Ghostbusters 2: "Break the barriers".

 

I'd like to thank Karli for an excellent guest posting on the new Ghostbusters, and, based on her input, I wanted to enlarge on my position regarding the remake.

For me, movie remakes are a little bit like cover versions of songs. If you're not going to make it your own, if you're not going to bring something new to the table, why bother? *

For whatever reason, genre films seem to be targeted for remakes and reboots more than the mainstream: Robocop, Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man, Total Recall, The Time Machine, Batman, Superman, and so on, with the Ghostbusters remake as the latest entry on the list.  Some of them refresh and revive the base concept, some don't - how does Ghostbusters score?

I agree with Karli that Ghostbusters was fun, and that the main cast has fabulous chemistry.  Kate McKinnon is obviously the next Jim Carrey - let's hope that Hollywood has the good sense to find her a script, hand her the ball, and just let her run with it.

It's also a funny movie, and the selection of cameos from the 1984 cast were a nice nod to the first version.**  I completely agree with Karli that Chris Hemsworth's Kevin failed to impress - a little more depth there would have helped to broaden the film.

All that being said, it's not a very different movie than the original version.  Do I think that it was worth remaking this movie just to replace the originals with female leads?  I would say no - in my mind, that doesn't matter.  A movie should be judged on its own merits, regardless of whether the cast is male or female.

However, I think I'm wrong.

Ghostbusters is a noteworthy cultural phenomenon in that there's such a sharp division between the film as such and its position as a feminist milestone. As Karli points out in her posting, it's important that women be shown taking the lead, both as actors and characters - and THAT'S why we needed to see "bitches busting ghosts".

- Sid

* The Alien Ant Farm version of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal is a prime example of this.

** But where was Rick Moranis? I know he retired from acting in order to raise his children, but surely he could have gotten a babysitter and done a quick hit-and-run appearance at the studio.

Ghostbusters 1: "Safety lights are for dudes!"

(Contributed by Karli Thomas)

 

"No one should have to encounter that kind of evil. Except you girls, I think you can handle it."

Theatre Manager, Ghostbusters

Last weekend, on opening night no less, Sid, and I went to see Ghostbusters. I had been looking forward to it since the first teaser trailer had come out. Maybe even before then. I remember seeing the first image released from the set – the four women wearing the jumpsuits, proton packs strapped to their backs. I poured over the photo and anticipated seeing these very funny women take charge of these very iconic roles. That Paul Feig was directing was the icing on the cake.

In broad terms, I liked the movie. The main cast had great chemistry and were very funny. Kate McKinnon owned every scene she was in. Melissa McCarthy was pleasantly un-Tammy-like. Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig did exactly what you`d expect of them and they were fun to watch. Chris Hemsworth’s character was problematic for me*. The big fight sequence in the second half dragged, but I am guilty of thinking that pretty much every big fight scene in the history of movies drags – you could all learn something from Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards, filmmakers!

As we walked out into the fresh summer air, Sid proposed a question for this new version of Ghostbusters:  “Did it need to be made?” Specifically, is changing the cast to all female enough of a reason to remake this movie? Sid thinks maybe not and I think maybe yes.

At some point in our future a generation of girls will grow up seeing movies starring more women in a wider variety of roles and that is a very good thing. Young girls (and boys for that matter) will get a broader spectrum of female role models and a more expansive view of what women can do and what they look like in those roles.

Ghostbusters was fun to watch and it was a pleasure to see these women take the reins and do such a great job of leading the movie. Did Ghostbusters need to be remade?  Maybe not remade exactly, no, they could have done a sequel rather than a reboot. But since Hollywood is going to reboot movies regardless of whether or not they need to – why not let women finally take the lead and have some fun?

- Karli

* My complaint about Kevin is nearly complete – he was poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed. He should have been a dumb, good looking klutz, not a complete idiot.

Warped starlight.

 Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science-fiction.
Zoë: We live in a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?  

