Ghostbusters!

[alias_sqbr]

So this I LOVED. It's exactly what I wanted: a fun reboot of the original which is funny and thrilling and charming and also feminist. Women being competent and weird and unsexualised and having complex relationships with each other and saving the world!! FORTY SOMETHING SCIENCE LADIES :D FAT LADIES :D AS CLOSE TO QUEER AS THE STUDIO WOULD ALLOW LADIES :D (which is not very queer. Holtzman flirts a little) ONE POC LADY WHICH IS BETTER THAN NOTHING I GUESS.

It was a very deliberate reversal of 80s comedy tropes, with Chris Helmsworth having a ball as the dim but pretty secretary who needs to be rescued. There's no romance, ones a little swoony over how pretty he is but seems to know intellectually that he'd make a terrible boyfriend. Instead there's just some really lovely female friendships (which are absolutely perfect for femslashing ;))

Things I didn't like:

• Patty, the black character, is definitely intelligent and competent even if she has no formal training(*) but after creating a way for her skills to be relevant they really dropped the ball on actually using them.
  
• The villain is too moustache twirlingly evil. You can get away with that with a Supernatural Being Of Pure Evil or side villain but with a main human villain you need a little more depth. Asides from that he was effectively creepy and believable.
  
• It kept pausing to go "DID YOU SEE THAT JOKE WASN'T IT FUNNY" instead of keeping up the momentum.

But overall I really liked it.

Very important reaction: Everyone seems to be in love with Holtzman but I think Abby is cuter. Just saying. Also the best ships are Abby/Erin and Patty/Holtzmann.

(*)I've seen people suggest she may have a history major or something but I feel like she'd have said that instead of "You all know science but I read a lot of non fiction". And it's certainly not explicit in the text, unlike everyone else.

Comments

[ember_keelty]

I actually really liked how shallow the villain was! This was an origin story that had to introduce four heroines all at once, and taking time to flesh out the villain would have distracted from that. And he WAS believable, in a way that I feel like giving him more depth might have actually lessened. I enjoyed that his horrible perspective just isn't taken seriously at all by the narrative or by anyone who matters. You see people ostracizing him, but you never get the sense that it isn't like at least 90% his fault for being intentionally creepy. And you get to see that be contrasted with the heroines getting shit for things that aren't their fault, and Abby gets to poke a big fat hole in his stupid little "I have suffered more than anyone else and therefore may pass judgement on the world!" schtick. I enjoyed that he didn't get to be taken seriously even when the heroines couldn't really think on the spot of anything in particular that was good and worth protecting in the world, because there's a huge gaping chasm between being kind of a misanthrope and condoning mass murder.

In other discourse, I am stupidly in love with Holtzman, but I am glad that someone loves Abby, and also, you are correct about shipping.

[alias_sqbr]

And you get to see that be contrasted with the heroines getting shit for things that aren't their fault, and Abby gets to poke a big fat hole in his stupid little "I have suffered more than anyone else and therefore may pass judgement on the world!" schtick. I enjoyed that he didn't get to be taken seriously even when the heroines couldn't really think on the spot of anything in particular that was good and worth protecting in the world, because there's a huge gaping chasm between being kind of a misanthrope and condoning mass murder.

That bit I definitely liked. It was better than the more common moment of sympathy for the villain's lot with the hero going "maybe if my life was as bad as the villains I'd be a villain too" and the implication that people who've suffered a lot are doomed to villainy and only people with relatively nice pasts can be heroes.