn't quite as deep and meaningful as the horrors of nuclear warfare. What's even richer though is that this is new for Ghostbusters, the original films were not meaningful and deep, they were, as Reitman puts it, just movies, it was Feig that tried to make Ghostbusters deep. Our author continues talking about Woodhead, who says; “I think we suffer from this collective sense of nostalgia in film, where we're always looking to the past rather than the future," and “The past is safe. The past is easy.” This sounds eerily like the 'the future is female' mantra that's been used to justify this kind of behaviour by film and TV producers, that we "suffer" from nostalgia and that it blinds us to a better future. Yeah, right, if it was a better future, we'd be getting Ghostbusters 2 from Paul Feig, instead Jason Reitman is directing Ghostbusters 3, probably because the Sony big heads freaked out at the financial failure of Feig's film and didn't want to risk another bomb, while making a sequel to Ghostbusters 2 and hiring the son of the legendary Ivan Reitman to direct would bring back some good will and maybe, just maybe, not bomb at the box office. If the future is woke, it'll also be broke, that's a reality of entertainment, one that's contributed to the collapse of a British TV icon and the largest film franchise in history.

Your clinging on to it is just delusion at this point, people don't like woke entertainment, and you come close to admitting that yourself because of course they'd look to the safe and easy past, they took a big risk in 2016 and it failed miserably. Luckily our author then gets back to the point and talks about the 2016 film's Fresh RT score, like that means a damn thing, before bringing up the racist attacks against Leslie Jones, which, you know, racism sucks, it isn't nice, but I'm not going to be sympathetic to poor little Leslie,being on the receiving end of racism and bigotry doesn't excuse you for also being on the giving end, and would you believe it, Leslie Jones has quite the collection of skeletons in her closet. There's a Breitbart article out there that isn't hard to find called; 'Double Standards: Leslie Jones' Racist Twitter History,' and should you read it, you'll see a nice little collection of all the times Leslie Jones has been a piece of shit on Twitter.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/07/20/double-standards-leslie-jones-racist-twitter-history/
But what's even worse than racism is incitement of abuse, and would you believe it, Leslie Jones has done that too, what a shock, it's almost like she's a massive hypocrite, it's almost like she's a complete piece of shit. But we ain't done talking about her today, that comes later.

Our Author then quotes someone else, one Drew McWeeny who probably has a lot of fond memories from his school days. McWeeny says; "I think it's a really entertaining movie that was doomed simply because it wasn't the film a certain very loud percentage of the audience wanted,” and minus the really entertaining part, which he's free to feel, I agree; it was doomed because it wasn't what a certain group wanted, the issue is that that group wasn't sexist man-babies as the media insisted it was, it was the fans; people who loved Ghostbusters and didn't want a politicised all-female reboot. The quotes keep rolling in with this one as next we get one Chris Sutcliff of Cracked who, interestingly, thinks that ignoring the reboot for Ghostbusters 3 is "A victory for all the wrong people," and a "creative step backwards." I got two issues with these quotes, issue one is obvious; the wrong people? what, the fans? the Ghostbusters fans? because I don't see a problem with them winning personally, so guilty as charged you cunt. And about the film being a creative step backwards, there was nothing creative about the 2016 film; its comedy was safe, its visuals were poorly done and over the top, its characters were hollow, lifeless archetypes and its villain was an insult to "the wrong people." Ghostbusters (2016) was about as safe as you could get from a film making perspective, it was, and I'll say it again, mediocre. And the things that killed it; the relentless assault on the critics, the douchebaggery of the cast and crew, the mere fact that it existed, wasn't so much creative as it was moronic.


The Getters Get Got

We're cutting that article a little short for now since we've got so much to do, but it goes on to talk about the online abuse faced by Star Wars actors and the nonsensical notion that Ghostbusters 3 will be a Spider-Verse style crossover. But now it's time to discuss something I'd hinted at earlier; the creature known as Leslie Jones had some things about this new Ghostbusters movie that she wanted to say, and while trying to find articles to talk about today, the vast majority of what I found were articles talking about her tweets, and agreeing with them, of course. I meanwhile do not, and rather than taking an article, we're just going to be looking at tweets themselves, because I've got a Mary Sue article lined up today and I don't want this to go on forever.  Her first tweet is the more fun one because of all the venom in it; "So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. it's like something Trump would do." There's a lot to say about this, firstly being how she felt the need to bring up the orange demon like he at all matters in this situation. The reason is quite obvious however; to the Progressive left, Trump really is evil, he's literally Hitler, he's every ist and phobe in the book and he wants to grope all the women and deport all the Mexicans and take America back to the dark ages. With the amount of hysteria surrounded Trump in the past few years, as well as the unfortunate coincidence that the film became embroiled in his election because of, you guessed it, Feig and co., it's no surprise that she'd compare this to him, because Trump is a synonym of bad.

