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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).

Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.

They don't bother me to be honest - some are good, some are not (IMO)

I prefer them to have a new take or different style and have enjoyed for instance the two very different versions of True Grit but had the opposite with the recent Star Wars films.

If you look at the Bechdel test and its relevance you'd understand why people are so interested in advancing female leads.

I think the best individual should play the role where it makes sense. Unfortunately "best individual" tends to be white, straight, and male in the majority of movies/television shows. I might go through this post and see if the majority of these movies pass the Bechdel test.

edit- the OPs first film passed. So I'll just take my ball and go home.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"

Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.

I think that, realistically, if we spread the net wide enough, we could find people like this with literally every single film out there, even with the "best" of the mostly agreed upon films here. There are people who say they actively dislike anything with X actor's name in the credits, or they hate X director/producer. . . . The Harry Potter films, while not mentioned ITT, are fairly well regarded throughout much of the western/film-going world. However, the religious folks I grew up around were actively pushing a boycott and "disliking" the films because they showed "witchcraft". . .


Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)

*Hand raised* I hate Harry Potter (found the writing for the books to be dumb as hell), hate Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rian Johnson for trying to ruin the Skywalker Series of Star Wars. All of them are high on my “don’t watch even if somebody else bought the ticket”.

I legitimately read this as you having some kind of next-level conspiracy involving all those individuals collaborating to destroy star wars from within, and I was getting really excited to dig into it until I realized you just specified with the last guy.

.....

Just for me, can you explain how if Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rion Jahnsan did collaborate in a grand plot to destroy star wars, how they would do it?


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 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Unfortunately "best individual" tends to be white, straight, and male in the majority of movies/television shows.

(X) Doubt


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 timetowaste85 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:

I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
.

How would that work, then? Lots of references to flowers and babies and perfume and stuff? They print the script on pink paper, maybe?

Hey, do you remember that part in Aliens where Ripley complains about being a bit bloated, and wishes she was back home raising babies and cooking for her man? Yeah, now that was an action role written for a woman, by jingo!

:

I'm sorry, Alien, the film that famously had a script written with zero references to the gender of the lead so that the director could cast whoever he felt fit the role best, is a film designed around having a female lead?

.....

It's why the character has a name that is her last name! She's called Ripley in the script specifically so it's almost irrelevant if Ripley is male or female. It was going to be Allen or Ellen, the point was it didn't matter.




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 FrozenDwarf wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:

 Scrabb wrote:
The Shawshank Redemption.

I would also toss in The Green Mile in the same sentence if we speak drama alongside A Beautiful Mind.

If we jump categorys, i think only thouse who dislike the action category would be the persons who dont like Die Hard 1, Lethal Weapon 1 and my alltime personal favorite action movie as of this date; Mad Max: Fury Road.

Same could be said about the sci-fi movies; Matrix 1, 5th element, Clouse encounter of 3rd kind and ET.

The Gladiator is allso a move that moust likely is only disliked by humans who dont like the roman era or Russel Crowe, same can be said about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"

Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.

prolly cuz the movies that now features a female main role, are retakes on older movies that was written around all main roles beeing male actors.
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)

in the case of fury road, i dont see the main actors beeing male or female, it is the world and the cars that are the main actors.

So, to summarize, movies that feature a female actor are fine as long as the whole script is designed for it.

Not like Mad Max Fury Road, the film about a woman raised in a commune called the Many Mothers who were trying to plant seeds in a world they describe as destroyed by men, trying to kidnap and rescue several brides from a bad guy named Immortan Joe, leader of a cult called the War Boyz, by escaping in a gigantic semi truck filled with mothers' milk.

You're right, that film had nothing to do with the characters being male or female. No references to those dynamics in there at all.

Aliens (NOT Alien) and Fury Road are two examples of action films designed around female protagonists; they happen to be some of my favorite films (Aliens is my all-time favorite).

If gender swapping is the only or primary reason a movie (or show or comic or whatever) is being (re)made then the main point of the original better have been gender in the first place; otherwise it’s pretty likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).

Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.

To be honest, I don't get why some people are so opposed to it.

For some reason, it's perfectly ok that there are a million different books out there with re-tellings of, say, Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the King Arthur legend, But try to make a movie with a different take on Ghostbusters? It's the end of the world!

Remaking a story allows you to tell that story in a different way. Sometimes that keeps the core of the character more or less the same and just changes small details and updates the visuals for a modern audience. Sometimes, it will involve major changes to the story, or to certain characters... and honestly, I would prefer that to the version that tries to stick too close to the original, because it gives you something different to watch. There does indeed seem to be little point in re-making a movie if you're just going to do the exact same thing... but telling the story with a difference (What if this character is actually bad guy? What if, instead of looking for [thing] they're looking for [other thing]? What if, yes, the main character is a woman, instead of a man?)

