Ghostbusters: This Year's Pixels.

Here’s the trailer to one of 2015’s uber-flops, Pixels:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAHprL…

aaaaand, here’s the trailer to this year’s Ghostbusters.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JINqHA…

I don’t think Sony’s marketing department has actual staff. I think there’s just a piece of software you drag and drop footage into, which then spits out something built to the same formula over and over again: thoughtful music accompanied by text that hints to something epic that has a link to a pivotal moment in history, which is then shattered by “comedy” and CGI.

2016’s Ghostbusters isn’t a sequel, and I just can’t call it a “remake”, because that would be like me saying “hey, I just remade a pizza” after taking a dump. Let’s instead refer to it as a “parody”, because that’s what it is.
The original Ghostbusters wasn’t a comedy. It was a horror movie with humour in it. Everything about it was taken with a level of seriousness and sincerity, not to the point of being po-faced, but more than enough to make it feel “real”. There was a dramatic edge to the concept of three scientists being kicked out onto the streets and having no choice but to try and capitalise on their research. There was something creepy about the pseudo-science Ray and Egon were continually spouting. The other-worldly forces had a very Lovecraftian, “Weird Fiction” whiff to their origins. It all mixed together to make the film feel much more epic than it had any right to be.
It’s something even its creators couldn’t grasp, which is why they themselves screwed the pooch with the more comedy-focused Ghostbusters 2, in which rotting cab-drivers and pant-sh*ttingly scary librarians were replaced with muppet rejects, and everything focused on slime, simply because “he slimed me” had become a catch-phrase.
Ghostbusters 2016 looks to be making all the same mistakes…..and then some. The trailer didn’t make me think “Ghostbusters” at all. My mind actually kept going to 1999’s Inspector Gadget. It’s a goofy, slapstick, unfunny, GCI-overloaded sh*t-stain on the franchise.

The real kicker here is that, 30 years ago, the perfect formula was spelt out in the movie itself. A simple line that would have permitted an endless number of sequels, following a constantly changing cast, in different settings right across the US, and indeed the world:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5C8C1…

“The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams”

There could have been Ghostbuster outfits all across the country! One movie could have focused on a team dealing with Chinese ghosts in San Francisco, another could have been like a western, with a squad of Ghostbusters riding horseback in pursuit of unquiet native spirits. Succubi in New Orleans. Mothmen in West Virginia. The list goes on and on. You could DROWN in the potential it offers!
….Or, you could expend no effort or creativity at all in just rehashing the original, gender-bending the cast for no other reason than gimmick, apply bright, family friendly colours and hurl it at the public, hoping that nostalgia alone will do the work.

This movie is getting neither my money nor my time, and you have to do something pretty bad for me to file your work in the same column as Michael Bay.