A few choice Reitman quotes from Entertainment Weekly's story on the new film 

More interesting than that though is how she finds it insulting; "Like fuck us. We dint count." Gotta be honest, it's kind of nice to see the shoe on the other foot, because guess what, you don't count Leslie, you and your pussy squad have probably been consigned to history to avoid confusion and box office catastrophe, and since you and McCarthy and Feig couldn't keep your mouths shut about how everyone who didn't like your movie were sad, lonely, basement dwelling misogynists, I can now feel quite comfortable in saying; Fuck you, fuck all of you, now you're the losers, it sucks doesn't it. I do agree with you in one way however, a soulless movie studio abandoning something you love while cruelly keeping the brand alive to make money off of it, that is a dick move, and so is that studio shamelessly screwing over all the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into that brand to make it what it was, such a dick move, why would they do such a thing to Reitma- I mean you. But it would be interesting enough if one of the cast went on a Twitter rant about how shitty Ghostbusters 3 is, and have the entire MSM and Paul Feig condone her bullshit, all while Jason Reitman is being admirably diplomatic about the whole thing in his Entertainment Weekly interview, which really shows which side of this war is the more fragile and insecure, once again, shoe's on the other foot now, sucks to be them. But then Leslie did what most people on Twitter do after getting called ou- I mean abused; she backpedalled, hard, the backpedal was actually more interesting than her initial rage.

Firstly, "it's very sad that this is response I get." Leslie, darling, large swathes of the Ghostbusters fanbase are currently doing the Crab Rave (YouTube it) because the film they always wanted is finally getting made, then in crashes you, the hulking, graceless beast of a woman that you are, to join in on the MSM's efforts to ruin our fun, don't play innocent when you get kickback. That's not what's fascinating however, what's fascinating is her next comment; "if they make this new one with all men and it does well which it will." How do you know that it will, Leslie? I mean, we all know that it will, but why do you in particular, who is definitely not reading this, not a chance in hell, feel that it'll do better. Does this reflect a secret lack of confidence in your film, or does it reflect a belief that everyone else is a sexist that'll go and see it just because it's all men and women suck. The truth is somewhere in the middle, it will almost certainly do better than the reboot financially, critically is another story, it'll probably get panned simply because it's not a sequel to the reboot, but financially it'll be a win precisely because you dint count. The people who wanted another Ghostbusters movie didn't want the one they got, they wanted a sequel, and (2020) is that sequel, whatever it ends up being, your movie was not. I'm actually willing to bet it's insecurity however because of the next bit; "It might feel that "boys are better"it makes my heart drop." No Leslie, that's how it'll feel to you, and Feig, and Rotten Tomatoes, and the Mary Sue, and all the other ideologies and shills, because you're all bigots, and I mean that, to still insist that the film failed because of sexism, and then to imply that a Ghostbusters 3 will inevitably do better because "Boys are Better" speaks both to the low regard with which you hold men an your own insecurity about the movie and your own ideology, remind me, who's the fragile and insecure one again?


