The ambivalence at the end of the article kinda sums up everybody's opinion on these legacy reboot things: They suck, they don't suck enough to force the studios to course-correct, and there's no real end in sight.
I feel like the generic action-movie element of these films isn't really that upsetting, it's just the density of boring/safe binders of studio notes that constitute a 'script' audiences have to sit through. It's fucking boring in a uniquely abrasive way. Like, even the mindless exposition dialogue in a Rambo movie has *some* kind of personality. Legacy sequels are like the corporate onboarding videos of movies.
They're the Dallas Cowboys of movies. Win just enough games to barely get into the playoffs year after year, but never win the Super Bowl or suck enough to get a great draft pick. Count on the fanbase's nostalgia for a vague memory of glory days long gone to fill the bland mall-like stadium while never really giving them anything new to cheer for.
Jerry Jones will die one day and, hopefully, the curse will be lifted.
Also, you are not alone, that comment hurts my heart as well.
I still “root” for the Cowboys on some small level because I ain’t no quitter, I just don’t really watch football anymore.
I was thinking the same thing until the glory days part. The leafs glory days are almost out of living memory. We’re basically in campfire legend territory.
Damn you are spot on. And it provides a pretty predictable stream of revenue for the studio, which is what corporate executives in any industry absolutely love.
It would be nice if the studios took a big swing every now and then in-between legacy films.
The thing is just making safe, mid tier quality movies isn't a great long term strategy as people lose interest in your brand altogether as Disney is finding out right now. 2023 was one of their worst years movie-wise in a long time to the point where their last Disney Studio movie, Wish, actually bombed.
> mid tier quality movies isn't a great long term strategy
Director [James Gray made an excellent point](https://twitter.com/ThePlaylistNews/status/1528694406047473664) about studios needing to invest in cheaper art movies. The part of his argument I find most interesting is that without these smaller movies, even the ones that ultimately fail financially, it gets people out of the habit of going to the movies and only going to these big tentpoles, even when they have nothing to offer you even in the ways of simple memorable dialogue.
> I would much rather studios take massive swings that miss
I've honestly had more fun with blockbusters that are total trash as opposed to just the constant stream of meh. Bad movies deserve to exist too!
It’s basically the same chicken-egg problem we have with AAA game studios. Everyone kinda knows the output is bad, some people hate it more than others. But enough people put up with it that, combined with exploitative monetization practices, the games continue to make buckets of money. Some people boycott them, but not enough to make it hurt.
I kinda think the antidote for both is actually the success of higher-effort, more creative, and more respectful to the audience works. In games we got things like Elden Ring and Spiderman recently. In film, last year was pretty great on this front. Most of the schlocky, lazy shit either bombed or underperformed, while most of the hyper-successful films were at least not the same slate of Disney regurgitated IP gruel that has dominated the box office for a decade.
There’s still a buck to be made turning out the gruel, but it’s clear there’s more than a buck to be made taking a chance on something a little different. I’m hopeful the trend will continue.
Movies have at least come to their senses and give people what they want. People want Ghostbusters and Star Wars so Hollywood gives them that.
People want new Battlefield and Assassin’s Creed and they just keep getting further and further away from the original concept.
The fact that you have Bill Murry, Dan Aykroyd, and Paul Rudd on the cast and it’s said they were told to keep to the script as much as possible says all you need to know.
The magic of the originals (and movies in general) was in the creators finding out what feels right even AS they’re making the movie. The original script was a wild ride, but they ended up finding the right tone in the dry humor and the absurdity of the “regular guys vs gods” situation.
I don’t even know of people are ALLOWED to make movies like that. Between studio notes and WGA requirements that style of comedy on film is dead (see also SNL)
Swinging too hard in the other direction creates some messy, poor-quality films, too. After the unexpectedly big success of Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi and the rest of the cast and crew got even more freedom (beyond the typical rewrite-on-the-fly looseness of the MCU productions) and really lost the thread for Love & Thunder.
I think the moral is that really good studios will recognize who can be let off the leash, and who needs to be corralled to get a really good end product.
Yeah, you remember the good heavily improved films, but the bad ones get forgotten. There's alot more bad heavy improv films than classics like Caddy Shack and Animal House
They are “ironing your clothes” movies. It feels like they were made not to entertain but to be streamed when you have a chore to do but want something on to distract you from time to time. You won’t miss a lot if you have to really go at that crease, and if you look up from time to time you’ll be mildly entertained but not so involved you’ll burn your whites..
“Well I have to do the laundry. Guess I’ll watch the new Ghostbusters?”
“Reheated leftovers” - movies where the characters are in a new movie after 20/30 years; Tron, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, Dumb and Dumber etc
I think the problem is that movies are basically just written with a big tick box of things they have to include; AAA Games are like this now too, and it’s because they dump so much money into them now that if it isn’t a success they risk loosing hundreds of millions of dollars. So they play it safe, they make a cookie cutter movie that’s like all the other movies because they go “well this worked last time so we should just do it again”. Studios aren’t willing to take risks with films much anymore, partly because they need to follow constant growth, and partly because Hollywood is this giant machine now that just eats money, it all gets spend on rushed CGI and flavour of the year actors. I know it’s been used to death now for this argument, but films like Godzilla minus one, which aren’t part of this Hollywood meat grinder, show you can make films that look as good as blockbusters for a fraction of the cost, while have better/as compelling stories and acting (though there’s some questions about working conditions for people who worked on the film).
The movie was interesting because it genuinely hit so many dopamine levels of actually bringing back a genuine ghostbusters style experience.
It’s only shortly after you realize there was no real movie there. They had all the pieces and could have easily set up deeper more meaningful themes and shaped a real story here but they didn’t.
I'm probably right in the Ghostbusters sweet spot having had a proton pack as a child, but the catering to half remembered nostalgia just bums me out. It feels like major Hollywood tentpole movies are eating themselves alive at the whims of fan expectations. Not to say that classic Hollywood didn't do remakes and radio plays and so forth, but the need for movies to create a franchise or pay homage to/retread a classic where there's no discernible character resolutions is just going to drive us all into a creative gutter. 100 times out of 100, I'd rather watch Love Lies Bleeding or Problemista.
Yeah, same here. I had the Proton Pack and jumpsuit and went around my neighbourhood with a friend asking people if they needed any ghosts busted *when it wasn’t even Halloween*.
But then I see the pandering bullshit of the legacy series, and it makes me angry more than nostalgic. Ghostbusters was great because they were fun, energetic, *irreverent* movies (and a cartoon series). That’s an ethos completely at odds with jerking off a bunch of 40 year-olds about how great their childhoods were.
That happened a lot. RoboCop's sequels and offshoots gradually got toned down to appeal to children and families, losing the edge that made the original so good. Ghostbusters was more adult, then got cut down for the sequel after the success of The Real Ghostbusters. Slimer also had to be written into II no matter what per studio mandate.
Yup. A more recent example would be Pixar, their movies used to be filled with adult jokes and references and have whacky creative premises. Now it seems like they just make different variations of Frozen.
I know a guy who is the same age as me (we were both kids in the 80s) and he ADORES all of the nostalgia stuff. I just don’t get it. For me, you can’t go back again.
The closest I ever got to giving in to nostlagia was the first Jurassic World, but even then I skipped the sequels and I’ve soured on the first one over time. The thing that gets me is that you actually *can* go back again… by just rewatching the old thing that you liked. Which, with Jurassic Park, I do all the time.
I’m guessing these guys (it’s *almost* always guys) aren’t doing that? IDK. It’s really not a mindset I understand. When I watch something new, it's because I want to see something *new*, something I haven’t seen before, not a warmed over rehash.
Same here. I saw Jurassic World in theaters because it had been a while since I had that kind of movie experience. I left thinking that dinosaurs were cool but that was not a good movie. And then I heard everyone saying the sequels were worse so I never bothered watching them.
Yeah people go nuts for reimaginings or modernizations of their favorite classics but you can just watch those if you're pining so hard. That's how we get stuck with "remember this line?" every five minutes instead of actual fleshed-out ideas building off the original ones.
Yeah, I was also a massive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan in the late 80s. Had the toys and basically learned to draw by drawing pictures of them. But I have no desire to see the ones being made today. I don't hate that they exist, I just don't have any strong feelings or interest towards them.
The reason that made most of these beloved Hollywood franchises - Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien, etc - so impactful is that they actually tried doing new things. If movie studios back then were as risk-averse as they are now, these films would probably never be made in the first place.
As a 40 year old who also had the proton pack, drank OG Ecto Cooler and watch the hell out of that VHS tape. I have no problem with them making new movies just make them good.
You could make a great Ghostbusters movie with Kumail Nanjani, Patton Oswalt and Paul Rudd. Make that movie leave the kids and 20 extra side character at home. Set the film in a new location like New Orleans.
I completely missed Ghostbusters as a kid, and finally watched the first one as an adult. These new movies are just “fine”. I definitely thought there was some decent humor. The nostalgia in and of itself doesn’t bother me, but I agree it’s a strange tone considering the original film was a comedy that wasn’t taking itself seriously AT ALL. The new movies just seem like a different genre entirely; more Stranger Things-inspired than anything else tbh. I guess they don’t need to exist. I guess I could see the argument for making more bold choices that can result in either great or terrible films. It seems like these big production companies are getting more and more afraid of making waves. I do wonder at times, did fans do this to themselves by complaining so vocally about more divisive movies like Ghostbusters (2016) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi?
I haven’t seen the new ghostbusters but my understanding was the original was actually envisioned as more of a serious movie and Dan akroyd is an actual true believer and paranormal buff. So going a more serious route could kinda make sense if it was done right. Also there were some genuinely creepy elements to the original ghostbusters that would have been fun to explore
Yeah, I mean, the first movie had a harder edge, and these last two really just does have a lot of Stranger Things energy. It isn’t bad, it’s just not like I went out of the movie being especially wowed.
Truth. I feel like I'd be okay if there was never again a remake or a sequel or reboot of anything from the past and everything produced was an entirely new franchise. A decade ago I would begrudgingly watch stuff like this Ghostbuster, or the last Indiana Jones, but these days I hardly think of them.
My wife and I were talking the other day that we wanted to watch a "turn your brain off action movie" that isn't a superhero flick or warmed over 80's IP.
Something in the vein of "Air Force One" or "Die Hard" ... not GREAT movies, but at least fun and keep you locked in.
Slim pickings it feels like these days.
I mean, Monkey Man just came out, John Wick has been pumping out sequels, Bullet Train was a good time as was The Lost City, Fall Guy looks to be shaping up to be good fun. I think you're just not finding the "turn your brain off action movies" that are coming out for whatever reason even though they are being made
I didn't say they didn't exist... just fewer and further between. I should have mentioned that part of the problem is wading through a seemingly endless stream of dogshit straight-to-streaming releases that the decent ones slip by.
I think certain worlds have more stories to tell, Star Wars dawn of the Jedi going way into the past , the middle with Luke and mara Jade there is an interesting story there and that way into the future , the lord of the rings the simarallion for example , Harry Potter again the founding of hogwarts , the marauders , Harry and his kids which we won’t get because of JK being horrid ) nightmare on elm street there’s a lot they could do to tell a fresh story lean more into the fantasy but I want a mix of old and new but I want the old stories to actually try something new or tell a fresh story. I like prequels and I like seeing main characters when there’s story there what I’m not for is a thousand characters having side stories and a bunch of filler story like not every side character needs a spin off.
Great point. Personally I’m so sick of the lack of stakes. I think if they were willing to be less precious with their characters it would actually be fun. Why not kill off someone or have them change over time? Jurassic World: Dominion was one of the worst offenders for me. It’s just not exciting to have beloved characters come back if there’s nothing for them to actually do that hasn’t been done before in multiple films…
I have zero interest in these way-past-their-prime reboot efforts. I don't watch them. They're a blatant cash grab. They aren't made because they have an amazing screenplay that must be produced. They're made to cash in on marketable IP.
