Ghostbusters Reboot/3

> If the cast hadn't been all female it would have likely gotten a reputation similar to an Adam Sandler film.

Should have gone with a ghostbuster team made up of men and women,I've been saying this for awhile but I don't think anyone was listening

Since this has turned into an all-purpose Ghostbusters thread, what I think would be a good plot for a future movie would be a huge war between two (or more) groups of monsters/demons with the G Bs caught up in the middle.

That was the Max Landis script, which probably cost too much. Then again Feig is a total hack, so who knows?

Feig isn't a hack, he's made good movies.

Honestly his continual blaming of everyone else except himself for the failure of Ghostbusters seems to show otherwise.

I'm fairly certain he's not the only director who has ever done that, dude.

I didn’t say he was. I’ve never seen anything of him but I understand he has a good reputation making quality romantic comedies, is just not a movie gender I’m interested. My point is he wasn’t the right director for this particular kind of movie.

In fact now that I remember I did watched Freaks and Geeks and thought it was very good.

Yeah but there’s a lot of difference between trying to pick up girls and rape.

It was the 80s, trying to hook up with a beautiful girl was not considered a crime back then.

This particular kind of sedative requires injection, is not like he wants to roofie her, if he wanted to drug her to have sex with her he would have to convince her to let him inject the sedative in the first place which would be kind of odd. Besides he’s clearly interested in her beyond sex, he wants to date her.

I personally never notice any animosity or misbehavior toward Janine but I guess it could be interpreted as such depending on the viewers, but being a prick with an employee is, again, not the same as being a sexual predator. We need to have some scale of things.

edited 4th May '18 5:42:01 PM by Luppercus

I'm not saying you were calling him a hack, I was responding to Beatman 1's assertion. Feig has made good movies but his improvisational approach wasn't good for this movie. That being said, I give him credit for good ideas. The antagonist in the 2016 film had infinite more potential than Viggo the Boring-Ass Painting. This is unfortunately one case where he should've been reined in. I mean hell, even RLM said that Feig wasn't a bad guy or anything, he was just not doing the right thing by going for improv.

And uh, just because it was the 80's doesn't mean that it's good.

I watched the Bridesmaids and Spy, and they were both pretty damn good. I'd even say Spy was one of the best comedy films to come out in 2010s. Also, his frequent collaborator, Melissa Mc Carthy, is a very competent actress. That's why I had a pretty high expectations for the film.

Right up until I watched the trailer. Holy fuck, that trailer sucked.

See, this response makes it clear that you have absolutely no idea why a doctor corrupting the results of a case study to try and trick one's patients into sleeping with him, using one's business to try and aggressively seduce desperate clients, or "romantic persistence", the art of ignoring consent and pushing one's self on a woman despite her repeated requests that you stop, are bad.

If you honestly consider these things to be a healthy way to pursue women, then this conversation isn't going to do anybody much good.

EDIT: I do want to note, however, that Venkman is a parapsychologist, not an MD. So the argument from before that he'd be legally allowed to prescribe drugs is flat-out wrong. The ESP study he was manipulating to con gullible women into bed at the start of the film is the kind of thing he's licensed to do, not administering sedatives.

Notably, Venkman doesn't even know how to properly describe the sedative he has. He says that he knocked Dana up with "300cc of thorazine", which isn't a thing. Real doctors measure thorazine in milligrams. It's a difference of volume versus weight.

Also, whether we're talking about 300mg or 300cc of thorazine, that is an absurdly high quantity that almost certainly would have killed Dana if that was actually what Venkman administered. So he's clearly talking out of his ass when he described the measurement to Ray. He knocked her up with a sedative he had on his person that he has no legal reason to possess and then tried to make it sound medical and scientifically sound.

edited 4th May '18 8:55:33 PM by TobiasDrake

Again, Venkman is pretty much meant to only be a stand in for Bill Murray to be Bill Murray. He has no character outside of "Bill Murray". And what character does Bill Murray have? That of an egotistical asshole who treats people like shit and is incredibly sexist while talking out of his ass seventy-five to eighty percent of the time. That part of the film has not aged well at all.

Sorry, my mistake then.

I've heard good things about Spy, I'm going to give it a watch. It should be notice that out of all the backlash the poor movie suffered all the intelligent non-political motivated people agree that it was better than the second one.

I try to separate real life from movies.

