Because if the movie is good, why does anything else matter?
From my perspective, it's bad because it's far, far more likely to not be good if the creative process is based not on creativity and storytelling, but rather on selling brand names to people. "Ghostbusters" and "Paul Feig" are the brands that Sony wants associated with their attempt to launch a franchise based on an existing IP to which they own the rights. If the film tanks...well, actually, knowing Sony, there's every chance they'll say "Ok, do over" and re-re-reboot it until they get a formula that works (see also, Spider-Man).
In general, I think this approach to the creative process is a terrible one. The main reason is that it stifles creativity. The Wachowskis may have had rather large flops with their non-Matrix films, but I give them massive credit for at least bringing a sense of artistic integrity to the process, and I credit the studio heads willing to take a chance with them and their very-hard-to-turn-into-a-30-second-pitch ideas. When all we get are reboots and remakes of existing IP, creativity dwindles. Think about if we just end up getting endless iterations of Spider-Man battling the Green Goblin for the next 20 years as our summer blockbusters. Imagine how many freaking times we'll have to see Peter getting bitten by a radioactive/mutated/genetically enhanced/cybernetic/nanotech/whoseewhatsit spider. But that's the direction studios like Sony have been headed. They lack any real creative vision and rely entirely on brands.
And when they get their hands on brands that you actually like, they are as likely to totally botch them as they are to create a real hit. Why? Because they have zero interest in storytelling. They want to sell brands. They leave the storytelling to the writers, actors, and directors, but if the creative team butchers the story, Sony doesn't care as long as opening and second weekend hit the necessary targets, and the suits think the best way to ensure that is to just keep making the same **** over and over again, but packaging it in a different can every so often.
I'm tired of that.
Compare that approach to what Marvel's doing. Yes, they're selling brands, but they also seem deeply connected to the storytelling aspect of their brands. They have made BIG bets on their stories -- not just their brands -- and they're committed to them. I'm sure there will inevitably be reboots or changes of the guard. We've already seen that with Age of Ultron signalling a shift in who's an Avenger. RDJ won't be Iron Man forever, folks. And that's ok, because I trust the Marvel folks to
care about telling a good story more than they care about whether they have the hottest actor they can squeeze eight sequels out of.
Storytelling
matters. I grant you that sometimes these kinds of processes can produce good stories, but more often than not, what folks like the people at Sony do works at cross purposes to good storytelling. And adhering to this process basically means we'll be far more likely to see crappy film after crappy film.
I think people get hung up on the "reboot" word. Its a new movie based on the idea of Ghostbusters. When they replace James Bond every few movies no one talks about it being a reboot. And those movies are as inconsistent a franchise of movies as there is. Yet everyone still considers them all part of the franchise.
Bond doesn't exactly work there. From Connery up through Brosnan, it was all in the same continuity. With Craig, we see the first hard reboot of Bond, but Skyfall even brought that into question by including stuff like the Aston Martin DB6 and Bond's history as the son of Scottish nobility.
We will see if it holds up to the originals, but I have no hesitation in saying it will be a Ghosbusters movie and spoken along side the originals, even if the story does not run consistent thru them.
Only because of the brand. Seriously. You strip the brand away, and this would be "Paul Feig's crappy knockoff of Ghostbusters."
Hey, remember
Evolution? That Ivan Reitman film with David Duchovny and the guy from
Juwanna Mann? Remember how it was basically a crappy Ghostbusters knockoff featuring mutated dinosaurs instead of Ghosts? If you strip out the IP veneer from Feig's version, that's all people would say this film was. But slap the IP on and suddenly folks give it the benefit of the doubt.
This is why Sony executives use this approach: they know people fall for it.
James Bond is an entirely unique beast, a worse metaphor than the Star Trek reboot. You're talking about a franchise which evolved over decades and dozens of films, just reflecting modern audience tastes and keeping the character rooted in current times. They weren't reboots - just lazy sequels. The character was the same person from Connery through Brosnan. You could argue that Daniel Craig's films represent the first actual reboot of the character in the film history, and even so it features the same title character working within the same organization - even answering to Pierce Brosnan's boss! Can anyone point to a true reboot of a beloved franchise that scraps the core characters and elements (not the superficial stuff), nevermind one that people actually appreciate?
Bingo.
I'll admit I'm hoping it's an easily forgotten footnote to the brand, like Lazenby as James Bond or Burton's Apes movie, but that's just reflective of my preference for the franchise to recognize its origins in the future. If the movie is good, I'll like it for whatever it is. That's really separate from thinking Sony's development and marketing process is a mess - that's all I'm critical of at this point. It's really all we have to consider. The people trying to hold up a hypothetically decent movie as an argument against thinking Sony's mishandled this have nothing to point to, and should one materialize against all odds and against Hollywood's track record that still won't be a validation of Sony's "process."
To be fair, Lazenby's film is actually one of the best in the series (in my opinion), and Lazenby
might have turned out to be a great Bond...but we'll never know. His "not Connery" status was too much for audiences, and that was that. But OHMSS is truly one of my favorite Bond films and one that's very true to the literary version (which is mostly my preferred version, with some of the "rough spots" smoothed out for the sake of modernity).
There is a difference, in Spiderman it was still Peter Parker, in the Fantastic 4 all the same characters are there, Doom is there, they are played by different actors. If the next spider man is John Smith from South Dakota and he fights crime at Mount Rushmore you may feel different. Which is what he is saying. Not saying I agree but I can see some of his point of it not being "The Ghostbusters", I still think its a Ghostbusters movie but its not "The Ghostbusters".
Actually, I'd say the new FF film is a good example of "You might have a brand, but that's about it." The FF movie looks mildly entertaining. It also doesn't really look like an FF movie to me, because it changes too much. That's not to say it'll be bad, necessarily. But it looks a little too different to me to really give it credit as a true FF film. And I'm not even a huge, hardcore FF fan, mind you. I just look at it and say "You can
call it Fantastic Four, but that doesn't make it so."
