Ghostbusters |OT| Is it the boobs?

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I don't think we need to keep jumping into all this false dichotomy.

Not everyone who disliked the movie is sexist or a bigot. There are certainly those assholes who exist, but let's ease of the gas a little on boxing everyone into two categories here or aligning with various conspiracy theories.

...
...
...

Who said everyone?!

Oh right no one.
 
I just watched it 2 hours ago.
I liked it!
I was smiling most of the time and really liked the ghostbusting at the end especially Holtzman's scene with the proton pistols. I would rank it on top of GB2.
 
It's looking like it'll have a tough road to profitability.

$144 Million production budget before advertising costs, ~$46 million opening weekend, mediocre word of mouth, and no Chinese release.

Is Pascal going to be put in Producers jail? her recent record after the email hack lookin shaky
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I just watched it 2 hours ago.
I liked it!
I was smiling most of the time and really liked the ghostbusting at the end especially Holtzman's scene with the proton pistols. I would rank it on top of GB2.

I couldn't help but laugh at the strange ADR that preceded that bit.

  • Holtzman tells the other Ghostbusters "Remember your sidearms."
  • A beat later we cut behind her back, hiding her mouth from view, and hear her say something along the lines of "I almost forgot THESE!"
  • Serendipitous slow-mo kicks in among cloud of CG. Theme song and McKinnon make it fun to watch in a surface level way, at least. Pretty colors.

The finale was real messy to me in terms of storytelling.
 
They absolutely did, Feig at least apologized about it but anyone who says they didn't attack their fanbase is reaching.

The worst he said is that geek culture is home to some of the biggest assholes. Which blatantly shouldn't be that controversial because geek culture has a toxicity problem.


Guess what though? That was from an interview about a geek culture book and had nothing to do with the movie or the backlash. The person who conducted the intial interview sold it to the NY Daily News falsely misrepresenting it as being about the movie...ooops.

So no Paul Feig did not bloody attack the Ghostbusters fanbase.
 
Last IMAX showing is 4pm local time. Tempted to get out of work early to catch it...wouldn't be the first time, as I caught the last IMAX showing of Pacific Rim as well.
 
Our dispenser at work went to see it last night
She said there was 2 people in the cinema..her and her husband.
She said it ok not brilliant.
 
It's looking like it'll have a tough road to profitability.

$144 Million production budget before advertising costs, ~$46 million opening weekend, mediocre word of mouth, and no Chinese release.

The important part of that article is on a deleted scene, not the numbers that we've had repeated tens (hundreds?) of times in this thread. It does have a challenging road ahead of it, but word of mouth is not mediocre (I wouldn't call an A-/B+ "mediocre") and it hasn't dropped sharply at the US box office. I think it will hang on hard enough to justify a sequel.
 
The important part of that article is on a deleted scene, not the numbers that we've had repeated tens (hundreds?) of times in this thread. It does have a challenging road ahead of it, but word of mouth is not mediocre (I wouldn't call an A-/B+ "mediocre") and it hasn't dropped sharply at the US box office. I think it will hang on hard enough to justify a sequel.

Oh for sure. I was reading that piece on the scene that apparently cost the production millions, according to Feig, when the financial end of things kind of sunk into me. I also look at the Rotten Tomatoes average and general consensus on social media and rarely see a lot of "must see" sentiments, although I'm sure they exist. There doesn't seem to be much buzz for this movie less than a week into its run.

Ice Age, Star Trek, and Lights Out hit tomorrow too, mind you. I can't imagine Ghostbusters breaking $30 million this coming weekend in the US.
 
Just got done watching it and it's far worse than I thought it would be. Jesus, the cast was down right terrible and not funny. Chris Hemsworths character was over done and just obnoxious. None of the jokes came off as funny..

As far as positives? I loved the special effects, especially the final ghost form, which was really cool looking.

I went in with low expectations, but some pretty positive reviews kinda had me convinced it had to be a decent movie at least, but no, it's by far the worst film I've seen in 2016.
 
