We’ve seen the new uniforms. We’ve seen the new proton packs. We’ve seen the new Ecto-1. (Check here if you haven’t.) We’ve seen leaked on-set images. But this is our first official glimpse of the new Ghostbusters cast in full get-up.
So… thoughts?
My first thought was “Wow, they look so badass!” Then my second thought was “Wait, do they really need to look so badass?” Then my thoughts ran in circles:
“Of course they do! Look at them; they’re badass Ghostbusters!”
“But the original cast didn’t need to look badass; Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd were practically cartoon characters.”
“Why are you comparing this to the original? It’s a completely different cast with what looks like a completely different take.”
“Completely different? I don’t think so.”
“Reboot… remake… homage… tribute… whatever. It looks awesome!”
“Well, yeah. Yeah, it does.”
I mean, it’s kind of stupid to judge a movie by a single promotional image, but you can’t deny that this looks all kinds of awesome.
As an experiment, I showed the image to both of my kids (4-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl)–neither of whom have seen the original movies. My daughter could immediately identify them as Ghostbusters since she has friends who have cosplayed as Venkman and Stantz. Neither of my kids had a very strong reaction to the image beyond being very interested and wanting to see the movie. Both want to see it, but neither one (boy or girl) cares that the lineup is all female.
Most kids today don’t come with the baggage many adults do. They can love both sets of Ghostbusters and not even care what gender they are. They can see a movie with Chris Hemsworth as Thor and then pick up a book and see that Thor is a woman. They can love characters in Star Wars that break the traditional gender molds. (Seriously, my son adores Captain Phasma even though he knows it’s a woman under that armor, and my daughter finally has an incredibly strong female character – Rey – to admire and emulate in her favorite franchise.)
It’s just storytelling. These are just characters and stories to them, and kids don’t have any preconceived notions of what anything “should” be or how anyone’s “supposed” to look.
So I’m excited for Paul Feig’s new Ghostbusters. My kids are excited. My daughter’s friends (the little cosplayers) are excited.
Are you?
Casual star wars spoilers. Nice.
What spoiler? That Phasma is a woman? Man, I’m as anti-spoiler as they come and I knew that months before the movie came out. This isn’t exactly the real identity of Kylo Ren or anything.
For people who haven’t looked at ANYTHING about the movie.. how are we to know what is a spoiler and what isn’t?
Good to know that bit doesn’t matter at all.
I’m a 62 year old HVAC geek, so I need some clarifications of terms. Does “reboot” mean doing the original story with a different cast or is this a sequel? If a sequel, I’ll check it out, if a redo of the original, I will probably pass. I think it would be fun if this all female team of Ghostbusters are protégées of the originals, with mentions of the originals and hopefully even some cameos of the original cast. I just watched the new Man from Uncle, which I really liked, but kept waiting to catch a glimpse of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum maybe playing chess on an outdoor chessboard or some other throwback scene.
A remake is where they remake the original movie all over again, a reboot is a new movie with a new story and the new ghostbusters is not a sequel it will show how they become ghostbusters but take on a whole different bad guy.
Thank you, James. That makes things a lot more clear for me for several movies. I don’t think I like reboots very much because I get confused trying to compare them to originals. Would the new Star Trek movies be considered a reboot?
Come to think of it, I do like the James Bond series reboots.
Remake, disguised as a reboot. Basically it completely ignores the original movies
Doesn’t sound like something I will appreciate, but I’ll give it a try when it comes out in Redbox. Before anyone mentions it, I don’t do the streaming thing. I’m not only old, I’m a paranoiac. “They” already have too many ways to infiltrate our lives.
It doesn’t look badass, it looks like a bad fancy dress party. I have no objection to rebooting it with women, I have an objection that it looks terrible.
Did you see Ep7? Phasma made about 0% impact.
It seems like a total cash-grab, using the name, logo, premise etc.
My thoughts:
I’m glad there is a new Ghostbusters movie, and am totally fine with having a predominately female cast. That being said, I’m sad that *I* don’t think any of them are particularly funny.
Your daughter finally has an incredibly strong female character to respect in star wars? What was wrong with Leia? Mon Mothma? What is wrong with Rey now? I’m not saying Captain Phasma wasn’t strong, but certainly there are other viable options.
I meant Rey. I thought that was obvious. But I’ve updated the post to clarify.