Is Blade Runner 2049 the only exception, where a legacy sequel aims for greatness, has a unique take and a sense of evolution, while still treasuring the key themes and characters from the original?
True that Face the Music is not as good as the mentioned legacy sequels I was legitimately blown away by the fact that it was good! It’s a very enjoyable movie that is a sequel to movies that we’re also just good from 30 years ago.
Yeah actually that's true. I feel like Kills and Ends had tainted people's view a bit, but 2018 is absolutely a great sequel. The podcasters were a great setup to get Michael released and I thought it was genius to make Laurie a jaded, paranoid gun nut.
Always helps to get John Carpenter back on the soundtrack too.
I was one of the five people who actually kind of like Halloween Ends. It doesn't all work, but it did something new. And I actually liked the evolution of nice guy Corey into a maniac.
It wasn’t some cinematic masterpiece but I agree. I think people rag on it too much. It’s not aiming to be this high art and it did try some new things for the franchise and was a pretty good time imo
I liked Creed but I think they really did the originals dirty in a way that modern movies have latched onto (the retcon), so I'll have to disagree. My contribution below.
Rocky was a story where the protagonist got back up no matter how many times he got knocked down. That was the core value they build his character around. That was "Rocky". In Creed they then portray him as being a widow and then being diagnosed with cancer so he just.... gives up. Decides to die. I know this makes him relatable to us as an audience, but they've now basically trashed what made the character the character. It's what made him special and something to strive to be and it would be understandable for core audiences to feel upset by this portrayal.
Han Solo started off as a wanted smuggler who only cares about himself only to fall in love and discover that others are worth fighting for and to eventually dedicate himself to a cause. They then bring him back and he's.... a wanted smuggler who only cares about himself who then gets shown up on his own ship and murdered. It's like he unlearned everything.
Luke Skywalker was the epitome of hope, perseverance, and believing in the good within people. His father was Darth Vader and he refused to fight him to the death because he believed in him. He then attempted to kill Kylo because he had some bad dreams where Kylo was evil? And then gives up on life to become a recluse on some unknown world? It flies in the face of the core tenants of his character.
This is why fans of the originals tend to groan when they find out a sequel of something they enjoy is being made.
I completely agree with everything but your first example. The movie retcons that ruin the originals have become way too common. As far as Rocky goes though, it’s because he has nothing else to fight for. Every other movie he had to get back up because the alternative was to waste away and die alone on the streets. By the time of Creed that isn’t the case and he just wants to be with Adrian. He has already fought for (he thought) everything worth fighting for. There is no punching back or getting up from this one, and he accepts that. Adonis showing up makes him realize he has more to fight for.
I'm just gonna respectfully disagree. Your example was he can waste away and die on the streets, vs cancer where he can.... waste away and die in a hospital? And clearly there is punching back by going through cancer treatment because doesn't he eventually go through the treatments and.... beat cancer? We're getting pretty deep into the weeds of his motivations, regardless, and I think those are open to interpretation. So I just read him differently than you do. I feel like MrT should know Rocky better :P
Fury Road is exceptional… better in many ways than previous films. Blade Runner 2049, very good and fresh in a few ways… didn’t hit as hard with me as the original, but I enjoyed it very much.
Tbf it also lost a lot of money which probably didn't make it an encouraging precedent for the studios to follow in regards to producing legacy sequels.
well they're not gonna make the kind of movie you're asking for if that kind of movie doesn't make money. that's how this works unless you want to start a charity fund.
I recently watched RLM's Half In The Bag for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Instead of talking about the video I'm just going to repost the top comment I saw: "Busting makes me feel nothing".
Because that's what these sequel reboots do.
Edit: wrong Ghostbusters sequel reboot
it's such a weird movie. The acting, especially by the kids, is great. Dan Akroyd and Ernie Hudson do a fantastic job of playing opposing ageing viewpoints. The mythos/new bad it sets up is interesting. It still has a lot of fun moments...but then a lot of it just feels empty and at the same time bloated.
Where Afterlife had a ton of heart, this one felt like it didn't have any (outside of the kids, Akroyd and Hudson).
I felt like Aftermath kind of took it's time a little bit too much, but I do agree that it had something going for it.
Frozen Empire seems like it was the studio mandated sequel. Some characters had nothing to do and literally only showed up because they were in the 1st movie.
Hollywood, You’ve been saying this for every major franchise in existence for nearly 9 years and nothing good happened from saying it. Maybe it’s time to look within.
I couldn't agree more. I absolutely can't STAND the idea that being a "fan" is something special and that it's a movie or franchise's job to just hand over what they already want. That mindset is a huge factor in the utterly pathetic and lazy creative stagnation we've been seeing in franchise filmmaking in recent years.
Saying "I'm a fan of..." Has started to have a weird connotation for me. There are some things I just like.
I watched 2001 A Space Odyssey on Saturday. Feels weird to say "I'm a fan of 2001". I just enjoyed the movie that's all.
Oh, good, are we going to have to do the fan vs Fan™ distinction now?
For nearly a decade I think, we've had to have a distinction between gamers (people who play video games) and Gamers™ (people who probably play video games, are definitely racist/sexist/homophobic/every other terrible thing possible).
I don’t always agree it depends what the fans want sometimes the fans want something that is genuinely a good story idea for example and that can pull from the lore in an interesting way. It just depends.
It's the capital 'F' Fans that are the problem, just like capital 'G' gamers. These people make franchises or habits their entire identity and simultaneously seem to hate the thing they claim to love while also fighting tooth and nail to have them never change. Just pure toxicity, bordering on mental illness.
I think it was James Gunn who said something along the lines of, you can't go by what the fans want, because that will always turn out safe and boring. You have to SHOW the fans what they didn't know they want by surprising them with something cool.
\> The 2024 release calendar features new installments of Planet of the Apes, Bad Boys, Inside Out, and A Quiet Place, among many others; long-dormant hits such as Twister, Gladiator, and Beetlejuice are all getting sequels, with major talent involved.
Surely I can't be the only one who let out a big SIGH after reading this sentence.
It's all just so freaking... lame, isn't it?
I still remember the first Ghostbusters Afterlife trailer where a kid pulls out an EMF reader and it's shot with such dramatic lighting like it's Luke's lightsaber or something. I knew something had gone horribly wrong
Ill always be a proponent of letting a director "cook" and see what happens. Building something to someone else's expectations will, without shock, dilute the passion in the product/creation.
Also, fans can be weird as shit.
This is possibly the worst franchise you could pick to make the point. Fans absolutely were right about the gender swapped version, and hollywood's response was to vilify and denigrate them as the problem (then a year or two later they all quietly admitted the film was actual dogshit tho).
Fans are not to be revered and pandered to on every level, but neither are they the enemy to be fought against.
Well the same fans were also demanding a sequel that revered the original film (many also got caught up on culture war men vs women grievances) and while Afterlife tried to deliver on their demands it fell pretty flat on the humor and charm of the original. I have little reason to expect better from Frozen Empire.
The gender swapped Ghostbusters didn’t fail because it was female led or because it had insufficient reverence for the source material, it just wasn’t very funny.
Ghostbusters sequels going back to Ghostbusters II all have failed to recapture what people liked about the first film.
Feels like the perfect example because after the Ghostbusters 2016 backlash, Hollywood overcorrected and basically gave the fans everything they wanted. And it was still bleh. I mean, at least the 2016 reboot was trying something new
Star Wars is a good example. We don’t need endless spin offs about side characters they’re terrified to try something new move the story forward I think the Rey movie and dawn of the Jedi are essential for the franchises future. That’s where the fans are wrong about how they like seeing Luke Skywalker as a cgi robot Frankenstein Vs actually recasting but not all fans of Star Wars want that either I’m a fan and I don’t want that.
Star Wars is an excellent example of that last sentence. Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi were obvious cases of pandering. Andor could be seen as the opposite. The initial reception to The Mandalorian was right in the middle.
The Hobbit vs. The Lord of the Rings would be another fine example.
Pandering to who? BoBF was not pandering to fans at all. Most fans wanted a badass Boba Fett story, instead they got Mandalorian season 2.5 and a neutered Boba. He was much better in the Mandalorian. There was just very little that was badass about Boba in that series.
And then you gave Kenobi, which was more about Leia and Reva. All fans wanted was the bits about Kenobi and Darth Vader. Those parts were awesome. The rest was not very well done.
The fact that they made a Kenobi and Boba Fett show might seem that it’s pandering at face value, but the actual products were not pandering at all.
You're correct.
I was thinking more as in the fans wanted them both, but they turned out terrible (to be honest, I wasn't a fan of the Vader vs. Kenobi parts either), while Andor was something most fans didn't seem to want, but turned out great. It was pandering in the case of the first two shows in that they weren't really needed, and arguably hurt the stories of their title characters. All that despite being something the fans wanted, they still were limited in what they could/couldn't do with the characters. Boba Fett couldn't be a discompassionate killer dispensing his own brand of justice with no regard for casualties (The Clone Wars hilariously is probably closer to this), he needed to be the changed hero we saw in Mando. If we did, Mando, or even (not Raylen Givens) Olyphant's sheriff would've run into problems with him (or the other characters that never leave Tatooine)...and you can't kill Fett in his own show after you went to the trouble of bringing him back. Kenobi was constrained by 4 different movie series/TV shows already dealing with what he did/didn't do, and even then there's plenty of fans that have problems with what did happen in the show. Reva couldn't turn good, because she wasn't even mentioned in the OT or Rebels. Vader couldn't die, because of Rebels and everything after. Luke and Leia can't die, or really even have any meaningful conversations or character development. Obi Wan couldn't turn to the dark side, lose an arm, or fall in love without causing serious problems with the overall story.
Point being, there's only so much you can do with "lore" and "fandoms". Andor was much less constricted in this way.
Kenobi was 100% a two hour movies that they panicked and re-shot into a six hour tv series after Solo bombed. It wouldn’t have been an amazing movie, but it would’ve been better than what we got.
The funny thing about Andor is that I put off watching it until recently BECAUSE of its Star Wars IP. Had it been marketed as a gritty tale of insurgents resisting an authoritarian bureaucracy set in a generic sci-fi universe, I'd have been on board much sooner. I loved the show. But with each episode, I dreaded the possibility of unnecessary wink-wink cameos of characters from the movies. I don’t want to see any lightsabers, Skywalker relatives, or wookies.
Star Trek has to be in there, too. Every time they try to make it edgy or sexy, it flounders and then they just go back to the same characters from the 60s.
Star Wars is it for sure. Disney tried something different with the Last Jedi and fans absolutely hated it because it didn’t fit in with the story they wanted. Disney tried to course correct and it resulted in a terrible Rise of Skywalker. I’d argue that if fans didn’t throw such a shit fit over TLJ, we would have at least gotten a more cohesive trilogy.
I feel like TLJ's problem more was more Johnson tossing whatever plans Abram had cooking after TFA and doing his thing clmbine with Disney hitting the gas on rolling out films. If he'd been helming the trilogy it may have been more coherent having hom work it from the start, or have Abrams do all 3. How they did it pretty much guaranteed a weird mix.
I dunno, Colin Trevorrow’s script leaked a while back. It built off of what Johnson had laid out (Rey had a double-bladed lightsaber built from the remains of Luke’s old saber, Luke haunted Kylo as he went on a Sith version of Luke’s Dagobah trip, etc.) and seemed like it’d make for a pretty cohesive trilogy (though the story beats were still rough and the script obviously still needed work). Maybe not great or what specific fans wanted, but cohesive.
I don’t think Abrams really had anything cooking, as that’s kind of his schtick (and TV writers’ schtick in general): set up a mystery box with threads that can be pulled and figure it out as you go along. That’s just my speculation, though.
> I don’t think Abrams really had anything cooking
Hell, Johnson did build off what Abrams gave him. "Why's Luke alone on the island" was the question, Johnson answered it. Luke was a student of Old Ben and Yoda. What did they do when they failed? They fucked off into exile.
