The original Ghostbusters is to this day, one of my favourite films. As a child, I found everything from the occult, paranormal, the ghosts themselves as well as all the gadgets and gizmos fascinating. Peter Venkman also cursed and did naughty things. As an adult I loved all the things I didn’t understand in my childhood including the anti-bureaucratic themes.
I think my reaction was similar to many when I first heard the new movie announced with an all-female team and saw the promotional images. I had no interest in the film and only read updates out of curiosity. Curiosity also had me watch the above trailer and my disinterest has changed to disbelief.
First of all, this is a trailer and not the full film but unless the trailer is showing the worst parts of the film, I’d expect it to be terrible. Like with so many reboots and sequels, the writers and producers seem unable to do anything original outside of the superficial which in this case, is a pandering but meaningless sex-change. The same location, same ethnic mix and even the some of the same jokes – judging from what was shown.
The token black is particularly disappointing as she appears to be nothing but a stereotype performing tired jokes and visual gags. If they’d taken notes at the original they might have observed that Winston Zedmore isn’t merely a token minority. He’s actually the only normal one in the group! He’s the one that the audience can most relate to which for the time, made the character much more than his race.
This seems to be the way every time with these movies. Not only can they not think of something new, they can’t take something that has been done and build on it in any meaningful way.
People often say a franchise has been “ruined” by a bad sequel or reboot. I think that’s going to far. You don’t have to watch it, include it or even acknowledge its existence. I would be amazed if I found it watchable at this point.