10 Movies Everyone Wanted To Hate Before They Even Came Out

You didn’t think we’d forget this one, did you?

There have been few films as widely despised before their release as 2016’s gender-bending Ghostbusters reboot, and the ire directed at the franchise revival resulted in a months-long debate about misogyny, internet culture, and the nature of fandom which an expensively unimaginative rehashing of old glories didn’t warrant.

However the film also had plenty of high profile defenders, such as the BBC’s Mark Kermode, cult comedian Patton Oswalt, and The New York Times, who wanted to love it without seeing it too. But Internet critics ranging from The Angry Videogame Nerd’s James Rolfe to Red Letter Media tore the flick to shreds well before its release date, with the latter going as far as releasing a video debunking the accusations of misogyny levelled at the film’s haters.

This prompted the filmmakers to call the new flick’s detractors—and by extension the franchise’s existing fanbase—basement-dwelling man-children, a move which paid off about as well as one would expect at the box office, with the film losing over a hundred million dollars.

Ultimately the film transpired to be as unfunny as haters had predicted, but later female-led reboots such as 2018’s starry Ocean’s 8 went on to prove that gender-flipped remakes could prove to be financial and critical successes without, you know, bad-mouthing fans of their franchise.