If you've just agreed to share your one big franchise with a rival and you want a property of your own, who you gonna call? Now Spider-Man is sorted (read: taken over creatively by Marvel), Sony need a big shared universe that they can take all the profits from. And their pick is, inexplicably, Ghostbusters. On top of the already announced all-female movie directed by Paul Feig, there's going to be an all-male version (because gender equality now means total, but same numbered, segregation), with the plan being to have a massive series of ongoing movies about people fighting ghouls and insisting they're not just copying Bill Murray. Now, turning any random franchise into a "Cinematic Universe" is already a misguided approach - it works for Marvel because it's already proven to work in the comics - but it's the particular one that's getting the treatment here that's so bizarre. There is no franchise more utterly buoyed in modern culture by nostalgia than Ghostbusters (although TMNT comes close). You have one movie that's kinda enjoyable if you take a big bite "at the time" pie followed by a sequel so pointless it led to twenty years of umming and ahhing over the worth of making another. At least Terminator and Alien both have some knockout movies that still hold-up today. Outside of that song, there's really not much special about something that is painfully eighties, not just as a movie, but as an base idea. What other reboots look like a complete waste of time? Do any of these movies look like they'll be worth it? Share your thoughts down in the comments.
