This is a thing they’re actually doing. You’re aware they’re doing it. Let’s just skip the background and jump right into it. (You can watch the thing here.) Ghostbusters trailer review and analysis, here we go:
(0:00 – 0:30) We begin by reminding people, in BIG WHITE TEXT, that the original film exists. And really, this is the perfect way to market a film absolutely no one outside of film executives and Tumblrinas asked for, a film rumored (before this trailer all but confirmed it) to be brutally unfunny to the point that Sony is sweating buckets over test screenings and contemplating whether or not to even market the thing as a straight comedy. Truly, if you want to get people to shell out 2016 movie prices for a piece of shit, the best way to do that is to remind them the original unfuckablewith classic is a thing, available for a pittance.
(0 :47) And we’re off! Not a full minute into the worlds first look at the unnecessary shemake of a cultural touchstone admitted to the Congressional film registry, we’ve got our first slime-in-the-cunt joke, just as scripture foretold. Truly, Katie Dippold is a brilliant scribe who was the perfect choice to treat this beloved property with the reverence it deserves. Let’s look at the gal’s writing credits:
The Heat
7 Episodes of Park and Rec
54 Episodes of MADtv
Wait, what? 54 Episodes of MADtv?
The Internet hasn’t shut up about this puddle of afterbirth since it was announced, so you know the tired line about how this was going to be another Feig-helmed SNL cast member transition vehicle? You’ll be left wishing that were the case because what you’re going to get is another Feig-helmed SNL cast member transition vehicle (Kate “Actual Funny Human Being McKinnon” & Leslie “Walking Minstrel Show” Jones this time) that was written by a chick who has spent most of her career writing MADtv sketches. FUCK.
(0:48 – 0:56) The fat one, white edition: “We dedicated our lives studying ghosts! Now there are ghosts! There are a lot of people who need our help with ghosts!” Riveting. Sometimes people condense the plot of a movie down to a few lines to make fun of it, but Dippold decided to do so and include the result as actual lines of exposition. It’s cool, though: I’ll bet it’s all a setup so the fat one, white edition, can shit her pants after an awkward silence, most likely a result of singlehandedly devouring a Chinese spread that represents the last of the petty cash. EMPOWERMENT!
(1:00 – 1:24) SHEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIITTT YOUSA SMARTY SMART WHITE WOMEN KNOWSA DAT MAGIC BOOK LEARNIN JUJU BUT MEESA BIG AND STRONG! MEESA STREET SMART AND WORK IN SUBWAY TUNNEL! MEESA KNOW ALLLLLL ABOUT NEW YAWK. MEESA BLACK, MEESA HAVE CADDY.
What I did enjoy about this display is it created a situation in which the nimrods who defended this bloody ass ulcer as an ideological purity test from the first are apoplectic. They don’t know what to do — continue to defend this misguided shitshow as only slightly less important than the suffrage movement? Or do the martyrdom bloggers change course and become outraged that the black ghostbuster was basically written by a very white girl to be Sambo with a proton pack?
The answer, like anything caught up in that dumpster fire located at the intersection of “feminism” and “internet”, is to ignore that which doesn’t impact rich, preferably white women. Hence, as fast as the trailer appeared, so did an army of clickbait articles claiming that the only reason one could hate this piece of shit is because one hates women, and not because one has eyes which are in turn connected to a brain capable of processing sensory information gathered in a logical, linear way.
(1:42) Kate McKinnon deserves so much better than this. I dont even have a joke here because she is very good and this is very, very bad. I hope she got a very large paycheck.
(1:48 – 1:55) CGI and Bay-esque action scenes including akimbo proton pistols and the fat one, white edition punching a ghost (Christ). Because the reason Ghostbusters made close to $700 million in box office (adjusted for inflation) was epic fight choreography and overuse of special effects.
(1:56) Oh look, Chris Hemsworth. I wonder if they do a gender-flipped version of the dumb oral sex joke from the first film? Really, I just want to know which Ghostbuster he goes down on while possessed? Probably one of the fat ones, because “Hunky Thor Going Down On Fat Woman While Possessed” is the exact level of craft we’re dealing with here. I also enjoy how the man carved out of marble is the new Janine, even though Annie Potts wasnt sexualized at all in the original.
(2:09 – 2:22) A lazy Exorcist sight gag, because this is what you get when you hire a MADtv staff writer to reboot Ghostbusters. Also, holy shit, I think someone needs to investigate whether or not Leslie Jones has human parents. I suspect she doesn’t, and instead took form when Tyler Perry found a computer preloaded with weirdscience.exe.
Stray Observation: The EDM/dubstep theme song remix is objectively shit, but I’m just thankful it wasnt a Miley Cyrus cover. I’m sure there’s plenty of time to throw one in there.
So there you have it, gender flipped Ghostbusters reboot is no longer one of those terrible abstract ideas studio execs come up while doing coke off a 19 year old script girls tits in the shitter. They’re actually doing this, despite every indication that they shouldn’t. Your Deity Of Choice taking Ramis wasnt enough of a sign. The continued apathy of most of the cast toward another sequel over the years wasn’t enough. Even the dudes who made The Lego Movie declined to get involved when asked. Can you imagine? “Fuck, we transmuted a 90 minute toy commercial into unimpeachable delight, but THIS? This is impossible.” Yet, nobody took heed.
Even still, if Sony was 100% insistent on doing this, was this the best group of women they could give us? Was Maya Rudolph not available for the token minority role? Did anyone think to give the Broad City chicks, or Kaitlyn Olson, or Kristen Schaal a ring? Nah. Better for Paul Feig to keep doing the lazy SNL casting, apply the formula, and cry misogyny when the people he’s nostalgia-baiting dont bite.
It just seems to me as though they flew too close to the sun. The director and writer have to shoulder the blame here — it’s not as if reversing the gender swap would have fixed anything about this. And despite the posturing that any pushback to this is analogous to when all of five turds on the Internet complained that Disney cast a black dude and a woman in the lead roles for Star Wars, this is nothing at all like what happened with Star Wars. Disney knew TFA had to be good, because they had just paid 4 billion dollars for the right to make it. Therefore, every effort was made to handle the source material like the nerd nitroglycerin it is. This included making sure that the black dude and woman cast as protagonists were, first and foremost, good goddamn actors.
The result was as fine a movie as “Direct Star Wars Sequel 30+ Years Later” ever had any hope of being. Of course the primary motivation in any franchise film is money, but if you’re going to further milk the golden teat of a property as iconic as Star Wars, or Ghostbusters, you better come up with a really clever idea as to how to do that. Whatever you thought of The Force Awakened (some people didnt like it!), Disney and Abrams at least did due diligence. Feig & Co. are on track for a direct-to-DVD quality successor to Bridesmaids with ghost traps & slime in the cunt.
Slime in the Cunt hits theaters everywhere this Summer.