Re: Ghostbusters 3
>snip<
...which begs the question... then why not create your own character?
"...the sad reality of present-day Hollywood is that it’s easier to make a movie if you have some pre-existing material to build off of."
and his answer is Established brands with Established audiences.
He as much as admits in his own article, the only way ANYONE would watch these items is because they are already attached to ESTABLISHED PROPERTIES.
If they weren't, they would most like fail.
...
If the movie was announced exactly as is, and it was called Supernatural Trapper Ladies no one would give a whiff.
He can dress it up in semantics anyway he would like, but it's a gimmick. A marketing gimmick.
The only reason anyone is talking about a movie staring these 4 women, that doesn't start shooting until this summer, is because they slapped the label Ghostbusters on it.
This is basically what I've been saying about the "branded properties" trend in films for ages. If your movie is so awesome, then let it stand on its own. For all the talk of "We need to use this as a springboard to get women more into the public eye in Hollywood," let's also recognize that the comment follows on having mentioned that Paul Feig was behind
Bridesmaids which was a movie that
stood on its own and was widely popular and a financial success. So, again, do we
really need these "branded properties," or are we just using them to prop up otherwise mediocre films or films that are basically knockoffs of better ideas?
As I've said before, if you strip the branded intellectual property out of
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra or
Transformers, and retitle them
American Commandos and
Warbots, respectively, would anyone see them? Would anyone think they're good? Probably not. They'd say they're crappy knockoffs of branded properties. I'd say the same of this film if it was four of the white male "Judd Apatow Players" and they were rebooting it while also changing it, by the way.
As for the line in the article about how "If you think this is controversial, you're sexist," well....yeeaaaah, not so much. I can recognize that a particular move or decision is likely to be seen as controversial without personally being offended or scandalized by it. Likewise, I can see how such controversy will generate press, which can be used to make a film more popular and get people curious about what all the commotion is about.
Likewise, as for the whole "You're just saying 'don't play with my toys,'" argument, first, ditch the infantilizing tone, since all it's likely to do is get people to respond with vitriol. Second, no, that's not at all what people are saying. What they're saying is that the choice to (A) reboot the series, and (B) engage in what is likely stunt casting is indicative that the film may well suck, and they'd rather that a franchise they love be continued in a way they'll love.
People take this attitude because, time and again, they've seen the modern Hollywood take a brand that they loved and drive it in a direction they don't love and which has relatively little to do with what they did love about the old brand. Likewise, they've seen Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general use "controversy" to drive buzz about a product, only to have the product end up fairly ho-hum in the end.
Let me try and put this another way. I'm sure there are fans who don't want female Ghostbusters because they think "Girls can't be Ghostbusters!" or whatever. And yeah, those people are sexist a-holes. But there are a lot of people who look at this and the decision to reboot the franchise as nothing more than the same old reboot bull**** we've been seeing for years. The fact that they decided to make the cast all female only further suggests that we're moving away from the source material, which, again, calls into question
why you are using the source material at all. The answer, apparently, is "Because we want the name to sell tickets, and everything else can be different." In other words, it won't really be "Ghostbusters." It'll just be called "Ghostbusters" and otherwise bear only the flimsiest connection to the original material. I, and apparently plenty of other folks, am getting tired of this. If your story is so good that it's worth spending tens of millions of dollars to make it and bring it to the big screen, then have the guts to do so without relying on brand names and "controversial" moves to get people interested. And if your story isn't good enough to stand on its own without that stuff...maybe it just isn't all that great after all.