Just got done watching it and it's far worse than I thought it would be. Jesus, the cast was down right terrible and not funny. Chris Hemsworths character was over done and just obnoxious. None of the jokes came off as funny..

As far as positives? I loved the special effects, especially the final ghost form, which was really cool looking.

I went in with low expectations, but some pretty positive reviews kinda had me convinced it had to be a decent movie at least, but no, it's by far the worst film I've seen in 2016.

I think the cast has some real potential, personally. Feig's shooting style is just completely at odds with their respective improvisation. He shot the movie with countless close-ups of improvised dialogue. Nobody is actually talking to one another and we never get an organic rhythm from the cast. We're left with an editing style that kills any natural chemistry the four might have had.

Hemsworth was, yeah, so questionably overdone in terms of stupidity that the movie felt surreal. I didn't find most of his jokes or approach funny. Less would have been more for him, or at least a more mundane/realistic approach to contrast the supernatural elements.
 
Just got out of seeing it.

This...was not a good movie.

I really really disliked it and I don't understand how.

Paul Feig has directed a number of REALLY good movies. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy have been in movies where they had great chemistry together. Leslie Jones is a hilarious comedian. Kate McKinnon is pretty funny and has had some good SNL moments.

Almost none of it worked. I don't understand. None of the jokes landed. There was no chemistry between the characters. The pacing was all over the board. The Ghostbusting was...really bad. The women who are GREAT actresses just...bumbled over each other's dialogue or yelled or sounded like bad improv. Chris Hemsworth's idiocy didn't even get a cracked smile out of me, his timing was atrocious and stuff he said wasn't even a joke. Like, they'd be setting up lines for laughs and then the scene would move on and I'd just get confused and be like "Where was the joke?"

Leslie Jones was actually pretty good; I'd say she was the best character. I hated all the "I'M SAYING SOMETHING LOUD AND THAT MAKES IT FUNNY" parts but everything else just seemed so much more...genuine and real about her performance. She was good.

I feel like it was a great director and great actresses given just a terrible script or poor direction. It's so weird.

What's really really unfortunate is I really wanted to like this movie. All the negativity surrounding it has been unfair bullshit from day one. I didn't like the trailers too much but everyone who went IN on their fucking misogynistic bullshit and hatred just made it impossible to have an actual conversation with people about this movie. The massive dislikes, the huge backlash and whining...all disgusting and totally driven by sexism.

But man. I wish it was actually good.
 
Tyrone Magnus has put out his review, what's quite surprising to me is that he really liked the trailers but thinks the movie is terrible, I watch Tyrone quite a lot as I find him funny and down to earth and his reactions are hilarious.

Tyrone usually likes trailers but hates movies.
 
Movie was average. Entertaining (mostly) but lacking any real creativity.

Couple notes:

Hemmsworth was terrible. He just seemed like someone pretending to be stupid. He never actually convinced me he was an idiot, and none of the idiot jokes worked.

Kristen Wiig either did not want to be in this movie, or she was miscast. Not sure which, but I do believe the lead in the movie should have some charisma. Compare this to Bridesmaids -she was great in that, and for some reason barely awake in Ghostbusters.

Melissa McCarthy was fine but boring. She also wasn't given any funny jokes.

Product placement was cringeworthy. They had a sincere scene set around a VERY visible Papa John's pizza box.

Kate McKinnon was great. Too bad there wasn't more of her.
 
Can't help but feel it would have been better if it was a rated 15 movie.

Some characters felt forced in. Most cameos were good though. Loads of throw backs.

I dunno, it was ok I guess.

Lol, 2 young kids with their mum left the cinema straight after the first ghost scene. Literally bolted for the door! No sleep for them tonight!
 
I think an important thing to note about the sequel chances and weather or not Sony is actually gonna push through with it, is that they recently gave Feig additional money so that they could make the extended version of the movie have complete special effects.