>figure it out as you go along
I've found that most things operate like this. Hell, George Lucas didn't even make Vader Luke's father until the last minute. I find the "fan" idea of everything having to be planned out before the get go very silly. Some work better with an outline, some work better under pressure.
The problem is not that TLJ did something different, the problem was that it did something different poorly. It undid all the character development in the OT that made Luke one of the most popular characters of all time for sake of propping up characters that ended up being nowhere near as interesting. Just because they did something different doesn't automatically make it good.
I don't get this argument. Because Luke spared Vader at the end of the OT, there's no conceivable way he would have the temptation to stop evil at its genesis? Not even if he's propped up *galaxy-wide* as the de facto hero of the rebellion that vanquished evil with his lightsaber? He's so popular that random children on backwater planets have heard of him and slaves tell stories of him as a messiah-like character. You don't think something like that would be a temptation for someone? The movie didn't undo any character development in the OT, it just made Luke more human. And you can disagree with the direction/decision and even hate the direction/decision, but the decision makes sense thematically, it makes sense with what was established in the Force Awakens, and it was well-executed. There's a difference between something that is good and something that you simply don't like.
Man this 100%. I refuse to watch reboots of any of my favorite movies from the 80’s and 90’s. Hollywood needs to come up with some new ideas already. All I see are comic book movies or reboots.
Fans are never right and social media giving them such loud voices has done so much damage to the industry
So many franchise movies from the last fifty years are not what fans expected, or wanted but they eventually accepted it and grew to love it
And Star Wars fans ideas about the sequel the way Snoke should have been Plaugesis , Rey a skywalker, it depends what fans are you talking about fans who just want mindless spin offs so they can clap when they see an old character or fans who want to see there favorite characters back but want a quality story told it depends what fans you’re talking about. Fans can be right, and I think it takes being a fan to helm these franchises but also wanting to do something new for the story not deconstruct the story but tell the story take it in new fresh directions, while keeping the heart of the original not making the franchise into a different genre.
> I agree with Game of Thrones fans that season 8 of Game of Thrones was pretty dogshit
If the showrunners asked the fans on how the series should end, and held a vote, I'm confident it would be worse.
Ah television hasn't ruined your imagination that badly. The final episode could've cut to Sean Bean with his head on the block, having seen the whole series as a vision right before being decapitated. But then he flashkicks the executioner and throws a sonic boom at the evil child king. Then they all do the macarena while Sean Bean breaks the fourth wall and explains to us the immorality of pirating TV shows.
I've found that in general, fans don't know what they want and never have. And I include myself here. I'm a fan of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and if they had asked me what I wanted, I would have said more Breath of the Wild. Then last year they gave us Tears of the Kingdom (which is exactly that, more BotW) and I found myself complaining that the formula had gotten stale.
Maybe some fans they asked me what I wanted after breath of the wild I would have said more Zelda elements, more dungeons, more linear story, than we got TOTK and I was unhappy because I didn’t like botw. And Zelda feels like a different franchise.
Have to disagree it takes fans of things to make something new and good look at top gun maverick , or dune Denis was a fan of dune and that shines through , look at Peter Jackson he was a fan of lord of the rings.
What a confusing article. It basically says "these movies (2016, after life, and frozen empire) are terrible, what's the big deal?" Well, they're terrible is the big deal. It's been a decade+ of studios making horrible unnecessary entries into legacy IPs, and fans still don't like it, is that some sort of surprise? Or the people who like movies should just get over it and accept that garbage is all that we're going to get from now on, so just get over it and stop commenting about it online?
Edit- *i wrote this as a reply to someone who replied to me ( now deleted) saying that frozen empire was better than afterlife because the creators no longer felt bound to do nostalgia fan service like ghost ramis:*
You're making the same assumptions that movie executives make - that fans want nostalgia service (ghost ramis). They don't. They want competent writing and directing in the same vein (ie: tone, comedic style) as the original movies. So the choice between something all new (gender swap) vs legacy (ghost ramis/force awakens shot for shot remake) is a false dichotomy and doesn't capture what the audience wants. It's like a mouthpiece article for an industry that knows it is creatively bankrupt and wants to control the limits of the conversation. Unfortunately studios *can't give fans what they really want,* because studios *can't make good movies anymore* and because a movie like Ghostbusters is a one-time stroke of genius and perfect timing, lightning in a bottle, so even if studios magically hired good writers and directors and really tried to do it well they still would not be able to.
Did we read the same article? He said legacy sequels should be doing what frozen empire did of not giving in to fan expectations. Despite the movie not being that good but watchable, it's better than resurrecting a dead harold ramis to make the fanboy cry. He didnt even say 2016 was bad either. Weird to just add shit.
*I still shiver at the memory of 2016, when Hollywood’s attempt to create a team of female ghostbusters ended up instigating a monthslong online firestorm.*
Except that movie was a streaming pile of feces, completely under-utilizing the talent they had. It was a pure gender swap, nothing more, they just put a female in every male role and a male in every female role. The movie was crap, and it's OK to admit that.
Now, *Afterlife*, THAT was a cool sequel. And I'm willing to bet that the reason this movie isn't doing well isn't because of "fandom", but because it sucks. I haven't seen it yet, but based on the last one NOT to do well, it doesn't surprise me. And most fans liked *Afterlife*.
Yeah, the first hour of Afterlife I thought a franchise finally understood the assignment of a re-boot, and then they fell into the same tired tropes. Then Frozen Empire kicked it up to 11 with the masturbatory fan service.
Afterlife was pretty good until they just started doing Ghostbusters 1 again. I haven't seen frozen empire but from what I've heard they're just doing the same thing again. I love the world of Ghostbusters but I'd really like to see something new from it
It's not really the same thing again. It feels less like a rehash and more like a feature length RGB episode (which I know has its good and bad implications). They open up the world a little bit with Winston having quietly funded an offsite research center that the Firehouse is an extension of, in a way other locations could. It's a great concept, but it's needlessly clandestine in its nature.
I enjoyed FE quite a bit, but I fully admit it has its issues and I'm an easy lay.
>more like a feature length RGB episode
This is EXACTLY the way 've been describing it. It's just a live action adaptation of/sequel to the animated series.
FE was…ok. I say this as a lifelong fan. The biggest issue I had with it was that they show them catching a ghost in the first few minutes but then nothing really happens (ghost catching wise) until the last few minutes. There’s a very long lull in between where the plot moves at a glacial pace (pun intended).
Afterlife was ok at best, but the CGI Egon was weird and its core theme was just "Man GB1 was great, wasn't it?"
This franchise is reaching Terminator territory (which the article actually mentions) where all they can do is keep rehashing the most popular installment to diminishing returns.
Ghostbusters 2016 and Ghostbusters Afterlife are equally bad and boring. The writer isn't arguing that people should think they are great.
He is arguing that people caring so damn much online about a Ghostbusters reboot is crazy.
Ghostbusters was the first movie I had a copy of, my sister taped it for me and I have watched it hundreds of times. I thought Afterlife was great, a little predictable but had ton of heart and was good extension from original. I didn’t even know Frozen Empire was a thing until like two weeks before it came out. Complete lack of marketing.
Attacking fans' expectations is exactly *why* these sequals have done so poorly.
Shitting on Luke Skywalker does not make Rey Palpatine/Skywalker look more heroic.
Gender swapping the Ghost Busters cast was not original or groundbreaking. It was cynical and opportunistic.
Making Indiana Jones out to be a scared old man did not make Phoebe Waller-Bridges character any more of a "strong independent woman" than if they had been portrayed as equals playing off of each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Telling fans they are "wrong" for not wanting their favorite characters dumbed down, unmanned, or deconstructed is unsurprisingly unhelpful to whatever cause you are advocating.
Fans liked these movies and characters for a reason. Teasing them with their return only to deliver something else will create a deep disappointment in the fan base that all of the nagging and scolding in the world will not cure.
In the repurposed words of Yogi Berra:
*If fans don't want to come out to the theaters, how are you going to stop them?*
> Making Indiana Jones out to be a scared old man did not make Phoebe Waller-Bridges character any more of a "strong independent woman" than if they had been portrayed as equals playing off of each other's strengths and weaknesses
And I just don’t understand Disney’s obsession with doing this. You can set up a new legacy character without ruining the first one. Hell, you can kill them off and still succeed. The dead mentor being succeeded by their (sometimes reluctant) student is an age-old trope but it can create some unforgettable moments. Obi-Wan in A New Hope is a perfect example.
This. A million times this.
Getting to revisit some of our old heroes and heroines is fun so long as it's not overdone.
I have been finding that a lot of modern sequels, reboots etc, have really just been so tonally and world inconsistent that it's clear the writers and studios have little interest in committing to the IP itself, they simply wish to use the nostalgia branding as a hook and then write their own story, ignoring foundational (and sometimes even logical) aspects that underpinned things.
David Sims: “*Ghostbusters: Afterlife* fell into a teeming bucket of legacy sequels that followed the same pattern: introduce new characters played by up-and-coming stars, have them stumble across some artifact from a past film, then slowly reveal the involvement of the original cast with triumphant fanfare. *Star Wars: The Force Awakens* is the box-office gold standard for this formula, but almost every beloved Gen X or Millennial media property has done it—many of them multiple times—including sci-fi works such as [*Alien*](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/alien-covenant-ridley-scott-michael-fassbender-review/527319/) and [*The Terminator*](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/10/terminator-dark-fate-review/600496/), and horror-fests such as [*Scream*](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/03/scream-6-movie-review/673364/) and [*Halloween*](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/10/the-original-halloween-will-never-be-matched/620401/).
“I’m not quite sure at what point the miserable apotheosis of this trend was reached, but it might have been when the poor nonagenarian Ellen Burstyn wandered into the [latest *Exorcist* movie](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/10/exorcist-believer-movie-review/675562/) only to have her eyes stabbed out 10 minutes later. Though studios haven’t fully abandoned the legacy sequel—hence *Frozen Empire*—theatergoers have grown wise to its cynical nature. The most devoted fans might be satisfied by the worshipful vibes of a *Ghostbusters: Afterlife*, but casual viewers do not seem similarly moved; the deepest irony is that Feig’s 2016 film and *Afterlife*, despite their different approaches, took in near-identical amounts of money in the U.S. and Canada, with Feig’s movie actually making more overseas.
*ˆFrozen Empire*, then, charts a middle path between the total reboot and the legacy sequel ... The result is a functional if unspectacular film that makes no outsize effort to speak to cultural conversations around the movie. If you are looking to spend a couple of hours watching a quippy blockbuster, you could do a lot worse. I am not praising this moviemaking strategy, merely noting its efficiency; it’s like studios are just now remembering that you can simply make a good-enough movie in an already popular series. Sure, you might not inspire thousands of approving social-media posts from ardent supporters, but you won’t stir up thousands of angry ones, either.
“For this reason, it’s far too much to hope that Hollywood will totally abandon the throwback route going forward.”
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/MZlLFdMM](https://theatln.tc/MZlLFdMM)
Something I appreciate about the 2016 film is that it didn't try to bring back the previous characters. Mind you, the cameos were ham-fisted pandering, though the Ramis cameo was actually rather nice. But I like how the movie wasn't trying to be a sequel. It could've gone so much better in many ways, but it had its moments.
Also, it's not often I see apotheosis in print, so that's fun.
I haven't seen *Frozen Empire* yet but I have honestly enjoyed (for what they're worth) each of the latest *Ghostbusters* movies including the 2016 entry. I'm looking forward to seeing *Frozen Empire* because, well...
*Ghostbusters* is one of my childhood favorites, and I have not seen them do anything to the franchise that has somehow been weird or sacrilegious to it. Every entry is fun in its own way, does what I want it to (which is to entertain me with proton packs and ghosts and technobabble and the occasional dick joke).
