Sony daringly continues to try to erase our childhoods.
In a stunning display of arrogance, Sony Pictures continues to market its news Ghostbusters movie – the one that dared to replace legendary male comedians with “girls” – with a brand new trailer. The continue to attempt, through sheer force of will, to eliminate the 1984 original from existence with feminist ideals such as inclusion, innovation, and a “goddamnit who cares it’s been over 30 years and Ghostbusters 2 was just okay” attitude.
While watching this trailer, I – like any man whose childhood might be threatened by Hollywood’s constant rebooting of properties I (a) loved at one point in my life and (b) consider to be “untouchable” – was worried that this might be the final straw.
Among its many sins, the trailer used similar gags as the 1984 original, including a ghost sliming one of the film’s so-called heroes:
Then one of the characters in the movie – a marginalized public servant turned lackey played by Leslie Jones – failed in an attempt to crowd-surf at a rock concert, immediately decrying her fall as being about “race” and/or “sexism,” furthering the film’s progressive agenda and directly attacking my own fragile masculinity:
Then, in an haphazard attempt to show me that bros would do amazing bro things in this movie, the trailer takes a character that reminds me of myself, played by the less-handsome Chris Hemsworth, and brings him this close to becoming a real Ghostbuster. But again, he is stifled, ultimately becoming a bad guy (which might be a bit of an overshare on the trailer’s part). It’s like the filmmakers are trying to tell me directly that 30 years of wanting to be a Ghostbuster, idolizing Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, can all be wiped away by this girl power party. Frankly, it’s offensive:
The trailer then goes on to explode with a bunch of colorful CGI action set pieces. Instead of the pale aesthetic of the mid-1980s, we get this rainbow sherbet powderpuffpocalypse. And they’ve roped fucking Slimer into this! He’s looking great for his age, but he needs to get a new agent. Go back to doing IDW Comics, you leftist shill!
And last, but certainly not least, what appears to be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man shows up. He’s the one thing that would never hurt us, friends. And now look what they’ve done to his beautiful face:
Somewhere in the 1980s, there’s a child version of yours truly whose wonderful mother is toiling over a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man halloween costume. He was very young when the first movie came out, nary a year and change on this Earth, but in the years following the discovery of Ghostbusters on VHS, he was an obsessive. Ghostbusters toys, Ghostbusters apparel, the now-rare Ghostbusters firehouse playset. Look at how happy he was:
What would this kid have thought about this abomination? This femi-Nazi rebirth of his beloved Ghostbusters with modern day (BAD!) effects, jokes about racism and sexism, all just clamoring for the merch money of unsuspecting millennial children and their technobraindead parents? What would the kid in the picture above think of this trailer?
He thinks it’s fine. Because his mother – the same mother who worked a full-time job, raised two kids mostly on her own, and spent hours hand-making that Marshmallow Man costume – raised him to be an inclusive, optimistic person whose sense of self or masculinity isn’t defined by holding power over women. She’s also the one who taught him that giving movies a chance is never a bad idea. Sometimes you find something great, sometimes you’re disappointed. Disappointment is part of life.
She’s the reason he’s the man he is today, a person who lives in a nice house, has a great job that he does from his badass home office, and gets to write about movies for a living. You know who would be totally into an all-female Ghostbusters movie? That kid’s mom. Maybe he’ll fly home in July and take her to see it.
As for the kid, he grew up to become a person who gets harassed on Twitter for defending a movie’s right to exist. Who believes that there’s nothing wrong with a reboot that seeks to include a new generation of fans. So that they can convince their mothers to make them costumes with love. And they can be inspired by science, fantasy, and comedy in one fell swoop.
He’s now a grown-up who is excited at the possibility of this new Ghostbusters movie. Sure, it might end up being bad. But that’s true for any movie. What he knows is that director Paul Feig’s last movie, Spy, didn’t have a great trailer and it turned out to be one of the best comedies of 2015.
He’s also a grown-up who just checked his DVD shelves. And as it turns out, that good ole Ghostbusters (1984) Blu-ray is still sitting there, existing in defiance of any perceived conspiracy to eliminate it along with our collective childhood, in case of emergency.
Related Topics: Feminism, Ghostbusters
