Huffy Flounce

Yeah, underwhelming for sure.

I want to see it because of this.

What an ugly man.

My problem with it has nothing to do with the gender of the cast, and all to do with the apparent complete lack of understanding of the tone and approach of the original. In short, it looks like the kind of Ghostbusters movie that I could have made - and I am an idiot!

But does it need to have the tone and approach of the original? Why not just watch the original if you're looking for the tone and approach of the original?

I think I will.

I feel people are being extraordinarily prissy and precious with the original. A lot of people would probably be just as angry and dismissive if it were an all-guy Ghostbuster cast. A lot of these people would peg all the jokes as weak or stale whether or not they actually were. Unfortunately, added to these people who would hate this regardless of the Ghostbusters' gender are people who clearly feel it's an affront that these Ghostbusters are women.

If you suggest to some of these people that this trailer would be getting nowhere near as much hate if the movie were coming out in an alternate reality where Ghostbusters as a concept never existed before, they will counter with, "That's the thing, though! It did exist before! This is just lazy!" People didn't really levy the same charge at the Coens when they made their True Grit adaptation, but I suppose their adaptation didn't have a gender-bend element to it. For those who think "This is just lame, gender-bending PC bullshit!" I don't think there's any way many of them are going to be able to give the movie a fair shot.

I haven't really looked around the web much, but I have seen people reacting to it on Facebook, AICN, and YouTube. The general trend, as far as I can tell, is that women and people in the LGBT community are intrigued and/or excited about it while the thirtysomething Joe Bro Blockbuster crowd is pretty disgusted by it. (Yes. I'm aware of there being exceptions. There are always exceptions. Again, I'm talking general trends I've noticed at three different places. I'm giving you anecdotal evidence. It wouldn't hold up in court, and it very likely wouldn't agree with statistics.) Others are on the fence or are either generally negative or positive toward it.

I feel like modern western society has come to prize the idea of originality a little too much. I say "the idea of" because it is exactly that. Art, for the most part, is a lot of remixing, but with a tiny dash of innovation (usually inspired by some greater cultural shift) here and there to keep things seeming fresh. (I realize this point, itself, is a pretty bland and obvious one. It's practically a truism at this point.) When there's not enough remixing there to obscure the unoriginality of a thing, people are more likely to rebel against it, even if it would otherwise seem a well-put-together and enjoyable thing.

The Internet has had a pretty big impact on this, because it allows for quicker and broader transmissions of fads and criticisms. We don't just have to keep up with the opinions of the local Joneses, anymore. We have to keep up with the opinion of the global Joneses. The Force Awakens backlash is potential evidence of this. A lot of people turned on it pretty quickly when they saw other people doing it. I'm sure some people were genuinely affronted by it from the get-go, of course. (At least some of those who were genuinely affronted by it may have been put on their guard because the Internet told them to hate Abrams. Who really even noticed the Star Trek lens flares before the Internet got pissy about it? Yes, yes. I know you did. Because you're more smart, cultured, and observant than the rest of the world. And *your* gripe is less about the lens flares than about how it's not real Star Trek because of Peace-Keeping Armada, etc.) I'm also sure some others simply didn't want to seem dumb, uncultured, or unobservant.

The Return of the Jedi backlash is probably also evidence of this. I grew up thinking it was beloved by all. I didn't find out otherwise until the Internet.

I just think it looks un-funny.

I meant to say I thought the new Ghostbusters trailer, for better or worse, was about as funny to me as trailers I've seen for other Feig movies, but the saying of it got lost in the shuffle.

I heard Abrams tell Colbert the other night that his wife finally told him to knock it off with the lens flares, so he did. And here I just assumed that with The Force Awakens he was trying to keep more within the SW style.

Never been a Dr Strange fan, but this looks pretty damn cool.

Honestly, at this rate, Disney might just end up owning everything I have, including my soul.

Is Lasseter still senior creative exec at all of Disney? Because they are doing something right and somebody has to be driving at least the cultures and behaviours that are letting the right things happen.