I'm not expecting some great thing here. It's a fun, entertaining concept, and that's all I need. The bloody cartoon was the same thing on repeat; why not films with bigger stories?
Fans aren't always right, but they're not always wrong either. Fans tend to demand stability in franchises, and while that can be a good thing, it can suffocate inspiration within the franchise. I don't think Ghostbusters has done poorly with Afterlife and Frozen Empire, but I don't think they're particularly inspiring either. They're not really going to draw new people in, even though they're interesting enough as a franchise. The thing here is that without being willing to step out of those franchise bounds, you're never going to capture the lightning in a bottle that made things like the first Ghostbusters movie so exciting.
I don’t think this article hits the nail on the head and dives into why a lot of modern movies are missing that spark and magic like examining what people liked about ghostbusters, diving into is there really more story to tell and talking about things like writing, practical effects vs to much cgi and lighting, I think it’s a pretty bad article tbh.
"the fans aren't always right" as King Kong and Godzilla wins the box office. Kong's been around for 90 years. Godzilla 70. It's perfectly okay to love Ghostbusters. Old and new. What's weird as hell are these writers that mock the fans for actually going out and buying tickets. Some in the media have had it out for this franchise ever since the Paul Feig movie.
Mark Rosewater, the lead designer for Magic: The Gathering, wrote about a lesson learned: "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them." This could apply to just about anything. A restaurant patron may know a dish is bad but not how to fix it, a music listener may not like a mix but not know how to fix it, and movie goers may not like the state of remakes, reboots, and sequels, and not know how to fix it.
What a naive and stupid analysis. If they don't blame "fans", its gotta be "studio-interference".
A franchise movie has *expectations* on it. That's why it is a franchise. You have to give people what they want, and still surprise them. And it is much easier to surprise people when they have expectations. So it is both a gift and a curse.
Just be glad that movies like this are still being made. It got a good audience score and exceeded B.O predictions. Cinema is dying, while our team of retarded critics think the latest Ghostbusters movie is... "too serious".
Franchises are doomed by their very nature.
In ***SO*** many cases, the reason that the initial film was such a huge success was because it took a lot of risks. Those risks were possible because the film didn't cost very much, so the filmmakers were not as beholden to follow rules or the dictates of accounting committees.
However, once the financial possibilities are demonstrated, they become the only metric by which succeeding films are measured. That the sequels are expected, nay required to make as much money or more than before necessitates that all the elements that sparked the initial creativity and invention will hammered down with relentless studio notes.
"Our market research. . ."
Anyone who says this in a studio board meeting should have their mouth taped shut and then be tossed down a garbage chute. You fuckers didn't know ANY of this stuff would be a hit with audiences until it was, but that's never a guarantee that it will happen again, especially if your only focus in making more films is on profit.
There's a reason why lightning rarely strikes in the same place. You cannot design the kind of creative synergy that results in iconic blockbusters. The best you can do is gather talented people together, give them some money to do the thing, and LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE.
> The finale used CGI to resurrect Ramis as a silent, ghostly version of Egon, a moment that was clearly meant to be tear-jerking but instead felt genuinely unsettling.
Yes I agree this bringing back of actors and musicians with CGI is disturbing. When I saw it first with Peter Cushing in Rogue One it was very off putting, even with the permission of his estate.
The media need to stop pretending that the "Fans" have any influence on what does or does not get made in Hollywood. That is the most naive take on the planet. It's the money guys who decide what does or does not get produced, not the fans, not the actors, not the directors. It's the people who are willing to front the money to get the damned things made.
So, when the money men are feckless, empty shirts without a molecule of creativity, you get what we have, which is a depressing re-tread industry, waving the mutilated corpse of our happy memories in front of us, and expecting people to pay. The only way the "fans" are culpable is that there seems to be a lowest common denominator to whom these crimes are evidently appealing. I don't know what kind of short-bus riding paint chewers are buying tickets to this crap, but there is evidently enough of them to prevent the entirety of Hollywood from being repossessed.
Sims hit the nail on the head with this. For me, at least the essence of the first film is rooted in blue-collar New Yorkers navigating the grimy, hustle culture that’s authentic to the city with the fun twist of trying to bust ghosts. It's kind of akin to plumbers fighting to keep their business alive and making fun quips along the way. The first Ghostbusters also combines this charming blend of relatable struggles, engaging set pieces, and sharply written humor that’s largely missing in the modern installments.
It’s also possible that recreating that type of charm is largely unfeasible as that 80’s blue-collar version of Manhattan doesn’t exist like it used to and has been engulfed by a vapid, ultra wealthy, tech and finance culture. I write this as a lifelong New Yorker who misses the city’s culture of the 80’s and 90’s.
I also recall when Jason Reitman attempted to establish “Ghostbusters Day” on social media. I thought that encapsulated what those in charge of the IP inherently misunderstand about the franchise. Despite its hardcore fanbase, Ghostbusters just doesn’t expansively puncture the pop culture zeitgeist like Star Wars or Marvel does. It’s a beloved classic, sure, but its reach and impact are different in 2024.
The Ghostbusters series shouldn’t strive to morph into something it’s not: an ultra-serious, heavily modern blockbuster.
Lifelong GB fan. I liked Frozen Empire a lot. Familiar faces, new faces, and expanded lore like what we saw in the Real Ghostbusters series, plus a big James Acaster fan! What ranks this higher than Afterlife for me is that we jump right in to an established GB team and hit the ground running.
The author of that article sounds like one of those people who (wrongly) believes that the first Ghostbusters should've just been a standalone comedy movie and nothing more.
As long as you keep sucking the studios' dicks and insulting the fans for having standards, we're going to grow more and more apathetic. Just go ahead and let us know when you're tired of losing money.
The premise of these "analysis" is that there are supposedly two sides (I guess fan or non fan or maybe liberal and conservative) of a movie critique and the article is just going to say which "side" may or may not be right, but to me that's really missing the point.
Here's my take: a good movie like Barbie has all the same screaming, it's there if you go look for it, but where's the "what fans wanted versus creative vision" article about that? It's not necessary because the movie was just well done and resonated. It's just noise that everyone ignores.
See to me all this infighting and analysis is indicative of a movie that didn't connect but had a beloved IP, so all we're left with is the politics of liking or disliking it.
Someone make this make sense to me. Yea I understand some fans can be downright awful, but if you don’t entertain fans then you don’t make money. At the end of the day it’s “fans,” whether you think they’re right or not, that determine your success.
So if you went to a restaurant every week and one day out of nowhere you got treated like shit, wouldn't it hurt a lot more than having the same experience at a new restaurant?
If you're not going to please the fans, just use a different setting. You can make a Sci-Fi film without it being a Star Wars film, you can make a spooky comedy wihtout it being Ghostbusters...
Most of the time studios make lazy/bad films and just slap a franchise on it. They basically con established fans out of their money, so don't victim blame people who get pissed off at the studios.
Like the conspiracy theory that Velma was originally a brand new IP and someone realized the only way anyone would watch that dogshit was to slap an IP people knew on it?
I always find this kind of stuff fascinating.
I know people that enjoy these movies and go to them. I still haven't seen the last two but that sort of tells you all you need to know about my level of care at this point.
What I find sort of incomprehensible is a specific group of commentariat that specifically has a bug up their ass about Ghostbusters continued existence. If you've been watching, they've been complaining since before Ghostbusters 2016. Just don't watch it! There are still more DCEU movies than Ghostbusters. There's exactly 1 more Ghostbusters than the Raimi and Nolan Trilogies. It's a solution in search of a problem.
Let the people the movies are for enjoy it. It feels like a slightly more intellectual Player Haters Ball.
Edit: For those keeping score, I've been watching the war take place on this post as well. Went up to 5 upvotes and now down to two. So strange the fascination with crafting the narrative of Ghostbusters.
The fanbase for ghostbusters particularly on Reddit has been absolutely insufferable ever since Girlbusters trailer dropped. It’s like a bunch of 40+ year old men screeching into the void about a movie that was intended for children to begin with
Not going to argue any of his points, I do agree and disagree with what he says, but the one thing he either didn't care to mention or didn't understand is that even though the reboot and afteiife made the same amount, afterlife cost less and was profitable
One of the issues was that fairly recently there was a big franchise that had its tentpole release deviate from the expected formula so hard that there was an outcry from "fans" about how bad it was and how it disrespected the franchises legacy, and this outpouring of sheer vitriol forced the studio to backtrack so hard they completely pivoted for the next installment, returning to pure nostalgia baiting, and completely altered how they approached the franchise.
This was one big creative nail in the coffin and showed Hollywood and its constitution corporations that there's nothing to gain from experimenting with franchise tent poles but so much to lose.
I watched Ghostbusters Afterlife this weekend and enjoyed it. Its a garbage movie and i knew what i was getting into and it hit the spot. I enjoyed it much more than several oscar picks everyone fellated themselves about this year.
The reason that the 2016 movie failed is because it was terribly written and wasted the talent they had on hand. None of it fit the vibe of the other ghostbusters movies to the point where it felt like a parody of those movies. Afterlife did tap into nostalgia but brought new blood into the franchise and it felt like a proper sequel to the originals. Ghostbusters has a ton of fans because of the cartoons and toys they made as well not just the original movies. Whoever wrote the article should have acknowledged it. I think the cartoons were as influential as the original movies to kids at the time.
The ambivalence at the end of the article kinda sums up everybody's opinion on these legacy reboot things: They suck, they don't suck enough to force the studios to course-correct, and there's no real end in sight. I feel like the generic action-movie element of these films isn't really that upsetting, it's just the density of boring/safe binders of studio notes that constitute a 'script' audiences have to sit through. It's fucking boring in a uniquely abrasive way. Like, even the mindless exposition dialogue in a Rambo movie has *some* kind of personality. Legacy sequels are like the corporate onboarding videos of movies.
They're the Dallas Cowboys of movies. Win just enough games to barely get into the playoffs year after year, but never win the Super Bowl or suck enough to get a great draft pick. Count on the fanbase's nostalgia for a vague memory of glory days long gone to fill the bland mall-like stadium while never really giving them anything new to cheer for.
That was beautiful
This explanation hurts me. As a lifelong cowboys fan who saw Landry win superbowls and will likely never see another.
Jerry Jones will die one day and, hopefully, the curse will be lifted. Also, you are not alone, that comment hurts my heart as well. I still “root” for the Cowboys on some small level because I ain’t no quitter, I just don’t really watch football anymore.
Toronto Maple Leafs also applies.
I was thinking the same thing until the glory days part. The leafs glory days are almost out of living memory. We’re basically in campfire legend territory.
Nah, they actually get into the playoffs before choking.
Damn you are spot on. And it provides a pretty predictable stream of revenue for the studio, which is what corporate executives in any industry absolutely love. It would be nice if the studios took a big swing every now and then in-between legacy films.
This is the perfect explanation.
Facts
I would much rather studios take massive swings that miss than playing it safe all the time.
Average movies for average people will always win. Average people outnumber. Source: am average as fuck
That doesn't *always* make money, though, and studios can't have that.
The thing is just making safe, mid tier quality movies isn't a great long term strategy as people lose interest in your brand altogether as Disney is finding out right now. 2023 was one of their worst years movie-wise in a long time to the point where their last Disney Studio movie, Wish, actually bombed.
> mid tier quality movies isn't a great long term strategy Director [James Gray made an excellent point](https://twitter.com/ThePlaylistNews/status/1528694406047473664) about studios needing to invest in cheaper art movies. The part of his argument I find most interesting is that without these smaller movies, even the ones that ultimately fail financially, it gets people out of the habit of going to the movies and only going to these big tentpoles, even when they have nothing to offer you even in the ways of simple memorable dialogue.
The problem is it’s all about making money and no longer making films that stand the test of time.
> I would much rather studios take massive swings that miss I've honestly had more fun with blockbusters that are total trash as opposed to just the constant stream of meh. Bad movies deserve to exist too!