Revenge of the Man-babies

Getting back to the articles, I did enjoy a Forbes article by one Scott Mendelson titled "Jason Reitman is Directing 'Ghostbusters 3,' And It's All Your Fault." The reason I'm not on that however is because this is already long and my other main article is a Mary Sue article, and given my track record with articles from that rag, two and a half articles and a salty tweet will be more than enough. Our rag Sue article comes from one Kate Gardner and is titled; "We're Getting a New Ghostbusters, But Not With Paul Feig's Cast." The article's title is nowhere near as salty as Mendelson's, but this is the Mary Sue and we're talking about Ghostbusters, so I'm sure the salt is in there, we just have to dig for it:
https://www.themarysue.com/new-ghostbusters-jason-reitman-no-paul-feig/
The article doesn't start off on a good foot at all with "In the world of unnecessary, “didn’t we just reboot this” reboots." Well then, fuck you author; this sentence really annoys me purely because of how unaware it is. Yes, Ghostbusters (2016) was a reboot and it was only three years ago, but it's a reboot no one wanted, and this film is not a reboot, it's a sequel, in fact it's the sequel everyone who wanted another film wanted, not a reboot, and especially not a reboot with a gimmicky gender swap and forced politicisation. And you know this isn't a reboot because you say as much, it's not a sequel to Feig's film, it's a sequel to Reitman's film, it's a sequel, though, given we're on the Mary Sue, I'm guessing it isn't the sequel you wanted, but that's just too bad. Our author gives us some padding about the film itself before getting back to the nonsense; still calling this 2020 film a reboot, and calling it unnecessary because it was rebooted in 2016, author, please stop making that mistake, I know that you're trying to spin the existence of this film as unnecessary because you don't like it, stop that. Our Author then stated a truth, kind of, saying that the 2016 film "did not perform incredibly well," and that it was because of the angry fans and the all female casting which, once again, is only part of the story. The two biggest reasons the film bombed were that no one wanted a reboot and that the film was turned into a political tool by the people making and promoting it, suddenly it wasn't just an unnecessary reboot, it was a symbol of women's empowerment, a symbol of the changing world, and the barometer on whether you were a good person or a Nazi, there was no in-between. The film bombed because the people making it thought turning it into a political statement was a good idea, it wasn't.

I will at least concede how odd it is that Sony is so quick to return to Ghostbusters, given that the brand took a pummelling at the box office and significant damage to its respectability, but this is Sony we're talking about, they're not exactly printing money with their film division, and Ghostbusters, despite the damage done to it by Feig and co., is still a beloved brand that can still be milked, only this time with more caution and consideration, because starting a war didn't end well for them last time. But this next bit is cute, "it is unlikely that the film will focus on four women," you could say that. Making a sequel to Feig's Ghostbusters would be box office suicide and Sony knows it, but making another all female Ghostbusters runs the risk of being even worse, because then there's the association with the 2016 film as well as the possibility that they could double down on the 2016 debacle and make the film even more woke, which, at that point you might as well make a sequel to (2016) and commit box office suicide. Either way, it's a commitment to a failed idea, and it doesn't matter how much you may like that idea, because it still failed and it would be a waste of time and money to pursue it again. Oh and here comes some salt from our author, back patting Reitman for making strong women in the past, but then saying what we're all thinking, just from the other perspective; that Sony is trying to appease the crying raging fanboys and giving them what they want. Once again, the 2016 film was not hated exclusively by raging fanboys, nor was it because of the women cast, it was hated because of the decision to reboot and make it a political statement, saying that the only people who hated that film were losers and sexists isn't even spin, it's an outright lie, but it's a lie that confirms our author's biases so it must be true. I'll tell you one thing though, I'm glad they're giving the fans what they wanted, both as a fan of Ghostbusters and as an enemy of Social Justice, to hell with your Go-Girl Ghostbusters.

Oh but apparently Twitter is right in pointing out that it feels like appeasing the vitriolic masses, and I suppose that is what it looks like to you, Mary Sue author, but then our author brings the salt by talking about Reitman. Reitman, as I mentioned earlier, was very diplomatic about the announcement of the film, saying he loved the 2016 film, but that just isn't enough to our author because now the franchise is going back to the days of male domination, what a classic Feminist argument, reminds me of the good old days. Do you know what else reminds me of the good old days; feminists not being diplomatic, but hey, at least our author isn't so salty and obnoxious as to compare this to the doings of the orange demon, Donald Trump, she's just salty enough to insult the franchise, a franchise she's apparently a big fan of. I do at least agree with the "abandoned" part, and thank god for that. Our Author then starts calling the film unnecessary again, while saying that it could still be good and, like it matters, inclusive, and once again, the whole 'Inclusive Ghostbusters' thing was never the problem, it was the fact that it was a reboot and that it was woke, and on a side note, what's inclusive about all women? especially with three of them being white, where's the Asian representation, that's not very inclusive is it. But like Diversity is progressive code for anti-white, inclusive in this context clearly means anti-male.