Dalty wrote:Is Lasseter still senior creative exec at all of Disney? Because they are doing something right and somebody has to be driving at least the cultures and behaviours that are letting the right things happen.

Lasseter's the Chief Creative Officer of Disney, in charge of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He's definitely one of the driving forces behind the new culture at Disney, but isn't typically involved with their live-action films. He definitely wields a tremendous amount of power and influence, however. Only Bob Iger ranks above him in their corporate structure, and he has the power to green-light films without anyone else's approval.

He also has a deep respect and longstanding relationship with the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, having produced quite a few of the English-dubbed releases of Miyazaki-sama's seminal Anime films. He introduced that same kind of commitment to exemplary storytelling and superb art direction to Pixar's (and later, Walt Disney Animation's) ethic many years ago.

Whan I grow up I want Bob Iger's job.

Dalty wrote:Whan I grow up I want Bob Iger's job.

Iger's come off as a bit of a jerk in a few interviews, mainly involving the whole mutants/Fox thing. Then again, I don't know how much of the current "I'm not a mutant! I was actually an Inhuman this whole time!" storyline in the comics stems from him taking vengeance on Fox.

He counts his stock options and thanks everyone for their input.

New trailer for X:Men Apocalypse. At this rate, doesn't look like Disney will ever get the rights back like they did Spiderman.

A lot of people standing and silent screaming at stuff while all tense. And are they in a landmark wrecking competition with those alien dudes out of Independence Day??

Dalty wrote:A lot of people standing and silent screaming at stuff while all tense. And are they in a landmark wrecking competition with those alien dudes out of Independence Day??

They're going to need to build new landmarks just so movies will have landmarks to destroy, since they've pretty much used up all of them.

In the ID-2 trailer they seemed to drop the Bhurj Khalifa and the Petronas Towers on London. Is that standard Hollywood geography at play, or are those aliens doubling up on landmark mayhem?

They mention in the new trailer that the ships have their own gravity, so it's conceivable that they picked the landmarks up and carried them to London.

Well, "conceivable" may be a stretch--in terms of known real-world tech, I mean. It wouldn't necessarily be inconceivable within the ID-verse's narrative framework. It wouldn't necessarily even be inconceivable within a physics framework. It would depend on the size of the ships.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:They mention in the new trailer that the ships have their own gravity, so it's conceivable that they picked the landmarks up and carried them to London.

Well, "conceivable" may be a stretch--in terms of known real-world tech, I mean. It wouldn't necessarily be inconceivable within the ID-verse's narrative framework. It wouldn't necessarily even be inconceivable within a physics framework. It would depend on the size of the ships.

Of course, the city destroyers in the first film were massive enough to have their own gravity well, and while they did a decent job depicting the heat generated by their atmospheric entry (the fireball that consumed that one radar plane), they glossed over the fact the explosion of all those giant craft across the Earth probably would've done more harm than good.

I can't even fathom how there will even be an Earth left to inhabit after this new, far larger ship from the trailers has finished scouring the planet. It appears to dwarf the mothership from ID4.

Master Skywalker wrote:Of course, the city destroyers in the first film were massive enough to have their own gravity well, and while they did a decent job depicting the heat generated by their atmospheric entry (the fireball that consumed that one radar plane), they glossed over the fact the explosion of all those giant craft across the Earth probably would've done more harm than good.

I can't even fathom how there will even be an Earth left to inhabit after this new, far larger ship from the trailers has finished scouring the planet. It appears to dwarf the mothership from ID4.

If you read "Beyond Star Trek," in which a physicist assesses the science in many common sci-fi TV shows and movies, he points out that the hovering saucer ships shown in "Independence Day" are so large that just by virtue of the force needed to stay aloft they would utterly crush anything beneath them. So if we worried about science at all, the movie could've ended as soon as those suckers showed and destroyed major cities just by hovering.

Bloody physicists ruining all our fun with all their thinking and their brains and shit.