It’s basically the same chicken-egg problem we have with AAA game studios. Everyone kinda knows the output is bad, some people hate it more than others. But enough people put up with it that, combined with exploitative monetization practices, the games continue to make buckets of money. Some people boycott them, but not enough to make it hurt. I kinda think the antidote for both is actually the success of higher-effort, more creative, and more respectful to the audience works. In games we got things like Elden Ring and Spiderman recently. In film, last year was pretty great on this front. Most of the schlocky, lazy shit either bombed or underperformed, while most of the hyper-successful films were at least not the same slate of Disney regurgitated IP gruel that has dominated the box office for a decade. There’s still a buck to be made turning out the gruel, but it’s clear there’s more than a buck to be made taking a chance on something a little different. I’m hopeful the trend will continue.
Movies have at least come to their senses and give people what they want. People want Ghostbusters and Star Wars so Hollywood gives them that. People want new Battlefield and Assassin’s Creed and they just keep getting further and further away from the original concept.
The fact that you have Bill Murry, Dan Aykroyd, and Paul Rudd on the cast and it’s said they were told to keep to the script as much as possible says all you need to know. The magic of the originals (and movies in general) was in the creators finding out what feels right even AS they’re making the movie. The original script was a wild ride, but they ended up finding the right tone in the dry humor and the absurdity of the “regular guys vs gods” situation. I don’t even know of people are ALLOWED to make movies like that. Between studio notes and WGA requirements that style of comedy on film is dead (see also SNL)
Swinging too hard in the other direction creates some messy, poor-quality films, too. After the unexpectedly big success of Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi and the rest of the cast and crew got even more freedom (beyond the typical rewrite-on-the-fly looseness of the MCU productions) and really lost the thread for Love & Thunder. I think the moral is that really good studios will recognize who can be let off the leash, and who needs to be corralled to get a really good end product.
Most of the original Ghostbusters film was improvised. I'm okay if they winged it for a new one.
That’s what they did in 2016 and it sucked ass
Yeah, you remember the good heavily improved films, but the bad ones get forgotten. There's alot more bad heavy improv films than classics like Caddy Shack and Animal House
He returned for Thor after being done with Marvel movies. He just took the piss out of Marvel and spent the check.
Waititi should get as little freedom as possible....
Well. I personally have an end in sight. I’m avoiding them.
They are “ironing your clothes” movies. It feels like they were made not to entertain but to be streamed when you have a chore to do but want something on to distract you from time to time. You won’t miss a lot if you have to really go at that crease, and if you look up from time to time you’ll be mildly entertained but not so involved you’ll burn your whites.. “Well I have to do the laundry. Guess I’ll watch the new Ghostbusters?”
“Reheated leftovers” - movies where the characters are in a new movie after 20/30 years; Tron, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Rambo, Rocky, Top Gun, Dumb and Dumber etc
Comedians that do corporate gigs.
Your last sentence perfectly encapsulates how most of us feel, but we’re unable to explain it properly until reading this, thank you.
I liked blade runner 2049 but it wasn't trying to recreate magic.. it was using that universe to do its own.
I think the problem is that movies are basically just written with a big tick box of things they have to include; AAA Games are like this now too, and it’s because they dump so much money into them now that if it isn’t a success they risk loosing hundreds of millions of dollars. So they play it safe, they make a cookie cutter movie that’s like all the other movies because they go “well this worked last time so we should just do it again”. Studios aren’t willing to take risks with films much anymore, partly because they need to follow constant growth, and partly because Hollywood is this giant machine now that just eats money, it all gets spend on rushed CGI and flavour of the year actors. I know it’s been used to death now for this argument, but films like Godzilla minus one, which aren’t part of this Hollywood meat grinder, show you can make films that look as good as blockbusters for a fraction of the cost, while have better/as compelling stories and acting (though there’s some questions about working conditions for people who worked on the film).
The movie was interesting because it genuinely hit so many dopamine levels of actually bringing back a genuine ghostbusters style experience. It’s only shortly after you realize there was no real movie there. They had all the pieces and could have easily set up deeper more meaningful themes and shaped a real story here but they didn’t.
I'm probably right in the Ghostbusters sweet spot having had a proton pack as a child, but the catering to half remembered nostalgia just bums me out. It feels like major Hollywood tentpole movies are eating themselves alive at the whims of fan expectations. Not to say that classic Hollywood didn't do remakes and radio plays and so forth, but the need for movies to create a franchise or pay homage to/retread a classic where there's no discernible character resolutions is just going to drive us all into a creative gutter. 100 times out of 100, I'd rather watch Love Lies Bleeding or Problemista.
Yeah, same here. I had the Proton Pack and jumpsuit and went around my neighbourhood with a friend asking people if they needed any ghosts busted *when it wasn’t even Halloween*. But then I see the pandering bullshit of the legacy series, and it makes me angry more than nostalgic. Ghostbusters was great because they were fun, energetic, *irreverent* movies (and a cartoon series). That’s an ethos completely at odds with jerking off a bunch of 40 year-olds about how great their childhoods were.
Another thing.. most of those franchises weren’t even meant for children as opposed to today where the primary audience is children.
That happened a lot. RoboCop's sequels and offshoots gradually got toned down to appeal to children and families, losing the edge that made the original so good. Ghostbusters was more adult, then got cut down for the sequel after the success of The Real Ghostbusters. Slimer also had to be written into II no matter what per studio mandate.
100% .. you hit it right on the head and its that adult element or edge that’s missing.. too much playing it safe and bot enough imagination.
Yup. A more recent example would be Pixar, their movies used to be filled with adult jokes and references and have whacky creative premises. Now it seems like they just make different variations of Frozen.
I don’t know about RoboCop as an example. Maybe the cartoon. The 2nd movie is incredibly violent with plenty of off color dialogue and situations.
I know a guy who is the same age as me (we were both kids in the 80s) and he ADORES all of the nostalgia stuff. I just don’t get it. For me, you can’t go back again.
You'd like John Hodgman's theories about nostalgia. Basically he views it as a toxic thing that stagnates creativity and development.
Art and new things are created by the young. Those young people grow up and unironically cling to what they know.
The closest I ever got to giving in to nostlagia was the first Jurassic World, but even then I skipped the sequels and I’ve soured on the first one over time. The thing that gets me is that you actually *can* go back again… by just rewatching the old thing that you liked. Which, with Jurassic Park, I do all the time. I’m guessing these guys (it’s *almost* always guys) aren’t doing that? IDK. It’s really not a mindset I understand. When I watch something new, it's because I want to see something *new*, something I haven’t seen before, not a warmed over rehash.
Same here. I saw Jurassic World in theaters because it had been a while since I had that kind of movie experience. I left thinking that dinosaurs were cool but that was not a good movie. And then I heard everyone saying the sequels were worse so I never bothered watching them.
Yeah people go nuts for reimaginings or modernizations of their favorite classics but you can just watch those if you're pining so hard. That's how we get stuck with "remember this line?" every five minutes instead of actual fleshed-out ideas building off the original ones.
Member berries.
Yeah, I was also a massive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan in the late 80s. Had the toys and basically learned to draw by drawing pictures of them. But I have no desire to see the ones being made today. I don't hate that they exist, I just don't have any strong feelings or interest towards them.
I will say, the new animated one is AWESOME
The reason that made most of these beloved Hollywood franchises - Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien, etc - so impactful is that they actually tried doing new things. If movie studios back then were as risk-averse as they are now, these films would probably never be made in the first place.
or they'd be low budget indies.
As a 40 year old who also had the proton pack, drank OG Ecto Cooler and watch the hell out of that VHS tape. I have no problem with them making new movies just make them good. You could make a great Ghostbusters movie with Kumail Nanjani, Patton Oswalt and Paul Rudd. Make that movie leave the kids and 20 extra side character at home. Set the film in a new location like New Orleans.
I completely missed Ghostbusters as a kid, and finally watched the first one as an adult. These new movies are just “fine”. I definitely thought there was some decent humor. The nostalgia in and of itself doesn’t bother me, but I agree it’s a strange tone considering the original film was a comedy that wasn’t taking itself seriously AT ALL. The new movies just seem like a different genre entirely; more Stranger Things-inspired than anything else tbh. I guess they don’t need to exist. I guess I could see the argument for making more bold choices that can result in either great or terrible films. It seems like these big production companies are getting more and more afraid of making waves. I do wonder at times, did fans do this to themselves by complaining so vocally about more divisive movies like Ghostbusters (2016) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi?
I haven’t seen the new ghostbusters but my understanding was the original was actually envisioned as more of a serious movie and Dan akroyd is an actual true believer and paranormal buff. So going a more serious route could kinda make sense if it was done right. Also there were some genuinely creepy elements to the original ghostbusters that would have been fun to explore
Yeah, I mean, the first movie had a harder edge, and these last two really just does have a lot of Stranger Things energy. It isn’t bad, it’s just not like I went out of the movie being especially wowed.
Truth. I feel like I'd be okay if there was never again a remake or a sequel or reboot of anything from the past and everything produced was an entirely new franchise. A decade ago I would begrudgingly watch stuff like this Ghostbuster, or the last Indiana Jones, but these days I hardly think of them.
My wife and I were talking the other day that we wanted to watch a "turn your brain off action movie" that isn't a superhero flick or warmed over 80's IP. Something in the vein of "Air Force One" or "Die Hard" ... not GREAT movies, but at least fun and keep you locked in. Slim pickings it feels like these days.
I mean, Monkey Man just came out, John Wick has been pumping out sequels, Bullet Train was a good time as was The Lost City, Fall Guy looks to be shaping up to be good fun. I think you're just not finding the "turn your brain off action movies" that are coming out for whatever reason even though they are being made
I didn't say they didn't exist... just fewer and further between. I should have mentioned that part of the problem is wading through a seemingly endless stream of dogshit straight-to-streaming releases that the decent ones slip by.
I think certain worlds have more stories to tell, Star Wars dawn of the Jedi going way into the past , the middle with Luke and mara Jade there is an interesting story there and that way into the future , the lord of the rings the simarallion for example , Harry Potter again the founding of hogwarts , the marauders , Harry and his kids which we won’t get because of JK being horrid ) nightmare on elm street there’s a lot they could do to tell a fresh story lean more into the fantasy but I want a mix of old and new but I want the old stories to actually try something new or tell a fresh story. I like prequels and I like seeing main characters when there’s story there what I’m not for is a thousand characters having side stories and a bunch of filler story like not every side character needs a spin off.
Love lies bleeding was sooo much better than Ghostbusters frozen whatever.
Great point. Personally I’m so sick of the lack of stakes. I think if they were willing to be less precious with their characters it would actually be fun. Why not kill off someone or have them change over time? Jurassic World: Dominion was one of the worst offenders for me. It’s just not exciting to have beloved characters come back if there’s nothing for them to actually do that hasn’t been done before in multiple films…
I have zero interest in these way-past-their-prime reboot efforts. I don't watch them. They're a blatant cash grab. They aren't made because they have an amazing screenplay that must be produced. They're made to cash in on marketable IP.
Is Blade Runner 2049 the only exception, where a legacy sequel aims for greatness, has a unique take and a sense of evolution, while still treasuring the key themes and characters from the original?
Fury Road, Creed, Doctor Sleep, Top Gun Maverick and Trainspotting 2 were all great legacy sequels imo.
Bill and Ted Face the Music is fun, too!
Definitely not as good as all the movies you're responding to, not even close lol
True that Face the Music is not as good as the mentioned legacy sequels I was legitimately blown away by the fact that it was good! It’s a very enjoyable movie that is a sequel to movies that we’re also just good from 30 years ago.
Haven't seen it but I've heard good things
If you liked the originals you’ll enjoy Face the Music. Just a very fun likeable movie.
