There's no doubt that the female-led GHOSTBUSTERS reboot was met with a special brand of resistance the moment that news of its existence hit the internet. While a large amount of individuals were excited for the film, it felt as if for a very long time that those who were vehemently opposed to the film had the louder voice. Thinking back on it, I can recall Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones each speaking about the controversy head-on when asked about the backlash during interviews and such. I also remember the way director Paul Feig chose to address all the fuss, by engaging the trolls directly with a series of remarks and a stern wag of his finger. It was a tumultuous time for the GHOSTBUSTERS community to say the least.
The question now is, why would I even bother to bring up such a sore topic? Well, this past Tuesday, while attending the Tribeca Film Festival, Feig said, "If I could go back in the time machine, I just wouldn’t read it … The biggest mistake I made was I took on one of the trolls.” However, even with that being said, Feig also expressed that he doesn't regret his decision to reboot GHOSTBUSTERS using an all-female primary cast, especially after having so many female fans of the film tell him, "if I had this movie when I was a kid, I would have been an engineer right now."
While I'm of the mind that feeding trolls is unwise, I think there's a part of me that can understand why Feig felt like he needed to respond to all of the premature venom and vitriol the film had received before so much as a frame of it had hit the web. Live and learn, I suppose.
Paul Feig's next directorial effort will be for SPY 2, which I'm assuming will star Melissa McCarthy, once again, as agent Susan Cooper.