I have personally never heard of that before, have any other movies had Director's/Extended Cuts that had additional special effects driven scenes added back in with effects completed? If I had to guess I'd say LotR/Hobbit but that's also a.. very different situation than we have here. I believed Sony was gonna back a sequel anyway but I was very surprised to hear they gave additional money to finish effects shots for the Extended Cut. I was assuming that the 15 minutes would have been maybe more jokes and/or adding stuff back in that they cut like
Erin leaving the group.
 
I think an important thing to note about the sequel chances and weather or not Sony is actually gonna push through with it, is that they recently gave Feig additional money so that they could make the extended version of the movie have complete special effects.

I have personally never heard of that before, have any other movies had Director's/Extended Cuts that had additional special effects driven scenes added back in with effects completed? If I had to guess I'd say LotR/Hobbit but that's also a.. very different situation than we have here. I believed Sony was gonna back a sequel anyway but I was very surprised to hear they gave additional money to finish effects shots for the Extended Cut. I was assuming that the 15 minutes would have been maybe more jokes and/or adding stuff back in that they cut like
Erin leaving the group.

Sounds like a waste of money. And I agree -more jokes would be much better.

I do feel like they wasted a lot of opportunities with the ghosts, though. Like the ghost at the beginning...there's a joke about how the father wished she was never born or something like that and it was really funny. But then the ghost just vomits on Wiig and disappears completely. It felt like a wasted opportunity to show the audience why she was so awful....or I dunno, just something more.
 
It's looking like it'll have a tough road to profitability.

$144 Million production budget before advertising costs, ~$46 million opening weekend, mediocre word of mouth, and no Chinese release.

Old information.

The conventional wisdom over the last few weeks was that the Sony release would open between $40 million and $50m this weekend. The hope was that it would really break out, but that didn’t quite happen yet. As it stands now, the picture is another example of how “Doing your best may not be good enough.” At least, not yet, thanks to that $144m budget.

It scored the biggest opening weekend ever for (deep breath) Paul Feig, Katie Dippold, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, and Andy Garcia. It is just behind the $54m opening of The Martian for Kirsten Wiig’s best live-action opening. This is even big for Chris Hemsworth, coming in below only the MCU films and Snow White and the Huntsman ($56m). No, I’m not counting his Star Trek cameo.

It’s the biggest live-action comedy debut since Pitch Perfect 2 back in May of 2015. It’s the third-biggest live-action opening of the summer behind X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. And just this year, it’s the second biggest live-action/non-superhero opening thus far behind only Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. So in a summer of many underperforming would-be franchises, this one broke out about as big as could’ve been hoped.

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In terms of domestic forecasts, it’s all a matter of legs. The worst-case scenario is that it plays like The Boss ($63m/$23.5m) or Sex Tape ($38m/$14m) and ends up with $125 million domestic and thus desperately needs overseas grosses to survive. But the rest of the comparisons are a bit rosier.

Even Sony’s Pixels, which was terrible in almost every way (sorry), pulled a 3.25x weekend-to-final multiplier ($78 million/$24m) which would give Ghostbusters a robust $152m cume. A 3.47x like Maleficent gives it a $163m cume. If it plays like The Heat ($159m/$39m), Identity Thief ($134m/$29m), Spy ($110m/$29m), 21 Jump Street ($138m/$36m), or, uh, Ghostbusters 2 ($112m/$29m), it gets somewhere between $178m and $190m.

----

The problem is that overseas prospects are highly uncertain. Comedy doesn’t always travel, especially female-driven comedies. It’s one thing to say that the $65 million-budgeted Spy made $120m overseas against a $110m domestic take, but Sony and Village Roadshow need a bit more than a $235m global cume ((or the $264m gross of Charlie’s Angels back in 2000) against that pesky $144m budget.

Like that other Village Roadshow domestic hit, The Legend of Tarzan, overspending has placed this film in a precarious position where it has to somewhat over perform just to break even. Of course, Tarzan won’t cause Hollywood to proclaim that they should stop making over-budgeted franchise revamps starring mostly unknown white guys with nice abs.