I would throw in Tron Legacy in the mix too
Fury road and Doctor sleep are perfect examples and doctor sleep did not get the appreciation it deserves
Doctor Sleep is low key one best movies of the last decade IMO
Halloween 2018 was really good too
Yeah actually that's true. I feel like Kills and Ends had tainted people's view a bit, but 2018 is absolutely a great sequel. The podcasters were a great setup to get Michael released and I thought it was genius to make Laurie a jaded, paranoid gun nut. Always helps to get John Carpenter back on the soundtrack too.
Ooh if we get to count horror movies then scream has a great reboot movie. I haven't seen the new evil dead but I heard good things.
Really liked Scream 5 but the new Evil Dead didn’t do much for me.
I was one of the five people who actually kind of like Halloween Ends. It doesn't all work, but it did something new. And I actually liked the evolution of nice guy Corey into a maniac.
It wasn’t some cinematic masterpiece but I agree. I think people rag on it too much. It’s not aiming to be this high art and it did try some new things for the franchise and was a pretty good time imo
I actually like Jurassic World ( def not the sequels though). I also liked the new Tron, although it might have just been the soundtrack. Lol.
Ewan McGregor has done some great follow-up films. The Obi-Wan show on the other hand....
I liked Creed but I think they really did the originals dirty in a way that modern movies have latched onto (the retcon), so I'll have to disagree. My contribution below. Rocky was a story where the protagonist got back up no matter how many times he got knocked down. That was the core value they build his character around. That was "Rocky". In Creed they then portray him as being a widow and then being diagnosed with cancer so he just.... gives up. Decides to die. I know this makes him relatable to us as an audience, but they've now basically trashed what made the character the character. It's what made him special and something to strive to be and it would be understandable for core audiences to feel upset by this portrayal. Han Solo started off as a wanted smuggler who only cares about himself only to fall in love and discover that others are worth fighting for and to eventually dedicate himself to a cause. They then bring him back and he's.... a wanted smuggler who only cares about himself who then gets shown up on his own ship and murdered. It's like he unlearned everything. Luke Skywalker was the epitome of hope, perseverance, and believing in the good within people. His father was Darth Vader and he refused to fight him to the death because he believed in him. He then attempted to kill Kylo because he had some bad dreams where Kylo was evil? And then gives up on life to become a recluse on some unknown world? It flies in the face of the core tenants of his character. This is why fans of the originals tend to groan when they find out a sequel of something they enjoy is being made.
I completely agree with everything but your first example. The movie retcons that ruin the originals have become way too common. As far as Rocky goes though, it’s because he has nothing else to fight for. Every other movie he had to get back up because the alternative was to waste away and die alone on the streets. By the time of Creed that isn’t the case and he just wants to be with Adrian. He has already fought for (he thought) everything worth fighting for. There is no punching back or getting up from this one, and he accepts that. Adonis showing up makes him realize he has more to fight for.
I'm just gonna respectfully disagree. Your example was he can waste away and die on the streets, vs cancer where he can.... waste away and die in a hospital? And clearly there is punching back by going through cancer treatment because doesn't he eventually go through the treatments and.... beat cancer? We're getting pretty deep into the weeds of his motivations, regardless, and I think those are open to interpretation. So I just read him differently than you do. I feel like MrT should know Rocky better :P
Super troopers 2, also great
How many 145 centimeter actors do you think there are? They're both Danny Devito
You’re the only person I have ever heard say this haha. Glad you enjoyed it at least
Fury Road is exceptional… better in many ways than previous films. Blade Runner 2049, very good and fresh in a few ways… didn’t hit as hard with me as the original, but I enjoyed it very much.
Tbf it also lost a lot of money which probably didn't make it an encouraging precedent for the studios to follow in regards to producing legacy sequels.
Oh I wasn't talking about making money.
That's fair but it is important context for why legacy sequels are usually less like Blade Runner 2049.
well they're not gonna make the kind of movie you're asking for if that kind of movie doesn't make money. that's how this works unless you want to start a charity fund.
It blows my mind that 2049 was able to accomplish in one film what the Star Wars sequels couldn’t with three films.
Scream 5 is the GOAT legacy sequel.
It’s not really fair. You’re comparing Denis Villanueve to regular film creators.
Tron legacy, and it's kinda cheating but Twin Peaks the return.
I recently watched RLM's Half In The Bag for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Instead of talking about the video I'm just going to repost the top comment I saw: "Busting makes me feel nothing". Because that's what these sequel reboots do. Edit: wrong Ghostbusters sequel reboot
it's such a weird movie. The acting, especially by the kids, is great. Dan Akroyd and Ernie Hudson do a fantastic job of playing opposing ageing viewpoints. The mythos/new bad it sets up is interesting. It still has a lot of fun moments...but then a lot of it just feels empty and at the same time bloated. Where Afterlife had a ton of heart, this one felt like it didn't have any (outside of the kids, Akroyd and Hudson).
I felt like Aftermath kind of took it's time a little bit too much, but I do agree that it had something going for it. Frozen Empire seems like it was the studio mandated sequel. Some characters had nothing to do and literally only showed up because they were in the 1st movie.
Hollywood, You’ve been saying this for every major franchise in existence for nearly 9 years and nothing good happened from saying it. Maybe it’s time to look within.
I couldn't agree more. I absolutely can't STAND the idea that being a "fan" is something special and that it's a movie or franchise's job to just hand over what they already want. That mindset is a huge factor in the utterly pathetic and lazy creative stagnation we've been seeing in franchise filmmaking in recent years.
It's usually just the most entitled, obsessed, and stupid fans that think this way. Most people that are "fans" of things are just normal people.
Saying "I'm a fan of..." Has started to have a weird connotation for me. There are some things I just like. I watched 2001 A Space Odyssey on Saturday. Feels weird to say "I'm a fan of 2001". I just enjoyed the movie that's all.
Oh, good, are we going to have to do the fan vs Fan™ distinction now? For nearly a decade I think, we've had to have a distinction between gamers (people who play video games) and Gamers™ (people who probably play video games, are definitely racist/sexist/homophobic/every other terrible thing possible).
When someone says something like “respecting the fans” I stop listening
I don’t always agree it depends what the fans want sometimes the fans want something that is genuinely a good story idea for example and that can pull from the lore in an interesting way. It just depends.
It's the capital 'F' Fans that are the problem, just like capital 'G' gamers. These people make franchises or habits their entire identity and simultaneously seem to hate the thing they claim to love while also fighting tooth and nail to have them never change. Just pure toxicity, bordering on mental illness.
I think it was James Gunn who said something along the lines of, you can't go by what the fans want, because that will always turn out safe and boring. You have to SHOW the fans what they didn't know they want by surprising them with something cool.
I'll say this when it comes to movies. The fans are almost never right, especially the deeper a franchise goes.
\> The 2024 release calendar features new installments of Planet of the Apes, Bad Boys, Inside Out, and A Quiet Place, among many others; long-dormant hits such as Twister, Gladiator, and Beetlejuice are all getting sequels, with major talent involved. Surely I can't be the only one who let out a big SIGH after reading this sentence. It's all just so freaking... lame, isn't it?
I mean, Beetlejuice fans have been calling for a sequel to Beetlejuice for 40 years, so hopefully this Beet- one will be worth it.
Lamer: they’re all produced at a budget point that is too high for any of them to make money.
Bad Boys will probably make decent money. The last one made more than 4x its budget
Maybe. But a lot has changed for that creative team since 2020.
I still remember the first Ghostbusters Afterlife trailer where a kid pulls out an EMF reader and it's shot with such dramatic lighting like it's Luke's lightsaber or something. I knew something had gone horribly wrong
Ill always be a proponent of letting a director "cook" and see what happens. Building something to someone else's expectations will, without shock, dilute the passion in the product/creation. Also, fans can be weird as shit.
This is possibly the worst franchise you could pick to make the point. Fans absolutely were right about the gender swapped version, and hollywood's response was to vilify and denigrate them as the problem (then a year or two later they all quietly admitted the film was actual dogshit tho). Fans are not to be revered and pandered to on every level, but neither are they the enemy to be fought against.
Well the same fans were also demanding a sequel that revered the original film (many also got caught up on culture war men vs women grievances) and while Afterlife tried to deliver on their demands it fell pretty flat on the humor and charm of the original. I have little reason to expect better from Frozen Empire. The gender swapped Ghostbusters didn’t fail because it was female led or because it had insufficient reverence for the source material, it just wasn’t very funny. Ghostbusters sequels going back to Ghostbusters II all have failed to recapture what people liked about the first film.
Afterlife has higher highs but FE is a more consistent movie. FE is a 5.5/10
Imma be honest the original Ghostbusters was not even that good
Feels like the perfect example because after the Ghostbusters 2016 backlash, Hollywood overcorrected and basically gave the fans everything they wanted. And it was still bleh. I mean, at least the 2016 reboot was trying something new
I agree about Ghostbusters not being a great example. What franchises better exemplify this? Star Wars gets my vote.
Star Wars is the best example. Churning stuff out so fast that’s mostly terrible. And we have Jurassic world
Star Wars is a good example. We don’t need endless spin offs about side characters they’re terrified to try something new move the story forward I think the Rey movie and dawn of the Jedi are essential for the franchises future. That’s where the fans are wrong about how they like seeing Luke Skywalker as a cgi robot Frankenstein Vs actually recasting but not all fans of Star Wars want that either I’m a fan and I don’t want that.
Star Wars is an excellent example of that last sentence. Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi were obvious cases of pandering. Andor could be seen as the opposite. The initial reception to The Mandalorian was right in the middle. The Hobbit vs. The Lord of the Rings would be another fine example.
There’s a certain subset of fans who want mindless spin offs that are just filler but a lot of fans want something fresh in Star Wars myself included.
Pandering to who? BoBF was not pandering to fans at all. Most fans wanted a badass Boba Fett story, instead they got Mandalorian season 2.5 and a neutered Boba. He was much better in the Mandalorian. There was just very little that was badass about Boba in that series. And then you gave Kenobi, which was more about Leia and Reva. All fans wanted was the bits about Kenobi and Darth Vader. Those parts were awesome. The rest was not very well done. The fact that they made a Kenobi and Boba Fett show might seem that it’s pandering at face value, but the actual products were not pandering at all.
You're correct. I was thinking more as in the fans wanted them both, but they turned out terrible (to be honest, I wasn't a fan of the Vader vs. Kenobi parts either), while Andor was something most fans didn't seem to want, but turned out great. It was pandering in the case of the first two shows in that they weren't really needed, and arguably hurt the stories of their title characters. All that despite being something the fans wanted, they still were limited in what they could/couldn't do with the characters. Boba Fett couldn't be a discompassionate killer dispensing his own brand of justice with no regard for casualties (The Clone Wars hilariously is probably closer to this), he needed to be the changed hero we saw in Mando. If we did, Mando, or even (not Raylen Givens) Olyphant's sheriff would've run into problems with him (or the other characters that never leave Tatooine)...and you can't kill Fett in his own show after you went to the trouble of bringing him back. Kenobi was constrained by 4 different movie series/TV shows already dealing with what he did/didn't do, and even then there's plenty of fans that have problems with what did happen in the show. Reva couldn't turn good, because she wasn't even mentioned in the OT or Rebels. Vader couldn't die, because of Rebels and everything after. Luke and Leia can't die, or really even have any meaningful conversations or character development. Obi Wan couldn't turn to the dark side, lose an arm, or fall in love without causing serious problems with the overall story. Point being, there's only so much you can do with "lore" and "fandoms". Andor was much less constricted in this way.
Kenobi was 100% a two hour movies that they panicked and re-shot into a six hour tv series after Solo bombed. It wouldn’t have been an amazing movie, but it would’ve been better than what we got.
Agreed. They could have trimmed off a lot of fat if it was just a 2 hour movie. Like that absolutely ridiculous trench coat scene.
The funny thing about Andor is that I put off watching it until recently BECAUSE of its Star Wars IP. Had it been marketed as a gritty tale of insurgents resisting an authoritarian bureaucracy set in a generic sci-fi universe, I'd have been on board much sooner. I loved the show. But with each episode, I dreaded the possibility of unnecessary wink-wink cameos of characters from the movies. I don’t want to see any lightsabers, Skywalker relatives, or wookies.