And to round out our article, our author puts a real belter of a statement on the table, "it seems for every step forward, we are taking two steps back in Hollywood," before, shockingly, making an argument against tokenism while also unconsciously admitting that her side of this war are a bunch of cunts. The golden bit is of course the whole bit about white men and one person of colour and one woman; way to belittle the likable, relatable black guy from the first film, you racist, but isn't it just gold that a progressive is now saying that tokenism is bad, because they love representation so damn much, so much even that they're more than happy to let it destroy franchise after franchise through their progressive disease, yet tokenism, no, that's bad, we need representation but not if it's tokenism, like those two things aren't the exact same thing. It's bad, full stop, they're the same thing and they're both bad because despite what you believe, the western world isn't infested with racists, or at least not the ones you think, people don't care as much about diversity and inclusion as you think, they care when what they're watching sucks, especially when they loved that thing already, and the issue with forcing inclusion and diversity into entertainment is that is comes with so many other progressive ideas, fundamentally, it is built upon the progressive stack, which justifies all kinds of racism and sexism out of historic injustice and concepts like "male domination." The ideology you hold and support is broken, corrosive, and warps reality to justify itself, and no one wants that in their entertainment, especially when they're being told they'll never amount to anything good because they have a dick or because they're white, Ghostbusters abandoning your bullshit is the best thing for it, regardless of how good or bad the film ends up being, and that's because, frankly, it is bullshit.


For the Sake of Comedy

Got a bit ill tempered in that last bit, and I did say that this was already long but there's this article I found not long after finishing up with the Mary Sue article, and I thought it'd really piss me off, but just from reading the first line, I actually feel kind of sad for the author. This won't take long but I will include a link so you can see it for yourself, it comes from Newsweek from one John Walters and is titled; "Why the Original 'Ghostbusters' Was Awful."
https://www.newsweek.com/why-original-ghostbusters-was-awful-480673
It's an older article, published in 2016, and I'm not wasting five paragraphs on breaking down everything wrong with it, firstly because it's not actually a  relevant article, it's just for fun, and secondly because there isn't really anything to gleam from it. Clearly our author wrote this article around the height of the Ghostbusters 2016 war in the hopes of belittling and dismantling the original film, but his method of doing so is so absurd and funny that I struggle to believe it isn't a fake article. He claims that he won't see the reboot, right before clarifying that he isn't a misogynist, because that actually is necessary with Ghostbusters now, thanks Feig, but what's gold is what he has to say about the '84 original, specifically that he believes that it sucks, that is isn't funny or clever or original, that it isn't funny, that people only found it funny because it had funny people in it, and that it isn't funny. I would break down everything wrong with this article, but I got the gist in the first few paragraphs, our author hates Ghostbusters, he has for more than thirty years, he doesn't care about the reboot, and that he thinks that the original isn't funny. And do you know what, while I don't care that he's of this opinion, I also don't care what he has to say, not caring about Ghostbusters, it strikes me as odd that a Sports writer would even bother writing about it, but the level of pissiness on display is just so bizarre that I can't help but be confused. The author tries to break down what he thinks is wrong with the film, but all I'm reading while I'm reading it is 'I Hate Ghostbusters, I Hate Ghostbusters' and it comes off as a bit too try hard for someone who really does hate the film, almost like he's over-compensating for guilt. This isn't important to the current controversy, but it wasn't all that relevant to 2016's controversy either, it appears to just be our author writing about something he doesn't give a shit about so he can get himself some notoriety with an inflammatory title and a bafflingly venomous article, or maybe that he sees shitting on the original as a virtue signal and isn't quite as honest as he wants to look, call me a cynic.


Almost Too Good to be True
Ghostbusters is something I hold very close to my heart, which is why the feelings run deep with me when it comes to the 2016 film. Because to me, (2016) wasn't just a controversy, it was a war; Ghostbusters had been turned into a weapon in a war that it was never meant to be involved in, a war in which I'd already chosen my side. I'm naturally very excited for this 2020 film, though I'm not an idiot, just because they've got Reitman's son to direct and it has the old Ecto-1 doesn't mean they can't fuck it up again, and so little is known for sure about it that anything is possible at this point, an all kid team would be a terrible idea, and since the 2016 film actually did come into existence somehow, I know that, while I want to be embrace my blind excitement for Ghostbusters 3, it failing is still a very real prospect. Ghostbusters 3 is still too far away to say anything for sure, it could be everything I wanted, or it could be dogshit, which would make this next eighteen months of fire and venom pointless, but you know what, until that day, I'm going to enjoy myself. Not only is Ghostbusters alive again, but so is the thing that killed it, and this time, it's the progressives tasting defeat. Because make no mistake, to them, Ghostbusters 3 is a defeat; it's a defeat of everything they believe at the hands of everything they despise, but I haven't got even a lick of sympathy, this film needs to happen, not because we need a Ghostbusters 3, but because they need to lose, this is a war that they started in 2016, and while 2020 will not the killing blow (unless Trump wins again), it will be one hell of a hit.