Short of it, it'd be a fine opening for any other comedy, but GB cost $144 million. Overseas is weird, but comedies, especially McCarthy's are pretty strong when it comes to legs. The trick is to see what's up this weekend.

I think an important thing to note about the sequel chances and weather or not Sony is actually gonna push through with it, is that they recently gave Feig additional money so that they could make the extended version of the movie have complete special effects.

I have personally never heard of that before, have any other movies had Director's/Extended Cuts that had additional special effects driven scenes added back in with effects completed? If I had to guess I'd say LotR/Hobbit but that's also a.. very different situation than we have here. I believed Sony was gonna back a sequel anyway but I was very surprised to hear they gave additional money to finish effects shots for the Extended Cut. I was assuming that the 15 minutes would have been maybe more jokes and/or adding stuff back in that they cut like
Erin leaving the group.

Because, as we've said repeatedly in the box office threads, Sony has nothing else.
 
The important part of that article is on a deleted scene, not the numbers that we've had repeated tens (hundreds?) of times in this thread. It does have a challenging road ahead of it, but word of mouth is not mediocre (I wouldn't call an A-/B+ "mediocre") and it hasn't dropped sharply at the US box office. I think it will hang on hard enough to justify a sequel.
I think Word of Mouth is all over the place just coming from these threads. Reviews are pretty good but it looks like a lot depends on this next weekend.

I hope it gets a sequel and I hope they don't mess it up like they did this one.

Short of it, it'd be a fine opening for any other comedy, but GB cost $144 million. Overseas is weird, but comedies, especially McCarthy's are pretty strong when it comes to legs. The trick is to see what's up this weekend.
Thanks for that information, Im interested to see how it does.
 
Tyrone usually likes trailers but hates movies.
That's not true, there's loads he like the trailer and loved the film
the only thing I disagree with him on is Batman Vs Superman.
Funny he put up a Pre-review as he left the cinema with
"Can't wait to tell you guys how Bad this was"
Don't think he's done that before lol
 
Goddammit internet, you made me think this movie was going to be good. :-(

It was just so...generic. Generic Summer Blockbuster. A few parts made me smile, but they used so many tropey cliches, racial, gender, among others, the chemistry between the characters felt almost non-existent most of the time.

The sad thing is the talent is there...but it didn't come together for me. They should have just rebooted one of the cartoons...
 
This is pretty much the cartoon IMO, it's less serious than the original and more vibrant. That's not a dig at the original it's just that it's more in line with material that followed the original.
 
Now I haven't seen the original movies. But I thought this was funny as hell. Nice little "turn your brain off" popcorn movie.

Paul Feig can do no wrong.
 
I think what annoys me beyond sanity's edge is that there are a lot of legitimate points in some reviews I've seen that didn't like it on Youtube from people like RLM or Angry Joe or whoever...

...which are completely thrown away and rendered shit by the reviewers constantly going "lol we're gonna get called sexist lol" or constantly dismissing the legitimate bullshit that has trailed after this movie.

Why is it so fucking hard to go "a lot of critiques lodged against this movie before it came out were drowned out by a wave of misogyny and hatred that did not come from a genuine place of thoughtful critique or legitimate concern due to sub-par trailers and concerning interviews as well as worry based upon the usage of a well-regarded and beloved property. It is unfortunate then that with all the unnecessary garbage thrown against this movie that it turns out to not actually be that good"

Do you have to be so condescendingly dismissive of the absolute shitstorm that was created about this movie from a cavalcade of sleazebags and realize when people are detracting from haters or sexist assholes they're not fucking talking about you who may have not enjoyed the movie?
 
Saw it earlier. I won't say it was awful, but it certainly wasn't good by any means either. Terrible chemistry between the cast and, most disappointing of all, it just wasn't funny. A lot of the jokes just fell flat for me, although a lot of that has to do with the lack of any aforementioned chemistry. I also had a real problem with the weapons and how it turned into God of War at the end.

Best part of the movie: A Monster Calls trailer. Seriously...holy shit.
 
