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Ghostbusters Review: Ladies Can Bust Ghosts!


From the divisive trailers to the musical abomination that was the Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliott reimagination of the iconic theme song, the reboot of Ghostbusters no doubt had many haters ever since its conception. It seemed that everyone who heard about the Ghostbusters reboot began despising it before it even hit theaters. The hate grew even more when the people involved in the reboot began to attack the fan base, accusing all of the people who had negative things to say about this movie of being sexist. Even director Paul Feig called out the haters of this film, saying that it was “some of the most vile, misogynistic [stuff he’d] ever seen in [his] life” (CinemaBlend).

After all the rather unnecessary controversy surrounding this reboot, did Ghostbusters turn out to be any good, or is it yet another cash grab that doesn’t care about the story, characters, or overall quality of the movie?

Cast of Ghostbusters: Chris Hemsworth; Melissa McCarthy; Kristen Wiig; Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon

To start off, the acting in the movie was excellent. While Hemsworth, McCarthy and Wiig were as fantastic as they usually are, the true standouts in Ghostbusters are Saturday Night Live alums Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Being both their first true roles outside of the beloved sketch show, both Jones and McKinnon show their capabilities as actresses, and their performances here should get audiences excited to see these two funny women again.

The CGI, or computer generated imagery, looks pretty good. The bright colors were a bit nauseating at times, but the visuals looked fine. Feig was invited to break down the first Ghostbusters trailer by Empire Online, where he presented some interesting information regarding the appearance of the ghosts in the film: “Most of the ghosts in our movie are played by real people who were on the set. That is not a fully CG image[.] Basically, we have this new system we used with LED lights, and we put the actor in full costume and make-up and they’re covered with these LED lights that throw light interaction onto the actors and the environment. Then we’re just augmenting with CG to make it a little more spectral. I think some people were accusing it of being full CG. It’s not.” By having real actors portraying ghosts and having CGI around the actors to make them look and appear more like ghosts, it gives the film a better sense of realism, given that the ghosts in the film aren’t 100% composed of CGI.

One of the biggest letdowns of the movie is that this film is not set in the same universe as the 1984 classic. For those unfamiliar with this concept, it basically means that this film and the 1984 one are two completely separate films, despite revolving around the same subject. Characters from the other film, such as Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), do not exist in 2016’s Ghostbusters’ story. This is a letdown because it completely washes away all the events that happened in the 1984 film and its sequel and totally starts from fresh.

This movie does, at times, seem to not know whether it wants to be a reboot or a remake. It’s like Paul Feig is wondering, “Do I want to reboot Ghostbusters with an all-new team?” or “Do I want to remake Ghostbusters and add more concepts, but still pay homage to the original film?” This indecisive feeling does make the movie feel disjointed at times as the audience sees familiar imagery commonly associated with 1984’s Ghostbusters, which is odd because most people would imagine that a reboot would try to take that certain film in a direction that differs from the original.

Even if the story is just fine and nothing special, the same cannot be said for the villain. The villain is, unfortunately, the weakest part of the entire film. His motivations are vague, if he had any at all, and he wasn’t threatening in the least. Gozer from the first Ghostbusters and Vigo from Ghostbusters II are much stronger antagonists than Rowan in this Ghostbusters.

The 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters is good. Actually, it’s pretty awesome. It’s not the best movie ever, but it’s definitely one of the better reboots.

Unfortunately, it seems that a sequel won’t happen. According to Paul Feig, “[a] movie like this has to at least get to like $500 million worldwide, and that’s probably low.” Feig might be disappointed because Box Office Mojo says that Ghostbusters has only made $217.7 million worldwide, with a little over $125 million of that being here in the United States.

With this take on Ghostbusters flopping, it’s unfortunate that we may not see four people busting ghosts for quite a while.

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