Ever since the announcement of a new Ghostbusters movie, with a new all-female cast, there has been so much hate for it on the Internet. The trailers especially have not made believers out of the fans from the eighties, and this is what is known about the new Ghostbusters release date, news, and Five Reasons why this new film could receive a lot of hate.
1) The All-Female Cast
I might as well address this first. It was pretty clear that too much time has passed in between sequels (the last film coming out in 1989) and the passing of Harold Ramis has made the original quartet reunion that fans wanted simply impossible. It is pretty clear that some "next generation" of Ghostbusters was required, but many wondered the same thing that I did: "why did they make all of them women"?
This is actually not the first time that there has been a "next generation" of Ghostbusters. In 1997, there was an animated follow-up to the Ghostbusters animated series known as Extreme Ghostbusters, which had a team that were made of both genders. In fact, one of the Ghostbusters was in a wheelchair.
The fact that all Ghostbusters are women seems like overcompensating. The animated program actually had their receptionist Janine Melnitz become a Ghostbuster, and this was welcome. Personally, I would have loved to see a reunion of the Ghostbusters with Janine taking Harold Ramis' place.
Perhaps the studio wanted the Ghostbusters to be all the same gender, like they were in the original. The original were mostly Saturday Night Live Alumni, and this is the case with all-female case. At this point, audiences are starting not to are about what race or gender their characters are, so who perhaps this is just a non-issue today.
2) That Awful First Trailer
That first trailer for the new Ghostbusters became one of the hated videos, along with the trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. With Infinite Warfare, people didn't like the idea that space has shown up in the game franchise known for gritty ground-based combat, and for Ghostbusters, most people remember the humor.
The first trailer for the new Ghostbusters has jokes that just are not funny enough, but most people who remember the first film remember how almost every joke was so spot-on. It is hard to follow up with this.
3) The Obvious Nostalgic Cash-In is Too Little, Too Late
Hollywood is very good at bringing back films based on old franchises just to kickstart a new type of blockbuster. It was attempted last year with Goosebumps, and Ghostbusters feels like a franchise that really should have had more than one sequel. Much of it was the Bill Murray didn't want to do another one of these films, but perhaps certain films such as Inception deserve really only one film.
Now that Ramis has passed away, it feels like this event suddenly pushed a Ghostbusters sequel into the fast track of production. It's almost as if the studio realized that they should have made a Ghostbusters sequel, and are hoping that it is not too late.
4) The Presence of Mr. Stay Puft
I previously mentioned that the first trailer didn't go over very well, but the second trailer is all right. One of the issues with Ghostbusters 2 is that many said that the film didn't take any risks. It had the exact same plot as the first film, but with a different villain that was not very well developed.
Putting in Mr. Stay Puft, who was the incarnation of Gozer the Gozerian from the first film, shows that the reboot is bringing back the villain from the first film. If this is the case, I'm sure that the film has an explanation for it, but it should be a good one.
The Ghostbusters reboot clearly needs to take some risks if it wants to do something new. Otherwise, it will just look like a "back to formula" reboot like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is too much like Star Wars: A New Hope. If the new Ghostbusters goes for too much risk, they could alienate the fans. If they don't take any risks, it will come across as a bad imitation.
5) The Black Ghostbuster
Yet another elephant in the room that I need to address. Most people don't like how Ernie Hudson played Winston Zedmore in the first film, as he was not as scientific as the first three. He is kind of the token black guy in the original Ghostbusters and his character isn't on a lot of the original promotional material. He does get a lot more development on the animated series and the sequel. Sadly, the animated series later made Zedmore just a driver.
There is a black ghostbuster in the reboot played by SNL alum Leslie Jones, and her character is similar as she is just a driver and not a scientist like the others. This feels like a missed opportunity as they could have made the black Ghostbuster just as academic as the others, but would it have been trying too hard if they had gone that direction?
Whatever the case, the film's doubters recently received a point of view that they should listen to. According to E Online, the original Ray Stantz and co-creator of Ghostbusters, Dan Akyroyd, has said the new Ghostbusters has "more laughs and more scares than the first 2 films". The new Ghostbusters will be in theaters on July 15, and so it had better live up to this compliment, but we will see. Maybe then the haters will stop hating, and that new all-male Ghostbusters will happen.
