Ghostbusters Reboot/3

Dude, don't mention GG. Banned topic.

Let's be honest, I'm sure the world would be a much better place if the comments were disabled in every YouTube video.

"Ghostbusters: Let Us Never Speak of It Again"

What, I thought this movie "revitalized" the franchise?

That seems like deliberate spiting. Let's not.

What, it's not like I'm gravedancing or anything...

...Oh.

You know what, you're right. Let's not.

....

So I just finished watching this.

I liked it. It wasn't the greatest thing ever (I only laughed a handful of times) but I felt like was a pretty good reboot. It did it's own thing, while still paying homage to its roots.

It's a damn shame Harold Ramis died before he could be part of this.

....I also find it hilarious that Bill Murray appeared in a Walter Peck type roll only to be killed off moments later. That's pretty funny.

Still, I feel a little weird about it. I mean, I fee like it was good, but at the same time, I was just kinda....watching it.

I can't really describe it.

I feel the same way. In general, there is nothing really offensive about it compared to the original but at the same time doesn't feel particularly ambitious. Truth is I don't think Paul Feig is a very cinematic director, something about his style feels rather small and claustrophobic (which makes sense because he started in television). As an example, look at how scenic a simple scene like Peter and Ray talk about going into business feels big and interesting, you can see the students walking across the courtyard, the characters move and shift positions and posture, even the little touch of them sharing some whiskey (as Ray is buying into Peter's speech).

I remember thinking in the reboot that their initial confrontation with the dragon ghost possessing the mannequin was all four of the girls in a small make-up room, and the hallways were also very narrow. In those moments it felt like a Ghostbusters fan film instead of a big studio tentpole. Actually capturing the dragon ghost was cool enough and consider what is different, a large room, hundreds of extras and real choreography of the main characters in three dimensional space. A lot of movies end up doing that, where they feel small and bland until you get into the big money making set pieces, where often the director hands control over to people who specialize in the stunt and FX work. It almost feels like they had three different directors.

I keep forgetting that I no longer have to call this film Ghostbusters (2016). Now I can just call it Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, the title they chose for the home media release. When I saw the home media title, I thought it was pretty weird. I don't know, Answer the Call might work as a tagline, but a subtitle? Eh...

Hey, as a Tom Cruise fan I had to deal with one of my fave films of his having its name changed TWICE. One name change is nuttin' to be concerned about.

I have no problem with the fact that the film changed name. I just feel that the changed name feels a bit weird.

Then again, the names like New Generation, The Next Call, etc might be a bit too generic. XP

I'm kinda wondering how to feel about the villain.

This isn't a a god like entity, or a legendary murderer.

It's just a really pissed off dude. And while he seems to be something of an expy of Bigger Bad Ivo Shandar, it's kinda funny that in the end, the big threat is just some pissed off hotel Janitor.

From Nobody to Nightmare to the extreme. Shandor at least had some followers. This guy nearly destroyed the world with enough anger and some home made ghost bombs.

It's kinda scary and pathetic at the exact same time.

I both like it, and think it's not quite as good as the original.

It does feel like it reflects the new contemporary setting.

We're a world with more awareness of mass shootings and terrorism. More fear of what a lone nut can do.

The original feels maybe grander in scope with it being a world ending cultspiracy that the ghostbusters stumble on and thwart but in order to give the movie a face to hate, they invoke the Walter Peck hate sink.

The situation gets as dire as it does in the original not because of the threat of the cultspiracy but because some dickless jerk raises valid but petty concerns about unlicensed nuclear equipment.

edited 23rd Oct '16 8:41:23 AM by Bocaj

I didn't like the villain.

Then again, I didn't like the villains of the previous films either. Gozer, meh.

I loved the villain. Instead of just slaughtering all the SWAT, DHS and National Guard types, all he did was make them go full on Dance Party Mode. I could have watched another quarter hour of Evil!Chris Hemsworth making all those folks just boogie.

