Ok call me an entitled whiney manbaby all you want, no seriously, get it out of your system, I don’t give a tenth of a fuck. We all know this movie is going to be garbage, every man, woman and child with half a brain who has watched the original films and TV shows (and possibly that shitty game, of which I only played like an hour of because it didn’t have an autosave function, I mean come on, what fucking game doesn’t autosave now, fuck if I’m going back to the start) knows this is unfettered garbage and the man behind it is a fucking shill, but that aside I can’t help but think he’s also a genius.

We know this movie will suck, that goes without saying, no it’s not because of the all female cast, no it’s not misogyny, it’s not the fucking patriarchy, all reboots suck. Find me one reboot that doesn’t want to make your childhood crawl up inside you and choke to death on legos. I watched the remake of Robocop and I almost genuinely cried, I remember going to dig out the old vhs of the original movie and just watching it in the foetal position. Man of Steel was so joyless and boring it was painful to watch, I just watched and laughed out of virtual horror, reeling and asking myself if this was actually a film or someone going back in time and punching Christopher Reeves father in the balls, Dean Cain is weeping softly somewhere as we speak.

Reboots are always shameless cash grabs that nevertheless make money, they’re not good, and they ride the coat tails of their predecessors to trick people into thinking that it’s actually entertainment and not simply unapologetic necrophilia.

But this time it’s different, Paul Feig has been a lot smarter, shifty and shameless and downright fucking reprehensible but smart. I think if I was him and I wanted to do a Ghostbusters remake, I’d punch myself in the face for even thinking it, but if I did it I would do it like this.

Look at it from this perspective; imagine if he did a straight remake? Or he got back the entire original cast to reprise their roles or even if he got an entirely new male cast and just did a straight up reboot. People would fucking hate, it wouldn’t matter if they used necromancy to bring Egon (Yeah I forgot his name sue me) back to life, it would be warming the bottom of the bargain bin. It would suck; it could never live up to the hype of the first two films.

Bill Murray knew it, that’s why he refused to do Ghostbusters 3, it would have been futile after the drop off between one and two, three would have bombed and brought down the whole series. Two movies were all it needed, then the TV shows and yada yada yada, t-shirts, toys all that bullshit.

If a Ghostbusters sequel ever had a chance it would have been then, now the fans are older and more cynical they would tear it apart like soft garlic bread on a sharing platter at Tess Holidays birthday. They would annihilate it.

So I don’t know if Feig is aware or not of this cultural backlash in regards to toxic ideas of feminism infiltrating all aspects of popular culture but he has picked the perfect time to capitalize on that particular dogma. But all that spaghetti aside, rebooting it with an all female cast is genius.

It’s genius because rather than trying to pander to the old fans that will never be happy he’s completely alienated them. Which not only created its own media firestorm, thousands of angry neckbeards like me raging about it over twitter and facebook and wherever, it attracted a whole new generation to see what all the fuss was about.

Women and hipsters drawn by the pangs of agony of nerds like me, like that of a predator hearing an injured animal came in droves to support a movie that caused this much butthurt to a whole generation of people. And they realised exactly what Feig wanted them to realise; that he made this movie for them.

There has to be a whole generation of young men and women that have never even seen Ghostbusters but it still enters their cultural lexicon, despite being too dated for them to actually watch and enjoy. So this appeals to them as not only a fun comedy but a shinier newer version of a movie that was in the background of their childhoods but never quite came into focus. This is their Ghostbusters, just like most people in my generation probably won’t have seen the original nutty professor with Jerry Lewis and instead watched Eddie Murphy do one and a half hour repetition of the same fart joke playing every character and possibly the garden furniture.
It both brilliantly cuts ties with the old movie but keeps enough elements to garner the outrage and the cash the name Ghostbusters might bring. I mean in all essence he could have just called it Spectreslappers or Ghoulgapers or anything who gives a fuck but he didn’t because he wanted this media hype, this media war to rage on giving him all the free publicity he needed.

They must know they’re pissing off a whole generation of people with this and only the most benign and banal of beta males and women that show a passing fancy for the original films but are not really diehard fans are on the fence or like the idea. I mean Emma Stone knew which is why she turned down a role in the film, she knew there would be a shitstorm and she wanted to stay out of it, but the ever one note (hurr hurr I’m a fat chick, aint dat furnny hurr hurr I done fell over) Mellissa McCarthy was chomping at the bit to make some money off this heap of pure heresy.

I only wish Amy Schumer could have been in just to add that extra hint of crap on this enormous faecal cake.

But and this is the big one; they are still going to make a killing. A fucking killing, the only way this movie could flop is if they cast Adam Sandler as Slimer and even then most of his films make shitloads of money despite circling the toilet bowl for the last fifteen years. There’s just too much hype around for it not to make money. Now I’m not saying it’ll do well review wise, it’s most likely going to be roundly binned or at least just indifferently shelved but I’m talking about cold hard cash here.

So I almost stand in awe of the sheer majesty of this media puppetry, either Paul Feig is just an incredibly lucky idiot or an evil marketing genius. My final conclusion as someone who prides himself on freedom of speech I would never call for a boycott or have the movie banned, you can’t ban a movie just for being bad. And at the same time I want to see how bad it actually is, I want to see it destroyed by people who loved the original films.

But in the end this isn’t ‘our’ movie, it’s the current generations movie and maybe just maybe it’ll capture a glimpse of the magic of the original films packaged and processed by the greedy grave robbers at Sony (you know the people that did that fucking god awful original Spiderman series gak!). We don’t have to like it, but it doesn’t and can’t really take away from the originals so what harm does it really do? It’s fucked up but what can you really do about it? If at least one kid walks out of that movie and says ‘Wtf was that pile of crap?’ and then goes and digs in his parents vhs collection and doesn’t find 80’s porn but comes across an original Ghostbusters movie, it’s done its part.
I’ve decided after careful consideration to give zero fucks from here on out.

Check out more of my little strips about Jeffrey Dahmer.