Why Is Ghostbusters: Afterlife Immune to Criticisms of the 2016 Reboot?
- Thread starter Shaka Zulu
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I am not saying it doesn't exist. I am saying that there is no way in hell that they intentionally made a movie for 114 million dollars (doubled for promotional expense) and didn't want "white men in their 30's-60's" to go see it. Your explanation of target audience vs target market makes sense, but is at odds with your "It's not for adult white men" statement. Studios do not set out to exclude a huge chunk of potential audience. It's also interesting to note that from the very first trailer, Sony did set out to reel in the people you say the movie isn't for. They intentionally marketed it with a false nostalgia angle.
That is not to say that a movie can't target the "young LGBTQ audience". You absolutely can. I just disagree with you that it was what happened here. (To be clear, my stance is not that they didn't court that audience. I'm arguing against the idea that they had no interest in people outside that group.)
On the flipside, let's not pretend that every "young LGBTQ" audience member connected with it or even liked it.
Anyway, at the end of the day I'm happy for the people liked it. I didn't and I wish I did, but them's the breaks.
I am not saying it doesn't exist. I am saying that there is no way in hell that they intentionally made a movie for 114 million dollars (doubled for promotional expense) and didn't want "white men in their 30's-60's" to go see it. Your explanation of target audience vs target market makes sense, but is at odds with your "It's not for adult white men" statement. Studios do not set out to exclude a huge chunk of potential audience. It's also interesting to note that from the very first trailer, Sony did set out to reel in the people you say the movie isn't for. They intentionally marketed it with a false nostalgia angle.
That is not to say that a movie can't target the "young LGBTQ audience". You absolutely can. I just disagree with you that it was what happened here. (To be clear, my stance is not that they didn't court that audience. I'm arguing against the idea that they had no interest in people outside that group.)
On the flipside, let's not pretend that every "young LGBTQ" audience member connected with it or even liked it.
Anyway, at the end of the day I'm happy for the people liked it. I didn't and I wish I did, but them's the breaks.
I have said over and over again that not being in the target audience doesn't mean you can't like it and being in the target audience doesn't mean you have to. I also said, over and over again, that not being in the target audience doesn't mean Sony didn't want others to watch it - Sony already expected the others to watch it and so targeted a new audience to enlarge it. I'm pretty tired of people in this thread claiming I said things I didn't.
If you have to choose between targeting LGBTQ's and targeting the straight cis crowd, you do the latter. There are just more straight cis people out there.
Don't actively OFFEND the LGBTQ's, there's no reason to. You can respect a demographic without targeting their business to the exclusion of all others.
Don't actively OFFEND the LGBTQ's, there's no reason to. You can respect a demographic without targeting their business to the exclusion of all others.
If I'm mistaken and these two points don't contradict each other then I apologize. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the term "wasn't made for".
Fair enough Tosk, I'm still bitter about the user who said I wrote "all women are icky" etc and I took it out a bit on you.
Not being made for was meant, again, that the movie wasn't aimed at that audience - that audience was assumed to be built in. So it was made for a new audience to expand the fanbase and make more $$$.
Whereas afterlife is pretty blatantly pointed at the OG fans. Which, as an OG fan, I personally am pretty blase about. Although the Lego ecto one tie in was cool.
We're only rehashing this old discussion because the OP made two threads in one week ranting against the anti-GB16 ranting. It's not as though a large portion of us were going out of our way to slag on the movie. So, why don't you ask the OP?
This was actually a TAMED DOWN version of what Jones usually does on SNL....which is practically the same character (as opposed to say Kate McKinnon or Maya Rudolph). They also missed the opportunity to make her character important. She supposedly had all this historical knowledge and that of the subway system. But it never came into play. They could have reasonably made her the kick-butt no-fear character that could have provided some balance, especially to the Wiig character. But she was more of an add on (like Ernie Hudson's character was somewhat, in the original).
Amen. And add Total Recall, too.
-- so going back to the original post, for me... it is because it has continuity with the original...not just the next generation of old characters, but also the original director's son as director.... so we can feel the respect of the original.
The thing is, the original movie could EASILY set up the GB multiverse... they talked about interdimensoinal rifts...so easy way to connect the past and present, and create buy-in. Kinda like Abrams did with Star Trek.
the misogyinists were the loudest voices (and magnified by countercriticisms), but as has been pointed out, there were other "legitimate" critics who get swept in with the misogyinists, and summarily dismissed.
Kinda like in Chicago , where Green Party candidates and their supporters are considered Republicans, when clearly they are NOT.