I thought the general premise of the villain was fine, even inspired at certain points. The moment when the Ghostbusters point out that his technology is not much different from their own was an inspired bit (echoing something said in the 2009 video game about Ivo Shandor "Stay in the light, Egon." "It's hard sometimes."), as well as the implications that this kind of technology is needed for supernatural activity to spring up. He also conveyed a certain rage at how horrible the world can be and his own ineffectual place within it. What didn't work was the few scenes of him plotting against the Ghostbusters, simply because the character is so ineffectual he never comes across as intimidating.

This is fair.

I rather like the circular nature of his relationship with the Ghostbusters. He doesn't know them until they show up screwing with his plans (and even then, they don't actually stop him until the end), and they have no clue who he is until they finally put together enough clues to realize who he is.

But if Erin and Abby had never written their book, he'd have never been able to actually do what he did. Likewise, if he hadn't started shit, the Ghostbusters would have never been born. It's less one sided then the original where the Ghostbusters came about as a result of Shandor's plans.

As for him being intimidating....I feel like he's not supposed to be that until he gets his power.

Lets remember....he never makes any mistakes. He never really gets foiled. The team catching the dragon doesn't mess with his plan because he'd already done what he needed to do. Even them finding him like they did changed nothing because he'd already been planning to kill himself from the get go. At worst, they both sped up that part and then slowed it down for a few seconds by shutting off the machine.

Not bad for a complete nobody.

That's what I'm saying, when we see what he is doing from the perspective of the girls, he is actually rather intimidating. A mysterious figure you barely glimpse and leaves behind machines that causes crazy shit to happen. Even his interactions with the Ghostbusters have a certain edge to it. But it's when we see him plotting against them that you lose that intimidation.

That might have been on purpose.

Doing both exemplifies the From Nobody to Nightmare aspect of his character.

He's just some un-intimidating nothing from nowhere. A loser who by all rights should just live his life and disappear along with so many others...

But circumstances have turned him into a force to be reckoned with even if he doesn't look like it. I mean, we see him plotting and talking big, but 90% of the time, it'd just be the rantings of some Arm chair revolutionaries, or a dick on the internet....

Then we see what he's doing and we realize there's far more too him then that.

That's just my idea on the matter though. It's more likely they thought the extra planning looked scary, but it just fell flat.

He's the harmless little weird loner muttering about how one day he'll make them all pay

up until the point where he's not harmless anymore.

Which kinda works for a contemporary villain. He's not cool. He's not usually intimidating. He's a nobody doing nothing important. But that doesn't mean he can't hurt people.

Possibly whats scariest is how overlooked he is in-universe, considering.

Exactly. He only got as far as he did because no-one paid him any mind. In fact, take away the rather fantastical means of exacting his revenge, and he's not much different from a normal lunatic who makes a pipe bomb in his basement. He's got the smarts, the anger, and the willingness to go all the way to get back at everyone.

Hell, if he'd never talked to Patty during his second test, they wouldn't have known what he looked like or where he worked.

And that's what people find scary these days.

I find these analyses on the villain rather fascinating. Good catches.a

I also liked the idea of Rowan. Conceptually, he worked for me. The parallels to our rash of mass shootings were appropriately chilling. But I do agree that he never quite felt like a legitimate threat to the Ghostbusters themselves; it seemed like a given that he was the type of villain where the conflict is in finding him, not beating him.

He became much more interesting and exciting as a character after he died, especially once he possessed Kevin. I actually thought going in, based on the scene from the trailer with Possessed Kevin glowering over spooky ghost tech, that Kevin was going to secretly be the mastermind behind the ghost attacks.

Looking back, I think I might have preferred, like, a Kevin/Rowan Composite Character. Or even for Rowan to just have been possessing Kevin from the beginning or something. Frankly, Kevin-Possessed-by-Rowan was a vast improvement over both their characters.

Rowan's a great idea, but as a character, he's in a weird place where he's less visually interesting and personally engaging to audiences than any other GB villain, except when he's possessing Kevin and becomes more visually interesting and personally engaging than any other GB villain. He's super bland except when he's super fun.

edited 24th Oct '16 7:49:05 AM by TobiasDrake

Yeah. I liked the idea more than the execution. I do think there were some good interactions, but it was one of two things I think the movie flubbed on.

The other is lack of a montage.

I don't remember any montages in the other two movies. ^_^;;