Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The Ghostbusters are Women Now.

If you really don't think these four actors are funny, then
you and I will never see eye to eye on anything, ever.
And I'll always hold this against you. 
In honor of National Woman's Day, I'm going to come right out and say I have no problems whatsoever with four women in the beige jumpsuits. None whatsoever. And if you do, well, I can't speak for you and won't try.

But I will offer this up in reply to your, um, stance: If you say, out loud or in print, that this movie (or any other thing you seem to disagree with) has "ruined your childhood," I'm going to invent white dwarf matter, create a shrinking device, shrink down to the size of an electron, travel through the fiber optic network and pop out of your computer and chop you in the throat. I'm totally not kidding.

Your childhood has been ruined? What kind of idiot are you?

Allow me to elaborate:

1. If the whole of your childhood hinges on whether or not a single movie gets remade or updated, then you are far more fragile than your profile picture would seem to indicate and you need to be in therapy.

Childhoods are ruined by learning there is no Santa Claus at the age of 6 when no presents arrive on Christmas Day because Daddy lost the money at the track. Random beatings. Social Services intervening. Nasty, contentious divorces. Creepy uncles. That stuff ruins childhoods. Movies don't ruin childhoods. And movies you watch as an adult certainly don't ruin personal childhoods, unless you're so developmentally stunted and emotionally retarded that you're still in your childhood at the age of 37.

2. No one has gone back in time and killed Ivan Reitman's parents so that he can never direct the first Ghostbusters movie and it never gets made. That didn't happen. The first Ghostbusters movie still exists out there for you to watch in an endless loop if you so desire. No one is stopping you. All of the venom and bile you keep vomiting up online about it could be better spent watching the first movie. Or, you know, the not-as-good second movie. Or the not-nearly-as-good cartoons. Or trawling ebay for the toys from the cartoon. Or getting out of your man-cave. All in all, 10,000 other things you could be doing instead of mewling to a bunch of strangers that you have no actual perspective by claiming some sort of Ret-Con childhood destruction because of a movie that you haven't even seen yet.

3. No one--and I mean, NO ONE--is making you see this movie. You don't gotta go. And let me tell you something, that alone will be your saving grace. If you're that upset by four funny women in a movie, you just don't have to expose yourself to that experience. Don't pay the ticket price. That'll teach 'em!

I have used this technique for years with great success. I still, to this day, have not seen Highlander 2. Or any of the other Highlander movies. You know why? There can only be one, that's why. And that one movie remains high on my list because I haven't surrounded it with all of the negative baggage of the other movies. It's not a 'franchise' to me; it's just one good movie. I wish I had done that with the first Ghostbusters, but I didn't, and now I have to square Mood Slime and Slimer driving a Midtown bus with the brilliance that was the first movie.
It helps if you stop thinking about this one good movie and
all of the crap that came after it as a "franchise." Also,
it helps to have actual perspective about pop culture. 

But I digress. We were talking about your hang-ups.

4. Was Ghostbusters 2 so good, so brilliant, so much better than the first movie that you want a third one with the same cast? Minus Harold Ramis, on top of everything else? Old, sad, and not as funny? Fat Dan Aykroyd? Come on. You're better than that. Well, you should be better than that.

5. If the movie comes out and it falls flat, let's look at it from that point of view. The script doesn't work? Fine. Ham-Fisted directing? Okay. Wooden acting? Fair point. But let me be very clear about this: if everyone but you likes it, then you're the asshole. Unless your standards for comedy are so Byzantine and esoteric that you don't like anything from any of the people in the movie, and can back that up with reasonable, if subjective, criteria, then saying "The four chicks in the movie ruined it" is not valid criticism and you henceforth suck.

Me, I'm willing to wait for the movie to come out before I throw it under the bus.

In conclusion: Grow up. Get a Life. And Shut Up Your Damn Head About the new movie. Participate, or walk away, but stop with the Nerd-Rage. We're all just sick of it.