Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” reboot released a trailer today. Oh boy, I don’t even know where to start. When this project was announced, Feig, purveyor of such gems as “Spy,” “The Heat,” and “Bridesmaids,” was adamant that the film was going to be a reboot and not a sequel to the two classic films by Ivan Reitman. Feig went on to explain that he didn’t like the idea of these women characters being handed the equipment and taught how to use it, because it undermined what he was trying to do, which was apparently to make a statement.
I shouldn’t have to explain this to either Paul Feig or Kate Dippold, who are both credited as the writers on this thing, but the one doesn’t really necessitate the other. As the writer you get to decide what happens and how. So you could have set this film in the same continuity and just…not do the thing you didn’t want to do. As Clayton Spinney has maintained from the beginning, it would have been a simple matter, playing off of the line from the original about how “the franchise rights alone could make us rich beyond our wildest dreams!” to have the women waiting to meet somebody at a particular place and be irritated because he’s late, starting to wonder if he’s going to show since their check cleared, or if they’ve been ripped off… only to have Venkman show up, dump off a pile of dilapidated equipment and and drive away like the devil was on his heels.
This then would leave Kristen Wiig or Kate McKinnon to be like, “look, this equipment is thirty years old, it’s poorly made, the power cells are unstable… I bet if we switched this on we’d level half the city. Not only can I do this better, but I WILL. Give me a week.” And then have her build new, better, more efficient and more powerful equipment. And before you tell me that this in any way undermines her, allow me to remind you that every single scientist on the planet Earth stands on the shoulders of all who have come before them. That’s how science works.
But even so, the film could have been good. Doesn’t look like that’s how it shook out, though. This looks like a film that can’t decide what it wants to be. The original drew most of its humor from the situations and the way the characters reacted. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) were crackpot scientists on a research grant at New York State University. Their funding was pulled because nobody was sure what the hell they were doing but everybody agreed it was crap. Peter Venkman was their old college buddy who probably floated through and got in on their program the same way he probably got them to do all of his homework for them. By being a first class BS artist. Venkman has degrees in psychology and parapsychology, but all he seems interested in is hooking up with college girls. However this termination of their funding comes right after a major breakthrough in Stantz and Spengler’s research, brought about by an interaction with “The Grey Lady,” a free-floating, full-torsal vaporous apparition at the New York Public Library.
Aykroyd wrote the first draft of the 1984 original, then Ramis was brought in to help him get it into shape. The thing about Dan Aykroyd is, he believes in the paranormal, and not only that, but he believes in it almost exactly the way it’s portrayed in the Ghostbusters movies he wrote. So he’s kind of a nut. But he’s a great comedian and good writer, and Ramis was a truly exceptional talent. Ramis didn’t believe in this stuff at all so he could look at it objectively and make the film function in a way that Aykroyd alone could not. They wrote these characters for themselves, and Venkman was originally written for John Belushi, sort of a version of his character from Animal House. When he passed away, the role went to Bill Murray who brought his own unique style to it, but the slacker who lives on the hard work of his smarter, socially awkward friends is so obviously a Belushi character once you know the truth. At any rate, Aykroyd’s personal belief system informs the film’s internal logic, so that Ray and Egon have lots of technobabble, or paratechnobabble if you like, to spout during their scenes.
And that’s the key, right there: they played their scenes straight. The reason we love these characters is because they believe 100% in the world they inhabit, they are doing what they need to in order to pay their bills, and later in order to survive: they are odd guys who just discovered their life’s work. They’re totally ineffectual in any other setting, and it’s absurd that they end up saving the world. It’s that absurdity that is the film’s lifeblood. It’s a comedy film that isn’t jokey. There are gags and wonderful lines, to be sure, but the humor is situational.
So what does this have to do with the new one? Well, looking at the trailer, it begins with a nod to the original two films. Not that the film itself does, but the trailer does, which tells you how Sony feels about this thing. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re nervous. They can’t be oblivious to all the negative backlash that existed even before the trailer came out. They know the original is a classic and they feel that they have to tie this new one, even if only in the most peripheral of ways, to the original in order to sell it. Mark my words: they know they have a bomb on their hands.
The trailer then takes us to the library, to a version of the “Grey Lady” scene, where the big payoff is a ghost vomiting slime on Kristen Wiig. That’s right. The ghost vomits slime onto Kristen Wiig. It’s like some weird fetish porn that I clicked on by mistake. It goes on for what feels like five minutes. *BLOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRPPPPPpppppp* So we’re going for gross-out humor here. The worst thing is, she’s playing one of the scientists, and she’s being all intelligent and kind of sweetly nerdy, and then, SLIME VOMIT. That’s not a joke, it’s an insult. And then the next scene is her post-shower explaining in fairly explicit detail how the slime got everywhere. Am I the only one who thinks this is the opposite of honoring women? It’s childish and not funny at all.
And I know, Pete Venkman got slimed in the Sedgewick Hotel, but remember, it happened off-screen, it was played as though he was in grave danger, Ray hears him yelling, and comes running in to find him on his back in the hallway coated in slime. It’s a dramatic buildup to something silly. And also remember that Pete had been asked in the library to collect samples of the ectoplasm, and had been grossed out by it, showing in yet another way that he was no scientist. So when he gets slimed, it’s a sort of comeuppance. I would add that he’s also the character that Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) describes as being “like a used-car salesman.” Which is a way of saying “slimy.” Because that’s what Venkman is. He’s a slimeball. It’s a joke with many subtle layers. Now I’m not saying that the joke in the remake can’t have contextually dependent layers, but I am saying right now that I doubt it does. Because it’s such a sophomoric gag. It feels slimy because unlike Venkman, Kristen Wiig’s Erin Gilbert doesn’t appear to deserve it.
I could go on; because all of the jokes in the trailer are that dumb. Leslie Jones’s character appears to be nothing more than a racial stereotype. Kate McKinnon doesn’t appear to have played a single one of her scenes straight. It’s not her fault, it seems like her character, the “brilliant engineer” was written as a screwball. Melissa McCarthy is Melissa McCarthy.
Unfortunately.
So where does this leave us?
You could have taken what has come before and used that groundwork to build something new and unique on the foundation of something people love. Instead you threw the continuity away and re-made the same movie with dumb jokes and unlikable characters. How is this better? Are you really advancing gender equality when the movie around your leading ladies is pure rubbish? Are you really advancing gender equality when you make the women look totally undignified? The guys get to mostly play it straight and let the humor come from the absurdity of a blue-collar workforce dealing with the paranormal and the way it becomes mundane to them. They never had to embarrass themselves like this. So why do the women have to? Paul Feig talked about wanting to honor women.
It seems more like he hates them.