The sheer level of vitriol people direct at remakes just puzzles me. It's like they feel that remaking a story somehow erases the previous version from existence. The fact that there's a version of Gone in 60 Seconds with Vin Diesel in it, or a version of Ghostbusters with an all-female cast in no way prevents you from watching the original versions of those movies if you prefer them. All it does is gives other people an alternate take on those stories.


Although, really, Ghostbusters is probably not a great example to use in these discussions anyway, since from what I've read (I haven't seen the new one) it's a terrible movie completely irrespective of the gender of the leads. People just focus on the fact that they gender swapped the cast, because that's so very rage inducing, for some inexplicable reason.

the_scotsman wrote:
Just for me, can you explain how if Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rion Jahnsan did collaborate in a grand plot to destroy star wars, how they would do it?

It's "and Rian Jonson, who tried to destroy the Skywalker series of Star Wars films". Nothing to do with the others.

I'm sorry, Alien, the film that famously had a script written with zero references to the gender of the lead so that the director could cast whoever he felt fit the role best, is a film designed around having a female lead?

I think this reasoning about films being 'designed' around a female lead is a bit confused, but Alien is still a good example, and similar to Ghostbusters: maybe it didn't matter what sex the working stiffs in the film were, beforehand, but Sigourney Weaver's Ripley has become so cemented as part of the franchise that some people can't fathom Alien films without her, despite having died at one point.

Not like Mad Max Fury Road, the film about a woman raised in a commune called the Many Mothers who were trying to plant seeds in a world they describe as destroyed by men, trying to kidnap and rescue several brides from a bad guy named Immortan Joe, leader of a cult called the War Boyz, by escaping in a gigantic semi truck filled with mothers' milk.

You're right, that film had nothing to do with the characters being male or female. No references to those dynamics in there at all.

Frankly, I see Fury Road as something like Avatar. It's going to take a while for fans to see past the swooshy effects.

insaniak, the gender swap in GB2016 was not in itself offensive (it was, however, boring); what happened was Sony created the narrative that people were panning the film because of the gender swap — the idea was to flip the script from “this is a bad movie disliked by reasonable people” to “this is brave movie disliked by sexist manbabies”

 Manchu wrote:
insaniak, the gender swap in GB2016 was not in itself offensive (it was, however, boring); what happened was Sony created the narrative that people were panning the film because of the gender swap — the idea was to flip the script from “this is a bad movie disliked by reasonable people” to “this is brave movie disliked by sexist manbabies”

Sony didn't create that narrative. People were panning the movie all over the internet prior to release, purely on account of the leads being women. Sony certainly made an effort to use that to deflect some of the actual criticism that came after people saw it, but it was most certainly a thing.

You’re mistaken; Sony did create and propagate that narrative as a counter marketing strategy.

Of course some number of people were spouting sexist stuff; it’s the internet, you can find someone as an example of anything. What Sony did, to hoodwink folks like you, is edit and create content to make it seem like that was the main criticism of the movie, to align this pile of crap film with a conversation about why sexism is bad.

 Manchu wrote:
Aliens (NOT Alien) and Fury Road are two examples of action films designed around female protagonists; they happen to be some of my favorite films (Aliens is my all-time favorite).

If gender swapping is the only or primary reason a movie (or show or comic or whatever) is being (re)made then the main point of the original better have been gender in the first place; otherwise it’s pretty likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.

I think part of the frustration here is this: nothing gets greenlit unless it's a remake, sequel, or reboot, and a great majority of what gets remade or rebooted starts out with white male protagonists.

Make an original spy movie, and make James Bond 23 starring that fellow with the odd ears for the seventh time in a row and it realky does not matter what the difference in quality is there, the second one will profit and the first probably will not.

At the end of the day, people just want things the same. And they will gladly proclaim that the only reason something not made is to push insert non Default Person Attributes Here regardless of what the original reason for the writing of the screenplay was before it got reworked into a seqboomake of an existing property.

Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie. It wasn't until after people actually saw the movie that they started to criticise the movie itself.

You may not have seen that, but it was there.

 insaniak wrote:
[For some reason, it's perfectly ok that there are a million different books out there with re-tellings of, say, Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the King Arthur legend, But try to make a movie with a different take on Ghostbusters? It's the end of the world!

Poor examples, I think. Centuries-old verbally-retold morality tales with multiple local versions and interpretations, versus a single painstakingly scripted and filmed story from 1984.

People just focus on the fact that they gender swapped the cast, because that's so very rage inducing, for some inexplicable reason.

I think too many people focus on the gender-swapping as the reason for the rage, to put it down as inexplicable and easily dismissable. Not to say that nobody ever threw their toys out of the pram for that reason alone, but it's also an easy (lazy?) shorthand to indicate just what kind of problems can come with gender-swapping and female leads these days. Not always, but often. Used to get bums on seats by virtue-signalling - however sincerely - and piggybacking on previous successes; to label any criticism as coming from misogynists and social lepers; and apparently (with hindsight) to cover up the fact that the film is shoddy in general.

