The original Ghostbusters is one of those films that is fiercely protected by fans who grew up with it and continue to cherish it today. This is one of the reasons why the 2016 reboot, which featured female leads, was met with a lot of visceral attacks prior to and after its release. Directed by Paul Feig, the film starred Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Chris Hemsworth, and it's not nearly as bad as some fans would have you believe. Kate McKinnon and Chris Hemsworth have some truly funny moments in the film and I would argue that it stands up pretty decently on its own. It was never going to top the 1984 film but considering all the hate that has built up over it, I feel like it's a bit unfairly judged by the masses. One of the stars of the original film, Ernie Hudson, recently gave his two-cents about the 2016 reboot and while he felt like the film was a mistake, he did admit to liking it.
"When you say reboot, which is the third movie, the one with the ladies – that I actually liked a lot. I definitely loved everybody who was in it. Paul Feig, I'm still fans of theirs – they tried to do a reboot. And a reboot, to me, means you're trying to do the movie over. Another version of what we already did. And I think that was a mistake. It wasn't a continuation or an extension of. It was somehow a different universe there. You know what I mean? It's kind of like us, but it's us but not us. In that universe, they're women. I don't know. That was a choice that was made."
I do agree with Hudson about it being the wrong move that the film borrowed the mythology of the franchise but ignored the original characters. This was made even more baffling because they still used some of the actors from the original films but had them playing new characters. Bill Murray appeared as a paranormal skeptic, Dan Aykroyd played a taxi driver, Hudson himself appeared as the uncle of one of the new Ghostbusters, and Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts also made cameos. If they wanted to piss and alienate the fanbase of the original franchise, this certainly was the move to do so and it only added to fan frustrations. Hudson is a part of the latest entry of the franchise, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and he says that this is the film that the fans have been waiting decades for:
"This is Ghostbusters. As we move on through the world, 20, 30 years later, it's still within the same universe. And the other was Ghostbusters. But like I said, it just felt like a retelling of the same story, which automatically causes comparisons that you really don't need to be doing. I'm saying this is how I feel like. But this is Ghostbusters later. It's been 30-35 years since we did the Ghostbusters'. And so this is years later. But definitely, it's the same universe."
Despite some of the criticism, I'm fine with viewing the 2016 film as its own thing and can enjoy it for what it is. I should probably say that, while I grew up with Ghostbusters and enjoy it, I'm not a hardcore fan of the film and that could be why I was a bit more open to what Feig and his team attempted to do with the reboot. Everything didn't necessarily work but it's certainly no dumpster fire, in my opinion.
Do YOU agree with Ernie Hudson's opinion about the 2016 Ghostbusters?