As many know by now, the recent remake/reboot/laziness/whatever you call them now of 'Ghostbusters' has raised a lot of unnecessary hatred and hurtful words being lobbed at one another. A full out 'gender-war' in which men and women fans were pitted against one another for the benefit of no one other than Sony Pictures. The controversy had started back with the trailer being released on YouTube to almost utter hatred (ranking up there with Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfares' lackluster trailer with the most dislikes on the site). From what I saw in the trailer, I did not believe the film was even going to get a single chuckle from me, so I ignored any more news of it and waited for the film to come and go. To me, this was just another remake that wasn't needed and it would soon fade from my memory, but this became far from the truth.
Sony began to manipulate the comments on the trailer's page, deleting comments here and there and then it seemed to escalate to a massive scale overnight with downright hateful, sexist and racist comments from both sides flooding the internet. Even James Rolfe, who runs the amazing Cinemassacre website got dumped on for a simple opinion (in fact, Rolfe seemed to be the most civil and calm about his debate on the film, but he got the most flack). Sony Pictures continued to lap it all up, hoping the hatred would bring in audiences to see the film as a sort of spiteful attitude towards the haters and proving everyone that was negative about the film wrong and that they were all for 'girl-power'.
The real problem that lies here which very few people are willing to discuss, or feel the wrath of the internet trolls is that the film itself was just not that great and that there are many more issues with the way that Sony went about with it. Yes, there were real sexist jerks but it dwarfed the number of people with real criticisms who were lumped in and silenced for the sake of a false sense of political correctness and to line the pockets of film executives. The 'Ghostbusters' remake fiasco had me thinking of the last time this company had taken a mediocre product, hyped it beyond believe, created a bunch of controversy in order to get people in the seats and get them more profit than it would ever have imagined gaining on a normal scale.
I speak of course of the Seth Rogan comedy 'The Interview'.
Man, people lost their shit at this movie didn't they? And all for a very tired, unfunny, and completely offensive movie (sounds like a lot of Rogan's films now that I think about it). Sony had a potential box office bomb on their hands and instead they took a very similar route to 'Ghostbusters': Blow everything way out of porportion in order to get more attention and theater attendees than we would have had otherwise. Marketing films this way is unbelievably despicable and disgusting to me. Taking real life problems and manipulating them, stirring the pot in order to have a better bottom line is the lowest I have seen a film studio or business stoop to, and THIS is the real reason that I have chosen to NOT see the new 'Ghostbusters'. I am not sexist, racist, or a 'neck-beard' sitting in my basement hating on everything, I just have a real opinion and a real issue with these things.
Instead of these tactics, we should come up with a movie that doesn't suck to begin with. That way, we don't have to trick or manipulate anyone to see it. Those who are interested will come and those who aren't won't it's as simple as that. Thanks for reading my little editorial guys, I know I normally don't write serious stuff like this and I really don't like to on here. I like reviewing movies and sharing my views with all of you. I really felt this needed to be addressed however, so again thank you for putting up with my temporary soapbox.
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