There's stuff like the little mermaid living happily ever after, rather than turning into sea foam; but it might be a bit different to, say, a big budget movie of Queen Aretha and her female knights showing up the bumbling male saxons, that looks like it was filmed on $75.25, with the director and main cast appearing everywhere with soundbites about 'taking the narrative away from white men' and sticking it to 'the basement dwelling trolls'.

It's that antagonism that gets me, man. Too often it's the filmmakers presenting as broken and childish themselves, not stoicially ignoring the dumb clucks but doing their best to stir them up.



Again, Red Letter Media has it.

 Vermis wrote:

Poor examples, I think. Centuries-old verbally-retold morality tales with multiple local versions and interpretations, versus a single painstakingly scripted and filmed story from 1984.

You're lacking a conclusion, here...

I think too many people focus on the gender-swapping as the reason for the rage, to put it down as inexplicable and easily dismissable. Not to say that nobody ever threw their toys out of the pram for that reason alone, but it's also an easy (lazy?) shorthand to indicate just what kind of problems can come with gender-swapping and female leads these days. Not always, but often. Used to get bums on seats by virtue-signalling - however sincerely - and piggybacking on previous successes; to label any criticism as coming from misogynists and social lepers; and apparently (with hindsight) to cover up the fact that the film is shoddy in general.

It can be true both that people complained about the movie having women in it, and that people on the 'other side' tried to use that to dismiss other criticisms of the film as misogyny...


This has all got a little off track, though...

I think the core problem of the female Ghostbusters is that it was too late. If it had come out hot on the heels of the original films then I think people would have been more accepting of it. However it came years later, in a slot where people were more thinking the terms "reboot" or "sequel" rather than "all female cast replacement" which is closer to what most would consider a spoof (pretty easy too as Ghostbusters always had a slight comic element and the female version played up to the comic elements in the trailers).

 insaniak wrote:
Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie.

Like I mentioned, you can easily find someone selling any position at all on the internet. Nothing about the reaction to GB2016 was newsworthy until the trailer dropped and immediately became the most quickly disliked video in YT history. That’s when the propaganda campaign got underway.

 Manchu wrote:
You’re mistaken; Sony did create and propagate that narrative as a counter marketing strategy.

Of course some number of people were spouting sexist stuff; it’s the internet, you can find someone as an example of anything. What Sony did, to hoodwink folks like you, is edit and create content to make it seem like that was the main criticism of the movie, to align this pile of crap film with a conversation about why sexism is bad.

Disney did the same with The Last Jedi trying to cover up that stinking pile of gak

Ghost in the Shell got flak for having a A list white actress as the main character. but I had no isue with it in the same way as happy to see Samuel J as Nick Fury - both got the charcter right.

Remakes can and do work - or not. How many times has Shelock Holmes been made or the Dickens classics? some are good, some less so.

 Manchu wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie.

Like I mentioned, you can easily find someone selling any position at all on the internet. Nothing about the reaction to GB2016 was newsworthy until the trailer dropped and immediately became the most quickly disliked video in YT history. That’s when the propaganda campaign got underway.

You and I clearly remember it differently. And that's ok.

It’s also somewhat irrelevant, considering that what some anonymous YT accounts post in the comments section can’t seriously take on hundreds of millions of dollars of production and marketing. People generally, not some tiny sub-subset of GB fans, responded negatively to the GB2016 trailer; that’s why the counter narrative needed to be cooked up and pushed so hard.

To me it seems pretty clear that audiences get their hackles up at the word reboot, and then start looking for reasons why their negative expectations will be fulfilled. Whether there were any genders or sexualities swapped, characters de-aged, themes dropped or plots simplified, the audience already doesn’t like the idea of another reboot. They can point to any changes to the original and say, “that’s the reason!” And if there are no changes at all, the audience can dislike the rehash for being boring and pointless.

I wonder how many reboots would receive a warmer welcome if they were announced differently. “Answer the Call: A Ghostbusters Multiverse Story” might sound clunky, but it does safely leave the original story sacrosanct while priming the audience for potentially dramatic changes.

For example, Star Trek 2009 successfully used timeline shenanigans to avoid a lot of fan backlash.

I don’t think that’s quite right. People want their favorite IPs to keep going. That is a big part of why this is happening at all.

When it comes to video games, reboots have been hitting it out of the park lately.

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t think that’s quite right. People want their favorite IPs to keep going. That is a big part of why this is happening at all.

When it comes to video games, reboots have been hitting it out of the park lately.

Well, I don’t know from video games, but in movies sequels seem to be a very different animal to reboots or remakes.

