Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment
We now have our long-awaited first look at Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot, and the reason it looks questionable has nothing to do with women in lead roles
Some people were going to hate Ghostbusters, the reboot of the classic 1984 comedy, starring an all-female cast including Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, no matter how the finished project looked.
While venom was spewed at the project from the very inception, some fans claimed it was because they were tired of reboots and wanted to see a sequel starring the original cast (minus Harold Ramis, who died in 2014), but in actuality, it seemed the true offense was that women were in the lead, something that men who love fantasy can never seem to wrap their heads around.
Despite the perceived (and actual) misogyny at play, the film deserves a chance to be judged on its merits, and with the release of the trailer, now we have our first look, and first opportunity to judge what to expect this summer.
After seeing the trailer, it’s obvious that there are some issues, but one of them is not the female cast.
McCarthy, Wiig, Jones and McKinnon all do the things they’re known and liked for. More over, each of them play off one another fairly well, so the interactions feel more natural than forced. People, whether they love, like or hate women, should be pleased there.
However beyond that, the problem I have with what I’ve seen so far is really a problem I’ve had with numerous reboots and remakes that’ve come down the pike over the years: falling to the temptation to be “bigger”.
Practical effects are always going to be a big part of a film like this, but one of the things that made the 1984 version so special is that the special effects were pretty practical.
Richard Edlund, an exile of George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic created effects for the original that were both inventive and spectacular, yet felt completely tactile within the world.
Everything in 2016’s Ghostbusters looks slick, polished…and computer generated. Everything has a sheen and gloss over it that screams, “I came from a computer!”, and while that may seem like a nitpick, and it probably is, what made the original film work is that the characters were always front and center, and their reactions to the things they saw were part of the comedy.
Now to be sure, two-and-a-half minutes is not nearly enough to judge an entire film, nor should it be, but there isn’t a whole lot here to feel confident about.
In a 2015 interview, Feig said that he was originally asked to direct a Ghostbusters sequel, but couldn’t figure it out, instead choosing to do something new with an all-female cast, and to be honest, that’s fine, but it seems like different only goes so far.
1984’s Ghostbusters had three white scientists and a black guy looking for a job (interestingly, the trailer claims they were all scientists).
In 2016’s Ghostbusters, you have three white scientists and a black woman looking for a job. The more things change, the more they apparently stay the same, right?
Yeah, it’s another nitpick, but it’s also emblematic that as much as reboots claim to want to approach the material from a “fresh perspective” the more it gets rooted in what came before, almost to a fault.
Ghostbusters haunts its way into theaters July 15, 2016.
Hashim R. Hathaway (Uncle Shimbo) is the host of the Never Daunted Radio Network, and proud father to NeverDaunted.Net. You can reach him on Twitter @NeverDauntedNet