Do you have to be so condescendingly dismissive of the absolute shitstorm that was created about this movie from a cavalcade of sleazebags and realize when people are detracting from haters or sexist assholes they're not fucking talking about you who may have not enjoyed the movie?

RLM was pretty blunt about their thoughts on the controversy. "This movie is a product, and everybody who argued about it on a political level wasted their time." (paraphrased)

Anything they said regarding sexism (which I don't recall them really doing) was obviously tongue-in-cheek. They even said that they preferred the movie having a female cast.
 
I'm still surprised to see a lot of the "no chemistry" opinions -- I felt that that was one of the film's big strengths, actually. I felt the leading members of the cast all did a great job in their shared on-screen time.

I do agree that Hemsworth was something of a black sheep when it came to geling with the rest of the cast, but I thought he picked up fine once
the bad guy possessed his character's body.

I wonder how many people went to this movie somewhat begrudgingly, and only looked for the elements of the film that reaffirmed whatever biases they carried into it. Not exactly in terms of the feminist/misogynistic aspects, but in terms of it being a cheap corporate cash-grab and/or too much (un)like the original.

I mean, I can full on admit at this point that that's kind of how it was for me and Batman v Superman earlier this year, so I can absolutely accept that there's a crowd like that for Ghostbusters.

That said, I'm going to retire any attempt of a defense of this movie after this post. Not out of frustration at all, but more or less because it's ultimately like a 6/10 or 7/10 (on a reasonable scale, not the dumb bloated game review scale) -- I find it perfectly fine for the most part, but like I said in my previous post, it's not likely to be one I care to remember later down the road. I had a fine time watching it, but I don't think it's "bad" by any stretch. At worst, elements of it are "okay," like general quality of the CG effects and the ghost aesthetics, and the one absolute thing I do not like is the Fall Out Boy rendition of the theme. For me, it's still a completely functional, but not at all exceptional, Ghostbusters film, but it's not one that I'm absolutely passionate about showering with praise and defending on the 'net.
 
Just finished watching this. It was very 'meh'. The movie got one, maybe two chuckles out of me. Some of the editing in the film was bad. It felt like the first half of the movie was just a bunch of scenes stitched together, no natural transition at all. Chris Hemmsworth was the funniest of the lot by far. No one else was close. It was clear the dance number was edited out of the movie and into the ending credits, but it worked weirdly enough. The villain was terrible. The stereotypical manbaby angry at the world (they even made a joke about his virginity). All this fighting for months over a below average movie...sheesh.

I give it a 4/10.
 
I think what annoys me beyond sanity's edge is that there are a lot of legitimate points in some reviews I've seen that didn't like it on Youtube from people like RLM or Angry Joe or whoever...

...which are completely thrown away and rendered shit by the reviewers constantly going "lol we're gonna get called sexist lol" or constantly dismissing the legitimate bullshit that has trailed after this movie.

Probably because of silly stuff like how James Rolfe got death threats for not wanting to see the movie.
 
Because, as we've said repeatedly in the box office threads, Sony has nothing else.

I don't ... disagree with you? I don't think they're mutually exclusive, they can back their investment out of both desperation and honest desire to get something done. In this case it's finally nutting out a Ghostbusters movie series that they've been getting blue balls trying to cash in on for the past 25 years. "We're gonna fuckin make this work! ... Oh God please let this work!" :)
 
I don't ... disagree with you? I don't think they're mutually exclusive, they can back their investment out of both desperation and honest desire to get something done. In this case it's finally nutting out a Ghostbusters movie series that they've been getting blue balls trying to cash in on for the past 25 years. "We're gonna fuckin make this work! ... Oh God please let this work!" :)

The question of course: For whom do they want to produce the sequel?

The old Ghostbusters fans are gone, they are not getting them back. The new audience which will make this movie, with a lot of luck, break even, is also divided. If half of them thinks the movie is meh or awful. They will not rush into the theaters to see a sequel either.

So this leaves some people, which maybe will support the movie again or maybe not. So the sequel from the start has a smaller audience which should make the next iteration profitable. And it has not the reputation of a great movie like the first one of the old Ghostbusters did.
 
