10 Reasons Ghostbusters Isn't As Bad As You Think
Fire the marketing team.
The long-awaited, much-discussed Ghostbusters reboot is finally rolling out worldwide, and despite a vitrolic hate campaign that has waged for over a year, critics are largely praising the movie as an enjoyable, if hardly Earth-shattering, blockbuster.
The critics aren't lying: while it seemed destined to be a trainwreck, Ghostbusters 2016 really is a pretty solid, enjoyable film, and most crucially, nowhere near as bad as most were expecting.
From the most divisive casting decision through to the movie's treatment of the franchise's iconography, this leaves one strangely optimistic for what the new franchise could hold should it be a hit (which it probably will be).
Here are 10 reasons the Ghostbusters reboot isn't as bad as you think...
10. The Marketing Was Terrible
There are plenty of good reasons for why many expected Ghostbusters to be a sacrilegious reboot, and it really begins with the marketing. Right from the very first trailer, this one seemed like a bust because the studio's marketing department were clearly aiming for the biggest, broadest audience possible.
Rather than emphasising that the new movie was a reboot, they initially (and confusingly) referred extensively to the 1984 original, while the majority of the comedy shown off was...not very funny, focusing on middling physical gags rather than witty repartee.
The trailers didn't even show off who the villain was, for Christ's sake. While the new movie absolutely isn't the laugh riot of the decade, it's a good deal funnier than the advertising suggests.
If the movie does somehow flop or underperform at the box office, Columbia will have only themselves to blame for attempting to sell it so aggressively to the lowest common denominator.