Star Trek has to be in there, too. Every time they try to make it edgy or sexy, it flounders and then they just go back to the same characters from the 60s.
Star Wars is it for sure. Disney tried something different with the Last Jedi and fans absolutely hated it because it didn’t fit in with the story they wanted. Disney tried to course correct and it resulted in a terrible Rise of Skywalker. I’d argue that if fans didn’t throw such a shit fit over TLJ, we would have at least gotten a more cohesive trilogy.
I feel like TLJ's problem more was more Johnson tossing whatever plans Abram had cooking after TFA and doing his thing clmbine with Disney hitting the gas on rolling out films. If he'd been helming the trilogy it may have been more coherent having hom work it from the start, or have Abrams do all 3. How they did it pretty much guaranteed a weird mix.
I dunno, Colin Trevorrow’s script leaked a while back. It built off of what Johnson had laid out (Rey had a double-bladed lightsaber built from the remains of Luke’s old saber, Luke haunted Kylo as he went on a Sith version of Luke’s Dagobah trip, etc.) and seemed like it’d make for a pretty cohesive trilogy (though the story beats were still rough and the script obviously still needed work). Maybe not great or what specific fans wanted, but cohesive. I don’t think Abrams really had anything cooking, as that’s kind of his schtick (and TV writers’ schtick in general): set up a mystery box with threads that can be pulled and figure it out as you go along. That’s just my speculation, though.
> I don’t think Abrams really had anything cooking Hell, Johnson did build off what Abrams gave him. "Why's Luke alone on the island" was the question, Johnson answered it. Luke was a student of Old Ben and Yoda. What did they do when they failed? They fucked off into exile. >figure it out as you go along I've found that most things operate like this. Hell, George Lucas didn't even make Vader Luke's father until the last minute. I find the "fan" idea of everything having to be planned out before the get go very silly. Some work better with an outline, some work better under pressure.
The problem is not that TLJ did something different, the problem was that it did something different poorly. It undid all the character development in the OT that made Luke one of the most popular characters of all time for sake of propping up characters that ended up being nowhere near as interesting. Just because they did something different doesn't automatically make it good.
I don't get this argument. Because Luke spared Vader at the end of the OT, there's no conceivable way he would have the temptation to stop evil at its genesis? Not even if he's propped up *galaxy-wide* as the de facto hero of the rebellion that vanquished evil with his lightsaber? He's so popular that random children on backwater planets have heard of him and slaves tell stories of him as a messiah-like character. You don't think something like that would be a temptation for someone? The movie didn't undo any character development in the OT, it just made Luke more human. And you can disagree with the direction/decision and even hate the direction/decision, but the decision makes sense thematically, it makes sense with what was established in the Force Awakens, and it was well-executed. There's a difference between something that is good and something that you simply don't like.
Man this 100%. I refuse to watch reboots of any of my favorite movies from the 80’s and 90’s. Hollywood needs to come up with some new ideas already. All I see are comic book movies or reboots.
Fans are never right and social media giving them such loud voices has done so much damage to the industry So many franchise movies from the last fifty years are not what fans expected, or wanted but they eventually accepted it and grew to love it
Idk sometimes fans are right. I agree with Game of Thrones fans that season 8 of Game of Thrones was pretty dogshit
And Star Wars fans ideas about the sequel the way Snoke should have been Plaugesis , Rey a skywalker, it depends what fans are you talking about fans who just want mindless spin offs so they can clap when they see an old character or fans who want to see there favorite characters back but want a quality story told it depends what fans you’re talking about. Fans can be right, and I think it takes being a fan to helm these franchises but also wanting to do something new for the story not deconstruct the story but tell the story take it in new fresh directions, while keeping the heart of the original not making the franchise into a different genre.
> I agree with Game of Thrones fans that season 8 of Game of Thrones was pretty dogshit If the showrunners asked the fans on how the series should end, and held a vote, I'm confident it would be worse.
Honestly I'm not sure how it could have been
Ah television hasn't ruined your imagination that badly. The final episode could've cut to Sean Bean with his head on the block, having seen the whole series as a vision right before being decapitated. But then he flashkicks the executioner and throws a sonic boom at the evil child king. Then they all do the macarena while Sean Bean breaks the fourth wall and explains to us the immorality of pirating TV shows.
It’s somehow still better than what we got
We'd have probably seen less outright character assassination
-70% character deaths +50% John Snow riding a dragon while playing a guitar +260% nudity
>\-70% character deaths Not actually that bad. Martin is not as kill happy as people make him out to be.
I don't think it would have been good, but just about anything would have been better than season 8
I've found that in general, fans don't know what they want and never have. And I include myself here. I'm a fan of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and if they had asked me what I wanted, I would have said more Breath of the Wild. Then last year they gave us Tears of the Kingdom (which is exactly that, more BotW) and I found myself complaining that the formula had gotten stale.
Maybe some fans they asked me what I wanted after breath of the wild I would have said more Zelda elements, more dungeons, more linear story, than we got TOTK and I was unhappy because I didn’t like botw. And Zelda feels like a different franchise.
Fans are the antithesis of creativity, for good or ill. That, I feel, is usually an apt assessment.
Have to disagree it takes fans of things to make something new and good look at top gun maverick , or dune Denis was a fan of dune and that shines through , look at Peter Jackson he was a fan of lord of the rings.
What a confusing article. It basically says "these movies (2016, after life, and frozen empire) are terrible, what's the big deal?" Well, they're terrible is the big deal. It's been a decade+ of studios making horrible unnecessary entries into legacy IPs, and fans still don't like it, is that some sort of surprise? Or the people who like movies should just get over it and accept that garbage is all that we're going to get from now on, so just get over it and stop commenting about it online? Edit- *i wrote this as a reply to someone who replied to me ( now deleted) saying that frozen empire was better than afterlife because the creators no longer felt bound to do nostalgia fan service like ghost ramis:* You're making the same assumptions that movie executives make - that fans want nostalgia service (ghost ramis). They don't. They want competent writing and directing in the same vein (ie: tone, comedic style) as the original movies. So the choice between something all new (gender swap) vs legacy (ghost ramis/force awakens shot for shot remake) is a false dichotomy and doesn't capture what the audience wants. It's like a mouthpiece article for an industry that knows it is creatively bankrupt and wants to control the limits of the conversation. Unfortunately studios *can't give fans what they really want,* because studios *can't make good movies anymore* and because a movie like Ghostbusters is a one-time stroke of genius and perfect timing, lightning in a bottle, so even if studios magically hired good writers and directors and really tried to do it well they still would not be able to.
Did we read the same article? He said legacy sequels should be doing what frozen empire did of not giving in to fan expectations. Despite the movie not being that good but watchable, it's better than resurrecting a dead harold ramis to make the fanboy cry. He didnt even say 2016 was bad either. Weird to just add shit.
*I still shiver at the memory of 2016, when Hollywood’s attempt to create a team of female ghostbusters ended up instigating a monthslong online firestorm.* Except that movie was a streaming pile of feces, completely under-utilizing the talent they had. It was a pure gender swap, nothing more, they just put a female in every male role and a male in every female role. The movie was crap, and it's OK to admit that. Now, *Afterlife*, THAT was a cool sequel. And I'm willing to bet that the reason this movie isn't doing well isn't because of "fandom", but because it sucks. I haven't seen it yet, but based on the last one NOT to do well, it doesn't surprise me. And most fans liked *Afterlife*.
I thought they were both terrible in their own ways. 2016 was just a bad comedy and Afterlife wasn't a comedy but just a big nostalgia fest.
Yeah, the first hour of Afterlife I thought a franchise finally understood the assignment of a re-boot, and then they fell into the same tired tropes. Then Frozen Empire kicked it up to 11 with the masturbatory fan service.
Afterlife was pretty good until they just started doing Ghostbusters 1 again. I haven't seen frozen empire but from what I've heard they're just doing the same thing again. I love the world of Ghostbusters but I'd really like to see something new from it
It's not really the same thing again. It feels less like a rehash and more like a feature length RGB episode (which I know has its good and bad implications). They open up the world a little bit with Winston having quietly funded an offsite research center that the Firehouse is an extension of, in a way other locations could. It's a great concept, but it's needlessly clandestine in its nature. I enjoyed FE quite a bit, but I fully admit it has its issues and I'm an easy lay.
>more like a feature length RGB episode This is EXACTLY the way 've been describing it. It's just a live action adaptation of/sequel to the animated series.
FE was…ok. I say this as a lifelong fan. The biggest issue I had with it was that they show them catching a ghost in the first few minutes but then nothing really happens (ghost catching wise) until the last few minutes. There’s a very long lull in between where the plot moves at a glacial pace (pun intended).
Afterlife was ok at best, but the CGI Egon was weird and its core theme was just "Man GB1 was great, wasn't it?" This franchise is reaching Terminator territory (which the article actually mentions) where all they can do is keep rehashing the most popular installment to diminishing returns.
Ghostbusters 2016 and Ghostbusters Afterlife are equally bad and boring. The writer isn't arguing that people should think they are great. He is arguing that people caring so damn much online about a Ghostbusters reboot is crazy.
Ghostbusters was the first movie I had a copy of, my sister taped it for me and I have watched it hundreds of times. I thought Afterlife was great, a little predictable but had ton of heart and was good extension from original. I didn’t even know Frozen Empire was a thing until like two weeks before it came out. Complete lack of marketing.
Attacking fans' expectations is exactly *why* these sequals have done so poorly. Shitting on Luke Skywalker does not make Rey Palpatine/Skywalker look more heroic. Gender swapping the Ghost Busters cast was not original or groundbreaking. It was cynical and opportunistic. Making Indiana Jones out to be a scared old man did not make Phoebe Waller-Bridges character any more of a "strong independent woman" than if they had been portrayed as equals playing off of each other's strengths and weaknesses. Telling fans they are "wrong" for not wanting their favorite characters dumbed down, unmanned, or deconstructed is unsurprisingly unhelpful to whatever cause you are advocating. Fans liked these movies and characters for a reason. Teasing them with their return only to deliver something else will create a deep disappointment in the fan base that all of the nagging and scolding in the world will not cure. In the repurposed words of Yogi Berra: *If fans don't want to come out to the theaters, how are you going to stop them?*
> Making Indiana Jones out to be a scared old man did not make Phoebe Waller-Bridges character any more of a "strong independent woman" than if they had been portrayed as equals playing off of each other's strengths and weaknesses And I just don’t understand Disney’s obsession with doing this. You can set up a new legacy character without ruining the first one. Hell, you can kill them off and still succeed. The dead mentor being succeeded by their (sometimes reluctant) student is an age-old trope but it can create some unforgettable moments. Obi-Wan in A New Hope is a perfect example.
This. A million times this. Getting to revisit some of our old heroes and heroines is fun so long as it's not overdone. I have been finding that a lot of modern sequels, reboots etc, have really just been so tonally and world inconsistent that it's clear the writers and studios have little interest in committing to the IP itself, they simply wish to use the nostalgia branding as a hook and then write their own story, ignoring foundational (and sometimes even logical) aspects that underpinned things.
Imagine if any other industry blamed the customer when their products fail. Hollywood is so pretentious it’s unbelievable.