In the end, I don’t think the genders of the Ghost Busters remake made a difference to the movie. It wasn’t a good movie because the movie wasn’t good. They could have had the original cast brought forward with a time machine, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It still would have been a bad movie.

Pragmatically speaking, people that care about genders in movies care about something that I don’t. In my opinion, it’s a waste of their time and energy. Regardless of when the sexism narrative began, it didn’t alter the quality of the movie.

If people get hung up on what actors look like, when that doesn’t impact the film, that’s their hang up. Sucks for them.

I’m not talking about sequels; I’m talking remakes of RE2 and 3 and FFVII.


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 greatbigtree wrote:
If people get hung up on what actors look like

My man, we are talking movies here. Of course people are hung up on what the actors look like.

How many well-received Movie reboots or remakes have there been in the last two decades? Fury Road is the only one I can think of.

Nolan Batfilms, Craig Bond films, most of the MCU, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the recent IT movies, Battlestar Galactica (TV but still), Coen Bros’ True Grit, Planet of the Apes; I mean we could go on and on.

Perhaps my point wasn’t clear. I’m saying that if someone cares if a character is a specific gender, or race, religion, sexuality... if it isn’t relevant to the story -

In a Constantine fiction, A Buddhist Monk trying an exorcism wouldn’t jive with the Judeo-Christian mythology it relies on

- and a person is bothered by it, that’s a problem with the person getting bent out of shape by it. While completely judgmental, you can’t fix stupid. All you can do is try to improve the future by encouraging critical thinking.

Does it make a difference to the story if this person’s gender was different? Padme needs to have children that Vader doesn’t know where they are. You can’t really flip that role’s gender. Could Luke and Leia’s genders have been flipped without changing the story? Yes.

Does it make a difference if the character’s race was different? Django Unchained really wouldn’t make much sense, given the time period, if Django wasn’t black. Would it make a difference if Mace Windu was Asian? No.

Sexuality? Again, if you want your characters to produce offspring without outside “interaction” involved, having a straight couple kind of works... but short of that? Does it matter to Sulu’s character in the Star Trek reboot if he’s gay or straight? Nope. He can perform his duties as an officer of Star Fleet either way.

Yes, complainers gonna complain, but that doesn’t make the criticism valid.

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t think that’s quite right. People want their favorite IPs to keep going. That is a big part of why this is happening at all.

When it comes to video games, reboots have been hitting it out of the park lately.

Video game reboots/remakes get a very different reception, I think, because to most consumers the originals are not actually still available. Sure, you can technically still whip out a PS1 and play the original Resident Evil, but the vast majority of people playing video games now either weren't around when the PS1 was a thing, or traded in that machine a long time ago. So a remake is a chance to revisit that game, generally with significantly improved visuals and/or game engine.

Whereas a movie made in the 70s is still generally available to watch right now. So a remake seems uneccessary, unless it brings something new to the table... at which point it gets criticised for being different to the original. Unless, like Gone in 60 Seconds, it's a remake of something old enough and obscure enough that most people don't actually realise that it's a remake.

Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.


And I don't mind it so much if a film maker revisits some of their own work, even if its a DVD collection or the like, such as the Alien quadrilogy box set I have, where all of the filmmakers have a more "complete" version of their movie that is longer than theatrical release. . . but in that case, these did not warrant an entirely new shoot, new cast and new everything, so it may not fit some people's definitions of reboot

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.

What are you thinking of for 'cinema versions?' I can think one or two terrible made-for-TV Cap movies, but not any real Hollywood or even indie films (not that an indie studio would be able to pay for a Marvel license).

None of the comic movies really fit the definition of remake, and for reboots, all that really fits is Sony's increasingly bizarre Spiderman web, and WB mugging random actors and dressing them up as Batman while they're drunk. And both of those were more about cycling the lead actor and director than anything else. And possibly keeping those characters stuck at their roots, because they fear the general audience won't recognize anything but 'dead relative = become super hero.'

Voss wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.

What are you thinking of for 'cinema versions?' I can think one or two terrible made-for-TV Cap movies, but not any real Hollywood or even indie films (not that an indie studio would be able to pay for a Marvel license).

None of the comic movies really fit the definition of remake, and for reboots, all that really fits is Sony's increasingly bizarre Spiderman web, and WB mugging random actors and dressing them up as Batman while they're drunk. And both of those were more about cycling the lead actor and director than anything else. And possibly keeping those characters stuck at their roots, because they fear the general audience won't recognize anything but 'dead relative = become super hero.'

There are decent budget films from 1944, then 1979, and finally a 1990/91 version. . . . Similar case for the Superman films, despite the love that the Christopher Reeves films get, and as bad as they truly are, Henry Cavill just looks a better Supes than previous bloke, and the SFX have gotten to a point where we can "appropriately" pull off the film.