Probably because of silly stuff like how James Rolfe got death threats for not wanting to see the movie.

What's that have to do with their point?


The Rolfe situation doesn't negate the existence of the 2 year long bullshit against or justify anything the post you were replying to was complaining about.
 
with all the conversation about the female leads and their chemistry, nothing prepares you for quite how badly made the film is. a drunkenly stitched together quilt of disparate scenes that at no point give the film any kind of momentum and the stakes are so low they're subterranean.

i don't think many people (especially fans of the actors) will claim that the performances are far above mediocre, but the film built around them really is pixels level garbage.

the vapid "it's a fun and breezy summer blockbuster" positive reviews which make up the bulk of its RT rating read like budget straight to DVD box quotes, which is beyond the quality you should expect.
 
Finally got around to seeing the film. Posting from mobile, so exuse it from being a bit disjointed. I've been excited since the early stages to check this out, and I can't honestly weight my disappointment with the end result.

A few things I've been noticing from other postings thst baffle me.

"This is a Real Ghostbusters film." - Outside of having the name Ghostbusters, huh? No.

"It's a least better than Ghostbusters 2!" - Remarkably it isn't. Goddam. Bar is testicle shot low.

I believe Feig is a large part of the problem here. He speeds through each scene like there is a time allotment. Never is there a chance to slow down and give genuine moments or marinate the characters. By the time the climax kicks in I really don't have a sense of any attachment or stake in anything that is going on. If you've seen Spy you should have a good idea of what I'm talking about in terms of his editing style. It worked in that film largely because you had a solo narrative, and cuts ended usually at the expense of the absurdity of McCarthy's universe. Here you have a variety of individuals who suffer because comedic styles are different, less narrative to go around, and simply makes everyone seem distant to the viewer.

Wiig and McCarthy may as well be ghosts in the film. Zero chemistry. Not sure why they didn't add any additional elements to these characters to make them stand out either.

Holtzmann comes across poorly. I never have a sense of who she is. I love Kate McKinnon, and despite this she has a couple lines that deliver some chuckles. She isn't very relatable or even stereotypical if you are narrowing her down to some kind of Egon character, which she is not.

Patty is the only character in the entire film thst feels whole. Despite this, they still make her seem strange and desperate by shoehorning her into the film when they could have naturally found a more acceptable way to introduce her to the group.

Kevin just works. He is a character that either gels with you or you loathe. For me, he was the only person who seemed to genuinely having fun and gave a enough dumb lines to generate some sort of reaction.

Every side character is absolutely wasted, every cameo is meaningless, every reference piles up. Lone exception was
Janine
. If this was the only cameo or strong reference to the original would have been perfect.

Final Score: RIGHT IN THE CHILDHOOD

Well...no. In fact it's relatively harmless. They also do enough to try and make this their own film. It doesn't share much at all with the overall objective of 1984 outside of generic structure. Problem is film has a higher sense of attachment and they marketed this as a selling point. It's hard pinpoint the hard terms Sony pushed, what Feig wanted, what Feig was capable to do with all this out of the film "Avengers" nonsense.

The comparison to Pixels still stands funny enough. Initially from a trailer and premise standpoint, but by the end of the film my experience was roughly the same in the cinema. Two franchises with jumpsuits throwing nostalgia in a attempt for any of it to stick. If this film would have went the Evolution path it could have been a bit more interesting in retrospect.
 
i swear holtzmann's inception was that foam adventure video that did the rounds a while back.

even got the goggles right.
 
GAF reactions here don't seem to reflect the RT score. Sometimes RT just gets it wrong, like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Is this one of those times?
 
GAF reactions here don't seem to reflect the RT score. Sometimes RT just gets it wrong, like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Is this one of those times?

I'd say GAF isn't far off RT, seeks like about 2/3 to 3/4 or 65-70%ish here liked it

As for Crystal skull, whether RT got it 'wrong' will always depend on your own opinion of the movie

Though I believe GB is a far better movie than Crystal
 
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