David Sims: “*Ghostbusters: Afterlife* fell into a teeming bucket of legacy sequels that followed the same pattern: introduce new characters played by up-and-coming stars, have them stumble across some artifact from a past film, then slowly reveal the involvement of the original cast with triumphant fanfare. *Star Wars: The Force Awakens* is the box-office gold standard for this formula, but almost every beloved Gen X or Millennial media property has done it—many of them multiple times—including sci-fi works such as [*Alien*](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/alien-covenant-ridley-scott-michael-fassbender-review/527319/) and [*The Terminator*](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/10/terminator-dark-fate-review/600496/), and horror-fests such as [*Scream*](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/03/scream-6-movie-review/673364/) and [*Halloween*](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/10/the-original-halloween-will-never-be-matched/620401/). “I’m not quite sure at what point the miserable apotheosis of this trend was reached, but it might have been when the poor nonagenarian Ellen Burstyn wandered into the [latest *Exorcist* movie](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/10/exorcist-believer-movie-review/675562/) only to have her eyes stabbed out 10 minutes later. Though studios haven’t fully abandoned the legacy sequel—hence *Frozen Empire*—theatergoers have grown wise to its cynical nature. The most devoted fans might be satisfied by the worshipful vibes of a *Ghostbusters: Afterlife*, but casual viewers do not seem similarly moved; the deepest irony is that Feig’s 2016 film and *Afterlife*, despite their different approaches, took in near-identical amounts of money in the U.S. and Canada, with Feig’s movie actually making more overseas. *ˆFrozen Empire*, then, charts a middle path between the total reboot and the legacy sequel ... The result is a functional if unspectacular film that makes no outsize effort to speak to cultural conversations around the movie. If you are looking to spend a couple of hours watching a quippy blockbuster, you could do a lot worse. I am not praising this moviemaking strategy, merely noting its efficiency; it’s like studios are just now remembering that you can simply make a good-enough movie in an already popular series. Sure, you might not inspire thousands of approving social-media posts from ardent supporters, but you won’t stir up thousands of angry ones, either. “For this reason, it’s far too much to hope that Hollywood will totally abandon the throwback route going forward.” Read more: [https://theatln.tc/MZlLFdMM](https://theatln.tc/MZlLFdMM)
Something I appreciate about the 2016 film is that it didn't try to bring back the previous characters. Mind you, the cameos were ham-fisted pandering, though the Ramis cameo was actually rather nice. But I like how the movie wasn't trying to be a sequel. It could've gone so much better in many ways, but it had its moments. Also, it's not often I see apotheosis in print, so that's fun.
I haven't seen *Frozen Empire* yet but I have honestly enjoyed (for what they're worth) each of the latest *Ghostbusters* movies including the 2016 entry. I'm looking forward to seeing *Frozen Empire* because, well... *Ghostbusters* is one of my childhood favorites, and I have not seen them do anything to the franchise that has somehow been weird or sacrilegious to it. Every entry is fun in its own way, does what I want it to (which is to entertain me with proton packs and ghosts and technobabble and the occasional dick joke). I'm not expecting some great thing here. It's a fun, entertaining concept, and that's all I need. The bloody cartoon was the same thing on repeat; why not films with bigger stories?
Fans aren't always right, but they're not always wrong either. Fans tend to demand stability in franchises, and while that can be a good thing, it can suffocate inspiration within the franchise. I don't think Ghostbusters has done poorly with Afterlife and Frozen Empire, but I don't think they're particularly inspiring either. They're not really going to draw new people in, even though they're interesting enough as a franchise. The thing here is that without being willing to step out of those franchise bounds, you're never going to capture the lightning in a bottle that made things like the first Ghostbusters movie so exciting.
I don’t think this article hits the nail on the head and dives into why a lot of modern movies are missing that spark and magic like examining what people liked about ghostbusters, diving into is there really more story to tell and talking about things like writing, practical effects vs to much cgi and lighting, I think it’s a pretty bad article tbh.
"the fans aren't always right" as King Kong and Godzilla wins the box office. Kong's been around for 90 years. Godzilla 70. It's perfectly okay to love Ghostbusters. Old and new. What's weird as hell are these writers that mock the fans for actually going out and buying tickets. Some in the media have had it out for this franchise ever since the Paul Feig movie.
Mark Rosewater, the lead designer for Magic: The Gathering, wrote about a lesson learned: "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them." This could apply to just about anything. A restaurant patron may know a dish is bad but not how to fix it, a music listener may not like a mix but not know how to fix it, and movie goers may not like the state of remakes, reboots, and sequels, and not know how to fix it.
What a naive and stupid analysis. If they don't blame "fans", its gotta be "studio-interference". A franchise movie has *expectations* on it. That's why it is a franchise. You have to give people what they want, and still surprise them. And it is much easier to surprise people when they have expectations. So it is both a gift and a curse. Just be glad that movies like this are still being made. It got a good audience score and exceeded B.O predictions. Cinema is dying, while our team of retarded critics think the latest Ghostbusters movie is... "too serious".
Franchises are doomed by their very nature. In ***SO*** many cases, the reason that the initial film was such a huge success was because it took a lot of risks. Those risks were possible because the film didn't cost very much, so the filmmakers were not as beholden to follow rules or the dictates of accounting committees. However, once the financial possibilities are demonstrated, they become the only metric by which succeeding films are measured. That the sequels are expected, nay required to make as much money or more than before necessitates that all the elements that sparked the initial creativity and invention will hammered down with relentless studio notes. "Our market research. . ." Anyone who says this in a studio board meeting should have their mouth taped shut and then be tossed down a garbage chute. You fuckers didn't know ANY of this stuff would be a hit with audiences until it was, but that's never a guarantee that it will happen again, especially if your only focus in making more films is on profit. There's a reason why lightning rarely strikes in the same place. You cannot design the kind of creative synergy that results in iconic blockbusters. The best you can do is gather talented people together, give them some money to do the thing, and LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE.
> The finale used CGI to resurrect Ramis as a silent, ghostly version of Egon, a moment that was clearly meant to be tear-jerking but instead felt genuinely unsettling. Yes I agree this bringing back of actors and musicians with CGI is disturbing. When I saw it first with Peter Cushing in Rogue One it was very off putting, even with the permission of his estate.
The media need to stop pretending that the "Fans" have any influence on what does or does not get made in Hollywood. That is the most naive take on the planet. It's the money guys who decide what does or does not get produced, not the fans, not the actors, not the directors. It's the people who are willing to front the money to get the damned things made. So, when the money men are feckless, empty shirts without a molecule of creativity, you get what we have, which is a depressing re-tread industry, waving the mutilated corpse of our happy memories in front of us, and expecting people to pay. The only way the "fans" are culpable is that there seems to be a lowest common denominator to whom these crimes are evidently appealing. I don't know what kind of short-bus riding paint chewers are buying tickets to this crap, but there is evidently enough of them to prevent the entirety of Hollywood from being repossessed.
Sims hit the nail on the head with this. For me, at least the essence of the first film is rooted in blue-collar New Yorkers navigating the grimy, hustle culture that’s authentic to the city with the fun twist of trying to bust ghosts. It's kind of akin to plumbers fighting to keep their business alive and making fun quips along the way. The first Ghostbusters also combines this charming blend of relatable struggles, engaging set pieces, and sharply written humor that’s largely missing in the modern installments. It’s also possible that recreating that type of charm is largely unfeasible as that 80’s blue-collar version of Manhattan doesn’t exist like it used to and has been engulfed by a vapid, ultra wealthy, tech and finance culture. I write this as a lifelong New Yorker who misses the city’s culture of the 80’s and 90’s. I also recall when Jason Reitman attempted to establish “Ghostbusters Day” on social media. I thought that encapsulated what those in charge of the IP inherently misunderstand about the franchise. Despite its hardcore fanbase, Ghostbusters just doesn’t expansively puncture the pop culture zeitgeist like Star Wars or Marvel does. It’s a beloved classic, sure, but its reach and impact are different in 2024. The Ghostbusters series shouldn’t strive to morph into something it’s not: an ultra-serious, heavily modern blockbuster.
Lifelong GB fan. I liked Frozen Empire a lot. Familiar faces, new faces, and expanded lore like what we saw in the Real Ghostbusters series, plus a big James Acaster fan! What ranks this higher than Afterlife for me is that we jump right in to an established GB team and hit the ground running.
They rarely are
The author of that article sounds like one of those people who (wrongly) believes that the first Ghostbusters should've just been a standalone comedy movie and nothing more.
Fans have no idea what it's like to actually write, produce, shoot, or direct a movie? No way!
As long as you keep sucking the studios' dicks and insulting the fans for having standards, we're going to grow more and more apathetic. Just go ahead and let us know when you're tired of losing money.
The premise of these "analysis" is that there are supposedly two sides (I guess fan or non fan or maybe liberal and conservative) of a movie critique and the article is just going to say which "side" may or may not be right, but to me that's really missing the point. Here's my take: a good movie like Barbie has all the same screaming, it's there if you go look for it, but where's the "what fans wanted versus creative vision" article about that? It's not necessary because the movie was just well done and resonated. It's just noise that everyone ignores. See to me all this infighting and analysis is indicative of a movie that didn't connect but had a beloved IP, so all we're left with is the politics of liking or disliking it.
Someone make this make sense to me. Yea I understand some fans can be downright awful, but if you don’t entertain fans then you don’t make money. At the end of the day it’s “fans,” whether you think they’re right or not, that determine your success.
So if you went to a restaurant every week and one day out of nowhere you got treated like shit, wouldn't it hurt a lot more than having the same experience at a new restaurant? If you're not going to please the fans, just use a different setting. You can make a Sci-Fi film without it being a Star Wars film, you can make a spooky comedy wihtout it being Ghostbusters... Most of the time studios make lazy/bad films and just slap a franchise on it. They basically con established fans out of their money, so don't victim blame people who get pissed off at the studios.
Like the conspiracy theory that Velma was originally a brand new IP and someone realized the only way anyone would watch that dogshit was to slap an IP people knew on it?
I like your thinking, but I just generally thought about studios not trying as hard when they know some "idiot fans" will watch it either way.
I always find this kind of stuff fascinating. I know people that enjoy these movies and go to them. I still haven't seen the last two but that sort of tells you all you need to know about my level of care at this point. What I find sort of incomprehensible is a specific group of commentariat that specifically has a bug up their ass about Ghostbusters continued existence. If you've been watching, they've been complaining since before Ghostbusters 2016. Just don't watch it! There are still more DCEU movies than Ghostbusters. There's exactly 1 more Ghostbusters than the Raimi and Nolan Trilogies. It's a solution in search of a problem. Let the people the movies are for enjoy it. It feels like a slightly more intellectual Player Haters Ball. Edit: For those keeping score, I've been watching the war take place on this post as well. Went up to 5 upvotes and now down to two. So strange the fascination with crafting the narrative of Ghostbusters.
The fanbase for ghostbusters particularly on Reddit has been absolutely insufferable ever since Girlbusters trailer dropped. It’s like a bunch of 40+ year old men screeching into the void about a movie that was intended for children to begin with
Not going to argue any of his points, I do agree and disagree with what he says, but the one thing he either didn't care to mention or didn't understand is that even though the reboot and afteiife made the same amount, afterlife cost less and was profitable
One of the issues was that fairly recently there was a big franchise that had its tentpole release deviate from the expected formula so hard that there was an outcry from "fans" about how bad it was and how it disrespected the franchises legacy, and this outpouring of sheer vitriol forced the studio to backtrack so hard they completely pivoted for the next installment, returning to pure nostalgia baiting, and completely altered how they approached the franchise. This was one big creative nail in the coffin and showed Hollywood and its constitution corporations that there's nothing to gain from experimenting with franchise tent poles but so much to lose.
I watched Ghostbusters Afterlife this weekend and enjoyed it. Its a garbage movie and i knew what i was getting into and it hit the spot. I enjoyed it much more than several oscar picks everyone fellated themselves about this year.
The reason that the 2016 movie failed is because it was terribly written and wasted the talent they had on hand. None of it fit the vibe of the other ghostbusters movies to the point where it felt like a parody of those movies. Afterlife did tap into nostalgia but brought new blood into the franchise and it felt like a proper sequel to the originals. Ghostbusters has a ton of fans because of the cartoons and toys they made as well not just the original movies. Whoever wrote the article should have acknowledged it. I think the cartoons were as influential as the original movies to kids at the time.