Why The New Ghostbusters Is Not A ‘Chick Flick’

When Yahoo Movies visited the Ghostbusters set in Boston in August 2015, Amy Pascal, the former head of Sony and now a producer on Ghostbusters, made an impromptu speech to the assembled journalists.

After we’d finished watching some unfinished, but extremely funny footage, Pascal said: “I believe that if we do our job right, you are not going to be talking about this as a female driven movie anymore than you would call ‘Gravity’ a chick-flick. Seriously, these girls are badass… it is not like a girl movie. I want you to get it out of your head.”

She was defensive, but understandably so. When it was announced that the 1984 film was being rebooted with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones taking on the four lead roles (plus ‘Bridesmaids’ helmer Paul Feig directing), the reaction was mixed.

Many were excited to see this talented group of comedians take on the iconic concept, reasoning that if Ghostbusters had to be rebooted, better it was with a new story and female leads. At one point, for example, it was rumoured to star Seth Rogen, Rainn Wilson and Jack Black – a less imaginative prospect.

Others though were not impressed. In amidst the usual reboot complaints (“you’re ruining my childhood”) was a disturbing strain of misogyny. Internet geek culture at it’s worst.

“I want to be reverential to what came before,” the director Paul Feig told us on the huge Boston set (the city chosen because of it’s similarity to New York). “People who are afraid of it on the internet, first of all they hear it’s four women and they assume it’s a romantic comedy and they’ll be breaking their nails and crying. You wouldn’t believe the tweets I’ve been getting over the last year.”

Besides the casting, the decision to reboot the series and ignore the events of the original films, rather than make this a sequel to ‘Ghostbusters 2’, has also caused consternation.

The plot is familiar but different to the original. Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig play a pair of scientists who wrote a book explain why ghosts were real. Wiig’s character changed her mind so she could land a job in serious academia, but is forced to quit when the book re-surfaces. When ghosts do turn out to be real, the duo reunite to fight them, with with the help of Kate McKinnon’s nuclear engineer and Leslie Jones’ subway attendant. The characters are brand new – McCarthy is not playing a female version of Venkman, for example.

“I didn’t want to do a movie where 25 years after the Ghostbusters have saved New York City twice, we’ve forgotten about ghosts and, whoop, now they’re back!” explains Feig. “I wanted to start with a clean slate. Nobody’s seen a ghost. People say they have but there’s no proof. In this world right now if suddenly there was a ghost invasion we would react very differently if we’d been through the same thing 25 years ago. And so it’s all in service of that.”

Pascal added: “The movie is completely reverent to the original in the sense that the original is about four dismissed scientists who are not accepted by the stuffy professors at the University, and that we also have a movie about four dismissed characters who believe in something no-one else does and they turn out to be right.”

Like Feig’s best films, ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘The Heat’, ‘Ghostbusters’ also uses the complications of female friendship to drive the plot.

He says: “The characters are very different – it’s very much about a friendship between these two people (Wiig and McCarthy) who have fallen apart and come back together because of their belief in something one chose to believe in and the other chose to turn her back on, in order to not look crazy. At the end of the day it’s a friendship story writ large in this world.”

Being on set, you see the amount of improvisation that Feig and his foursome of funny women do. The cast was coming up with gag after gag for each take. Much like Anchorman 2, they could surely release two cuts of the film with entirely different jokes.

One example of this was the scene where Chris Hemsworth’s character is being interviewed by the Ghostbusters to be their secretary (see above). The cast were gushing about the ‘Thor’ star’s hitherto hidden comic timing and said his first day on set was a memorable one.

Melissa McCarthy told us: “There was just 40 minutes of takes of improvisation. We improvised for two days and at one point I felt like we all had been drugged and we had gone crazy. We were just crying with laughing.”

“I am so curious to know what is going to end up in the movie, because there is two days of just utter insanity under the guise of an actual interview. I am telling you there is stuff in there that is going to be mind-blowing. So nuts.”

In the original Annie Potts memorably played the gang’s secretary, but Hemsworth’s version is very much a new take on the role.

He told us: “He may not be the smartest on the planet. In fact these glasses may or may not have lenses in them. He wants to be an actor. He wants to be a poet. He wants to be a musician. He wants to be an artist of any form. We went for this kind of hipster kind of look minus any actual artistic talent. He is like a big kid in a lot of ways. He misses the point and looks at the world from a very different angle. It may not necessarily be wrong but it is different to the rest of the planet. He has a unique take on things.”

Hemsworth said that doing a smaller role was attractive to him after making Marvel films. “Just to be able to not have that pressure like you do with Thor was a nice idea. I am such a big fan of Paul’s and his work and all these girls. I met a couple of the girls from Saturday Night Live before jumping on. It was the people involved and the subject matter… to be in amongst these four talented women was awesome.”

Besides Hemsworth and the rest of the cast, the 21st century scale of this version of ‘Ghostbusters’ is also in stark contrast to the 1980s original. This is a $150 million-ish CGI-driven action movie, and the money will definitely be up on screen, says the director.

“It’s amazing how much more expensive it is to make a movie today than it was in the ’80s,” laughs Feig. “We just wanted to make the scope bigger. It’s only so exciting to watch people aim a proton gun and shake as the beam comes out. We wanted to have that fun, but also step it up. So we step it up through them actually fighting ghosts and being in hand-to-hand combat with ghosts. Just to make it a big spectacle. I love action as much as comedy and so I wanted to bring that element into it.”

That money has also gone into updating the look of the ghosts this time around – including Slimer (below).

“The ghosts in the original were kinda cartoony, says Feig. “Which I liked, but I want everything about this movie to be as real as a movie based on fake stuff can be. And to me, ghosts are people. They are people who come back and we will have some who are otherworldly. It’s my goal to create a giant spectacle. A comedy spectacle. There haven’t been that many comedy spectacles before.”

When we were on set, more than anything there was the sense from all involved that they want the public to give their version of ‘Ghostbusters’ a chance… and get over the fact the stars happen to be female.

Answering yet another question about the genders of the four leads, Kristen Wiig sighed: “It is hard for us. We don’t really have perspectives on it, because we are women and we do have this opportunity and hopefully we will get to a place where it won’t even be a topic – it will just be funny is funny.

“It’s not a female comedy and I think people are going to be really surprised. It is for everyone. It’s catered for women, children, adults, it is for everyone. It is so funny. It’s so smart. The nods to the old one are so smart and respectful. And it is just fun.”

Leslie Jones also had the perfect response to those who said the new ‘Ghostbusters’ would ‘ruin their childhood’.

“Grow up.”

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‘Ghostbusters’ is released in the UK on July 11, 2016. Watch the trailer below.