Objects in Space, Firefly

I've just finished reading City at World's End, a 1951 short novel by Edmond Hamilton.  Hamilton is one of the lost treasures of science fiction - a contemporary of the better known E.E. "Doc" Smith, his prolific work from the first half of the 20th century helped to establish the "thundering planets" style that typifies the early science fiction of the pulp era.

Over time his writing developed a more humanistic, insightful approach, as demonstrated in short stories such as What's It Like Out There?, The Pro, and Requiem.  Other strongly recommended reading would be 1966's Doomstar and his Starwolf trilogy from the late 1960s  - The Weapon from Beyond, The Closed Worlds, and World of the Starwolves. These four books beautifully combine Hamilton's epic view of the future with a more personal, character-driven narrative.*

City at the World's End shows glimpses of Hamilton's mature style, although it's still strongly reminiscent of his early work. In this story, the detonation of an experimental superbomb hurls a small American town millions of years into the future, to an uninhabited - and uninhabitable - Earth.  Scientists from a research centre concealed in the town manage to activate a distress beacon in an abandoned city, attracting the attention of a ship from the galaxy-wide Federation**.

Upon their arrival, the Federation's representatives offer the townspeople a double-edged salvation - they can save the inhabitants of the town, but only by removing them from Earth and transferring them to a different world.

However, a dissident crew member offers another option - requesting a dangerous experimental process which might re-ignite the fires at the Earth's core, thereby providing enough warmth for the castaways from the past to continue to live on Earth.  One of the scientists is taken by starship to the Vega star system to plead the town's case before the galactic Board of Governors: 

He would not show fear. They expected him to do so, they were watching him with sidelong glances of interest and amused expectation. But Kenniston clenched his fists inside his jacket pockets, and resolved fiercely to disappoint them.

He was afraid, yes. It was one thing to read and talk and speculate on flying space. It was another and much more frightening thing to do it, to step off the solid Earth, to rush and plunge and fall through the worldless emptiness.

He stood there with Gorr Holl*** and Piers Eglin in the bridge of the Thanis, looking ahead through the curving view windows, and a cold sickness clutched at his vitals.

"It isn't the way I expected it to be," he said unsteadily. "Only those stars ahead--"

He fought against the impulse to clutch for support. He wouldn't do that, while the bronzed star-men behind him were curiously watching him. 

Directly ahead, Kenniston looked at a depthless black in which fierce stars flared like lamps. The blue-hot beacon of Vega centered that vista, and up from it blazed the stars of the time-distorted Lyre and Aquila, crossed on the upper left by the glittering sun-drift of the Milky Way.

Only that section of sky ahead was clear. The rest of the firmament, extending back from it, was an increasingly blurred vista of warped starlight whose rays seemed to twitch, jerk and dance. 

The last 50 years have provided the general population with an extensive education regarding life in the future: androids, starships, energy weapons, warp drives, a plethora of advanced technology.  Anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie, any one of the iterations of the Star Trek franchise, or one of a hundred other visual stories set in space would be completely familiar with the view that fills Kenniston with such dread (although I'm willing to admit that the actual experience might well be more daunting than watching it on a movie screen, even in IMAX 3D).  And at this point, who hasn't seen one of those examples? 

How ironic that, with all the things that science fiction has predicted for the future, it would fail to predict its own success and popularity.

- Sid

* And I have to add that they're fun.  Hamilton knows what he's doing - he paints his interstellar future with a big brush, but he also uses a lot of bright colours on a huge canvas, and the result is dramatic, tense, and entertaining.

** It's not the U.S.S. Enterprise, and it's not that Federation. I don't think Gene Roddenberry was guilty of plagiarizing this idea - let's face it, there are only so many words you can use to describe a democratic political organization.

*** A hint for new readers of vintage science fiction:  if there is a character with a name like Gorr Holl, there's a really good chance that the story you are reading was written before 1960, if not 1950.