So Ghostbusters 3 is officially happening people, Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman the director of the first two films has been handed the keys to Ecto-1 and charged with bringing New York’s finest paranormal investigators back to the big screen as Sony has a second go at reviving the ‘80s franchise.
Details are sketchy at the minute, all we really know is that the film’s happening, Reitman is directing and it’ll be released next year! Since news broke earlier this week Reitman has been keen to stress that this instalment will ‘follow the trajectory of the original film’.
‘I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a six-year-old visiting the set,’ Reitman told Entertainment Weekly and that ‘I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans. This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ’80s happened in the ’80s, and this is set in the present day.”
So far so good, my inner teenager is excited at the thought of a new movie, but the sceptical 36-year-old me is still bitterly disappointed by Sony’s last attempt to revive the franchise back in 2016. Hopefully lessons have been learnt from that debacle, after all, last year Sony managed to successfully reboot the Jumanji franchise with the help of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, so maybe this time they’ll get it right.
It’s The Hope That Kills You!
Now I’m not gonna go all Kingdom of The Crystal Skull on you and say Feig’s film never happened, nor am I gonna say that the film’s main problem was the decision to reboot it with a female cast: I never had an issue with that in fact, I thought it was probably the right thing to do. My central problem with Feig’s film was that it just didn’t know what it wanted to be, the writers couldn’t decide whether they wanted to pitch the film as an outright remake, or as a series reboot.
It’s a bit like how local media outlets here in Northern Ireland use Londonderry first, then Derry thereafter in all their news reporting for ‘Stroke City’ in an attempt to appease both nationalist and unionist viewers and in doing manage to annoy everyone in equal measure.
Believe me, when I say this I wanted Feig’s film to be good, first and foremost as a massive fuck you to the considerable misogynist trolling the film and it’s cast received from the moment it entered into production. On the first day of its release the film’s trailer collected 12,000 ‘likes’ and 13,800 ‘dislikes’ from YouTube viewers and by May 2016, the trailer had become the most disliked film trailer on YouTube and the ninth-most-disliked YouTube video of all time.
Leslie Jones, one of the film’s stars even found herself singled after the film was released with a series of racially charged slurs on Twitter. There’s a difference between being a fan of something and getting grumpy when you see it being remade and just using the female recasting aspect of the feature as an excuse to shamefully vent your misogynist agenda online through social media.
Sadly we had to go through this all again when Jodi Whittaker took over from Peter Capaldi as The Doctor in BBC’s Doctor Who in 2017. Because hey a woman couldn’t be trusted to drive the Tardis…..Come on guys get a grip, please! Don’t let female Ghostbusters and female Timelords threaten your fragile masculinity.
McCarthy, Wiig, McKinnon and Jones Deserved Better!
I knew Feig’s film would never hold a candle to the original, but hey any new Ghostbuster film would be better than no Ghostbusters film, but sadly I was wrong. It just wasn’t funny enough, regardless of the gender of its cast and worse still the special effects just looked cheap and nasty. Don’t get me wrong Feig’s film wasn’t Dirty Grandpa or Get Hard bad, but it wasn’t great.
Unlike Reitman’s original the film’s tone seemed like it was aimed at a much younger audience, yes the original film had an appeal to young viewers (myself included), but there was so much in there that surely went over younger viewers’ heads. Remember when Ray got a blowjob from a ghost and Venkman’s witty retort to a possessed Dana when she told him she wanted him inside her? “No, I can’t. It sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already!”
All of that went over my head when I was younger, but then maybe I was just a naïve innocent child, other than a fanny fart joke (sorry) and a reference to ectoplasm going ‘everywhere’, there just wasn’t much edge to the film’s humour.
At least he didn’t give us ‘sexy Ghostbusters’, thank god Michael Bay never got near the franchise, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones were real woman, just like Aykroyd and Co. had been real men 32 years prior. In a time when cinematic heroes where buffed macho men like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, the Ghostbusters were men we could relate to, they had love handles after all.
Reboot or Remake, They Just Couldn’t Decide!
But coming back to Feig’s feature, whilst I can forgive the lack of laughs I can’t forgive a film that just didn’t know what it wanted to be: Reboot or remake? They just couldn’t decide! If the film took place in a world where Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore never saved New York City from Gozer the Gozerian, why
How simpler would it all have been if the producers had taken the Force Awakens approach and treated this movie as a passing of the torch to a new generation? After all the film’s aforementioned trailer seemed to suggest that when it proclaimed, ’30 years ago four scientists saved New York (okay three scientists and Winston), now a new team will answer the call’ I even remember prior to the film’s release Ghostbusters old and new were brought out together to promote the movie in a desperate attempt to generate some much-needed buzz pre-release.
When the final result was something completely different, you’ve gotta wonder why people got so annoyed! Come on how bad were those cameos in the film? Okay, Ernie Hudson’s was kinda funny, but Bill Murray’s was one of the most unfunny things I’ve ever seen. I know here at BanterFlix we say trailers lie and marketing people will sell their souls to get you to buy a ticket for the movie they’re promoting but to further piss off a fan base that’s already annoyed that your movie is happening in the first place was just the final nail in the coffin.
Maybe Feig’s Film Was My Last Jedi Moment?
Now I know it that sounds petty and reeks of fan entitlement, but it was a real problem for me! Maybe I’m just a big ole hypocrite (probably), who had a Last Jedi reaction to Feig’s film because it wasn’t the Ghostbusters movie I wanted, but hey I’m just being honest. At the end of the day, a passing of the torch might’ve been an easier pill to swallow for some and maybe, just maybe it might’ve helped the film find a bigger audience at the box-office, but let’s be honest it wouldn’t have made it any funnier.
We’ll have to wait until 2020 to see how Jason Reitman’s new film turns out, but it’s already got me more on board than Feig’s feature ever had with its promise that it’ll be a continuation of the original series: carrying on 20 years after that fateful night on New Year’s Eve when the Ghostbusters saved us all from Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf (spot the fanboy).
At the minute we don’t know which members of the original cast will reprise their roles, although Dan Aykroyd has announced he’ll be involved in some capacity. So along with some familiar faces returning Reitman has promised fans there’ll be ‘lots of wonderful surprises and new characters for audiences to meet’.
So let’s wait and see, we had Ghostbusters: The Video Game back in 2009 (there’s a three cut you can watch online), which tided me over for a little while, but now I’m allowing myself to get quietly excited (more fool me) by the thought of Ghostbusters 3 next year.
But there’s still only three Indiana Jones movies!
(BanterFlix Editor-in-Chief)