This was an issue with the Charlie's Angel's reboot as well. I find it distasteful when directors try to blame all the failure on outside factors. You are supposed to learn to take responsibility for your failures in grade school. Passing the buck is the weasels way out.
That isn't to say good films can't get screwed by external factors. Flubbed marketing being common. The Shawshank Redemption had an opaque title and famously flopped, crowded out by Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump The Rocketeer had a similar problem with competition. But I also subscribe to the idea of "If you build it they will come". Eventually when people find your film later, and it's good, they will become fans, see Firefly. Ghostbusters 2016 had no shortage of publicity, plenty of people knew about it, and they didn't come.
This just proves that it doesn't require sexism to achieve the same result. I've never believed there's enough people leaving actor insults in the comments to have a measurable impact on the box office.
Hopefully the two threads get merged, making for a massively confusing hybrid.
Whose combined offspring will attack the world.........
BTW I like the Charlie's Angel movie with Patrick Stewart, and I like Replicas there I said it.
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Err what? It is obvious that I am asking him. I mean, I asked the question in the thread he created. Should I have called him by name explicitly? Send him a private message?
I actually agree that a good deal of the criticism was because women were in the lead roles--that is a common pattern with nearly every movie starring a female lead that has come out in the past few years-- but let's face it-- the movie was a waste of talented comedians, it was a wreck of a plot, a lot of the jokes were just not funny.
Ghostbusters in its day, was filled with adult oriented content and was never intended as a kids movie. The 2016 remake should have been written in a style similar to The Hangover or Bridesmaids. It would have been a hit.
Ghostbusters in its day, was filled with adult oriented content and was never intended as a kids movie. The 2016 remake should have been written in a style similar to The Hangover or Bridesmaids. It would have been a hit.
Elizabeth Banks was quite foolish in some of her remarks, IMO. Before release: “If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.” No it doesn't, it just means that not enough people in general wanted to see that movie. Based on the amount of money it didn't make, clearly women weren't that interested either. I saw it. It was...okay-ish.
I can't speak for the previews of the 2016 remake, but I can say I wasn't particularly impressed with the film itself. While I am sure that there are people who didn't want to see it simply because the leads were female, that was never the issue for me. Rather, the original Ghostbusters had a very distinctive snarky and sharp humor. It had lines that are still quotable even today. From "Ok, who brought the dog?!?" to "Tell 'em about the twinkie," and " "Ray has gone bye-bye" the dialogue crackles.
The new film's attempt at humor seemed to rely on fart jokes and a recurring joke about soup with one wanton. Oh, yeah, and the secretary was so dumb he didn't know how a telephone worked.
The new film wasn't terrible, but it most decidedly failed at the script stage.
The new film's attempt at humor seemed to rely on fart jokes and a recurring joke about soup with one wanton. Oh, yeah, and the secretary was so dumb he didn't know how a telephone worked.
The new film wasn't terrible, but it most decidedly failed at the script stage.
Exactly. Banks was playing that card to the fullest--instead of accepting that her film was flawed from the word go. That, and there was no groundswell of interest in Charlie's Angels being rebooted yet again. It is not that kind of property.
Ah, sorry, based on your previous posts upthread, I thought you were going the other way there.
Of course, it doesn't take a previously existing interest to make a film a hit. People had been asking for more Ghostbusters for decades (of course they thought they were asking for part 3). If Charlies Angels had been good, it would have been a hit. Look at the new Jumanji movies. No one was asking for a sequel, and when announced everybody said "No Robin Williams, and it's a video game? Pass" But the movie was good and was a huge hit.
I'm not sure this is true, but I need more time to do the research on recent female led movies. There are definite high profile cases, but it's the ones that didn't make headlines that we would naturally overlook in this discussion.
I'm not sure this is true, but I need more time to do the research on recent female led movies. There are definite high profile cases, but it's the ones that didn't make headlines that we would naturally overlook in this discussion.
Two reasons why I avoided the 2016 remake despite being a fan of the original...
1. The previews. Gobs of snarky verbal exchanges, and almost no scenes of ghosts getting zapped. I wanted to see Ghostbusters, not a sitcom.
2. Four very capable female characters, and a male doofus for comic relief. If you want men to watch your movie, don't have your movie castrate them.
1. The previews. Gobs of snarky verbal exchanges, and almost no scenes of ghosts getting zapped. I wanted to see Ghostbusters, not a sitcom.
2. Four very capable female characters, and a male doofus for comic relief. If you want men to watch your movie, don't have your movie castrate them.