You need to be a psychologist to be a parapsychologist, I do not know if it is ever mentioned in the movie but in the character’s official biography he’s a licenced psychologist. I don’t know if the laws in New York allows psychologist to prescribe drugs but, again, discussing about the ethical procedures in a movie were two giant hellhounds possess people and a giant marshmallow man tries to destroy New York somehow feels weird. I do think that psychologists have a prohibition of sleeping with their patients, not of flirt with subjects of their studies, but again the ethical and legal standards of the Ghostbusters universe is kind of blury. Should be notice tho that he really didn’t seem to be interested in the ESP study or believe in it which may explain his disregard for the results. Whether flirt with single adult women is such a bad thing, well, that’s kind of on the viewers.

What all of these tells me is that he wasn’t trying to use the thorazine on her nor it was there for that intention, probably was in his car for some other reason, and if he was thinking in using it on her then he’s more a serial killer than a rapist.

But again, discussing the ethical and legal ramifications of the actions of 80s movie comedies is kind of odd. We can also discuss whether the principal in Ferris Buller’s Day Off committed trespassing, police corruption and brutality in Police Academy, whether Dr. Emmet Brown should be processed by endangering the life of a minor and buying plutonium to Libyan terrorists and the like, but probably this is not the place where.

edited 4th May '18 9:32:03 PM by Luppercus

Yeah, uh, kinda hard to do that with a character as sexist and creepy as Venkman, my dude.

That was an answer to "If you honestly consider these things to be a healthy way to pursue women", which I don't, after all I don't think the way characters act in movies should be extrapolated to real life because, well I'm not crazy.

Nevertheless, if the actor and the characters dislike you so much maybe this is not the franchise for you.

edited 4th May '18 9:30:54 PM by Luppercus

See, here's the thing: I like the franchise. I like the ideas. I like the potential. But I don't like Venkman. Saying "then this isn't the franchise for you" seems like a standard "don't like don't read" defense, and an egregious one at that.

I don't want to be rude is just that I personally won't be able to do that. I can't enjoy a franchise if I hate one of the main characters.

I remember rewatching ghostbusters in college and just sort of being horrified by Bill Murray's character, having grown up adoring the movies.

You could just watch the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, Venkman doesnt act like a sleaze there. Speaking of which, it's kind of a funny coincidence that the Ghostbusters cartoon did an episode based off of A Christmas Carol (I guess in this universe, it's not just a story but a real thing, which makes me wonder if the book was even published, I guess Scrooge could have written it himself as autobiography), and around the same time, Bill Murray starred in a movie that was a modern-day retelling of A Christmas Carol.

edited 5th May '18 9:18:02 AM by J79

The IDW continuity also both tones down Venkman slightly and also explicitly plays him as the team Jerkass vs being the "80's roguish face character."

If you don't mind, could you list some of Murray's transgressions please?

Generally they include tons of behind the scenes tensions with people. An infamous case is Murray and Harold Ramis losing their friendship due to the fighting on the set of Groundhog Day. There's the infamous backstage fight with Chevy Chase on SNL, though in fairness Chase is also a notorious piece of shit. Murray also assaulted one of his ex-wives, though to my knowledge it was physical abuse and not sexual. I recall something behind the scenes of Lost in Translation too of Murray being incredibly difficult with Sofia Coppola, plus him insulting Lucy Liu on Charlie's Angels.

Basically, he's a dick. The characters he played aren't too far behind the real guy.

Thanks. I assume the thing with Lucy Liu is why he wasn't in Charlie's Angels 2.

From what I recall, he'd allegedly insulted Liu's acting or something.

So I finally watched the film, and I'd say it was worth watching once if just for Chris Hemsworth's character. Everything he did had me ROFL.

I hope your floors were clean.

Anyway, Venkman was definitely the stand-out character in the group. Ironically, what made Bill Murray popular in that role is what would get him lambasted for it today.

To be fair to the movie, Ghostbusters was very cynical at its core. One of the team being just the worst kind of person kinda fit with the way things hashed out. None of the characters were prepared to be Ghostbusters and they were all in over their heads. They definitely weren't heroes. That's the weight of the ending, for me. That, for a moment, they're willing to take that step and risk everything. It's the only point in the movie where it drops the veil of cynicism and it works. It doesn't excuse or validate Venkman, but Bill Murray was popular at the time and his inclusion benefited the film.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Mar 16th 2019 at 12:41:58 PM