What Ultimately Doomed Ghostbusters 2016

A Cautionary Tale

Far be it for me to turn this newly-minted newsletter into a mere impulsively-written “what really grinds my gears” type platform. But I’ve been thinking a bit about director Paul Feig’s recent public call-out to Sony regarding the noticeable lack of his “Ghostbusters 2016” in their Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection. 

Ultimately, I think that what doomed Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters 2016” was Paul Feig.

Lemmie explain.

Look, nobody is saying that the online outrage over merely the *notion* of an all-female ghostbusting team didn’t impact the eventual reception of the actual film. It was horrible, unfair, a whole bunch of adjectives. 

But it’s the fact that Feig not only continued to add gasoline to the fire by publicly reacting to this online outrage (WAY before the movie was even finished), but CLEARLY worked that reaction into his final cut.

The result was a film that seemed like a rather hastily put-together “reply” to snarky smack from keyboard warriors…snarky smack that was so fresh it was still warm on people’s Twitter feeds by the time the movie came out. (Irony of ironies, this approach is sorta the *norm* five years later.)

You can most clearly witness this in “Ghostbusters 2016” with Bill Murray’s cameo as paranormal debunker Martin Heiss. That whole sequence seemed to me to be one big ham-fisted defense of the new female team. Heiss was broadly written (and acted) as a *complete* asshole, who is essentially “oppressing” the women…clearly, the symbolism represents cranky fans of the original beloved 1985 Ghostbusters flick (which Murray’s character explicitly depicts by default, as the actor WAS Peter Venkman). 

Then Heiss suddenly gets unceremoniously flung out a window and is killed pretty much for laughs. It was extremely cringe to watch, and had a very obvious “out with the old, in with the new” feel to it. And the problem with that approach, outside of its clunkiness, is that I believe the original “Ghostbusters” was too much of a massively popular fan-phenomenon to dismiss in such a manner. 

So why would Sony include an outlier movie in their canon Ghostbusters collection that had CLEARLY took a shit on that original franchise? 

I could go on about the main villain of “Ghostbusters 2016” being a painfully obvious stereotype of a woman-hating incel. And then I could move on to other aspects of the movie that have *nothing to do* with Feig’s beef with the original fans, such as the palpable lack of personality of the theoretical “leader” of the new group, Kristen Wiig’s Erin Gilbert. (Some might argue that Melissa McCarthy’s *far* more appealing Abby Yates is the team head, but it doesn’t seem that way both in the marketing or the plot. I’m sure focusing on Wiig instead of McCarthy had *nothing* to do with the latter’s zoftig physique.) 

It’s a shame, because there were *definitely* aspects of “Ghostbusters 2016” I liked. The look and feel and energy of the new ghostbusters (outside of wet blanket Gilbert) was really cool. I would still love to get a set of their action figures (which from me is as high praise as I could give anything). And the finale with the giant possessed vintage Thanksgiving balloons was visually stunning.

But the takeaway lesson here is that you don’t want to let your reactions to advance online chatter regarding your upcoming project to impact the final product (I speak from experience). ESPECIALLY when it comes with last-minute tweaks to a major tentpole high-budget motion picture. 

But that’s just my opinion. Thanks for reading…and smash that “subscribe” button until your fingers bleed, if you haven’t already done so. Face front, True Believers!