When word broke that Paul Feig was rebooting Ghostbusters with an all-female cast, the response was quite mixed. That’s putting it lightly, of course, but one side seemed fine with the idea. The other was less enthused, sometimes crying about childhoods and slapping the moniker “Lady Ghostbusters” on it. The last point became a point of contention for star Leslie Jones, who was one of the early voices to talk back alongside director Paul Feig.
“Lady Ghostbusters” is probably the most tame criticism lobbed at the film — if it’s really a criticism at all — but the negative response has been fairly brutal at times and seems to have rubbed some of the cast the wrong way, like Kristen Wiig. She spoke to the LA Times about her upcoming film Nasty Baby and the Ghostbusters question came out in the end, leading to this response:
[The] fact there was so much controversy because we were women was surprising to me. Some people said some really not nice things about the fact that there were women. It didn’t make me mad, it just really bummed me out. We’re really honoring those movies.
If the idea that they’re remaking Ghostbusters is ridiculous to some, the response to said remake dwarfs it. Not to mention that it poses the opposite effect and keeps the film in the headlines. Then again, nothing can be reasonable or rational these days, which is partially why Ghostbusters is being referenced during an interview about an unrelated film. It was preceded by another question on women in comedy, something Wiig saw coming and seemed to dread a bit:
I think the fact that people keep asking it implies that it’s something we need to explain or defend. If [people] would watch movies or look at comedy and see how many talented, funny women are out there and have been since the beginning of time, people would stop asking that. The other side of it is we’re still not there as far as opportunities. But people are doing the work.
I do wonder how many people who have complained in the past months about the Ghostbusters reboot will end up seeing it in the theater. Will it change their mind or will they continue to complain?
(Via LA Times / The Hollywood Reporter)
