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strangluv's Replies
Since the fake, rigged score is still up, and with the same rigging saga having recently reared its ugly head with another movie (woke Little Mermaid), how about one more rant?
Only a very obviously, self-evidently BAD movie would need these kind of protections and manipulations. Plain and simple, a movie has to strike a cord of being <i>egregiously</i> poorly executed in some significant way to inspire a level of public hatred, so strong that Hollywood, journalistic media AND film websites have to ban together in trying to suppress it (or specifically for any movies with woke-lefty principles behind them).
The fact that the media spent more time smearing people who disliked this movie than defending it on its own merits, tells you how badly it failed. The fact that there isn't a SINGLE memorable scene or quote to come out of the movie (because have you ever met an actual fan?), tells you how badly it failed. Especially in light of the franchise-birthing movie it bears connection to - a classic that is still quoted and referenced after 40 years. And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the fact that an embarrassed Sony studios quickly shelved a sequel, and then a much better Ghostbusters movie was created as a (MUCH needed) apology to the fanbase tells you how badly it failed.
Yet despite these facts, you have utter imbeciles in these threads who spew unthinking bullshit such as "it was voted against by manbaby TROLLS who never watched it" or "people didn't give it a fair shot originally due to TROLLS". Ok you bitches, let's go ahead and assume that downvote/'review bomb' sabotage is real (even though it reeks of a media-invented conspiracy theory to stifle criticism of pre-approved movies). Can you think any other instances where this type of thing has hurt movies that would otherwise have NOT so been badly received by the public? Sure, you've heard of movies ranging from highly-acclaimed to under-acclaimed having their share of people who heavily criticize them, but how many been victims of loud and organized sabotage campaigns?
A competently made movie with enough strength of quality to stand on its own, will invariably be able to dodge being brought down by massive 'widespread review bombing'. There is something innately, unavoidably terrible about a movie that would inspire that reaction in the first place. Indeed it wasn't just that Grrlbusters pushed grrl power wokeness, and thus was sabotaged by anti-woke people. Plenty of movies have managed to avoid this treatment that promoted feministic and other politically correct themes. Mad Max: Fury Road, Black Panther, Hidden Figures, Moonlight, Wonder Woman and Barbie are some examples of these, in recent times, that actually have good reputations. It is obviously idiotic to place sole blame on 'sexist bigots' for Grrlbusters' miserable failure, when that same crowd of bigots didn't drag down these other aforementioned movies.
Some movies are just really fucking bad. In fact we all know of movies known to be so universally reviled, so embarrassingly, unwatchably bad that they were even shunned and disowned by their own film companies. Hey fun fact: Grrlbusters was shunned and disowned by Sony studios!
As far as I'm concerned, IMDb has destroyed itself. When it decided to rig this piece of shit movie's score in the name of political correctness, there was no way it was going to stop there - and indeed it didn't as we can see recently with Little (Diversity) Mermaid. They, and Rotten Tomatoes and almost the entirety of the film review industry are little more than whores now.
'Arrested' is a bit of stretch, and 'rape' even more so. You really oughtn't be throwing the latter word around with respect to a KIDS show that depicted no sexual relationships. Also keep in mind that these relationships both on TV, and in real life were less controversial back in the heyday of the show. Not because age of consent of laws didn't exist (they did), but there just wasn't as much parental strictness around dating. There was more of an independence in the way that Gen-X era teenagers went about their lives. The social taboo we have around high schoolers dating younger (college-aged) adults is really more of a post-2000 or late-90s thing.
(Despite that, I'm sure this type of dating happens even now.)
When you think about it though, most 16-17 year-old girls are probably not being raped or molested by their 19-20 year-old boyfriends. As long the age gap is more on the narrow side, it's really hard to make the case that these relationships usually have a 'victim', whatever other issues there may be (not saying there aren't any). However, if you can provide an example of some guy being jailed for simply for having a 3 years younger girlfriend, let me know. Because as far as I know, without proof or a compelling case made to police that sex took place, there is little grounds for arrest. Parents can certainly use THREATS of police to end a relationship, which probably does happen often, but actually GETTING an arrest made on the grounds of a 3 year age difference is a different story.
"Why didn't they just have the characters be closer to the actors' age? How does that impact the story? It's not like it's set in high school."
I agree. I just started watching this show out of curiosity while browsing Hulu (because I began reflecting on its wild but brief/fleeting popularity back in the 90s including the 'dancing baby' weirdness). When Ally said she was 27 in one episode I did find that rather jarring. Calista Flockhart may have not been much older than that, but as an actress over 30 there was no reason she couldn't be portraying her own age in a show whose premise did NOT necessitate making her younger. The show's premise in fact, concerns a woman who while successful in her law career, is rather 'worn down' by life and haunted by her biological clock and failure to fulfill her dreams of a big family. Uh, doesn't that sound like someone closer to <b>37</b>? What would make an evidently intelligent woman think it realistic to have finished building her career AND her big nuclear family less than a decade out of high school? No one ever told her there are only so many hours in the day?
Fact is, <i>career-hyperfocused</i> women throughout their 20s tend to be so consumed in a life of grinding and 'climbing the ladder' that babies (let alone DANCING ones) are rarely at the front of their minds. It would be rather illogical to be fretting about 27 being 'too late' when you CHOSE to put your career first. Still, this understandably starts to change after these women reach their 30s and 1) they are feeling in a more secure place to settle down 2) the countdown on their unused eggs becomes hard to continue ignoring. While Ally's just a TV character, she seems to be one who pursued the classic feminist career path while thinking that classic traditional motherhood was just as easily within reach. This would indicate that she is unbelievably naive, and doesn't comprehend the importance of time, sacrifice and patience in building a life...not to mention the hard work that 'having it all' will ALSO take to continue maintaining.
Was Ally written to be simply THAT clueless in her understanding of life? Or was she maybe written as say, an illustration of how second wave feminism's promises to women could be horribly misleading enough to turn them into confused messes?
Hmm.
And regarding the 'racism' - simply comforting his preteen son by opting not to force him to kiss someone he didn't want to, wasn't exactly equivalent to being like "good, I don't WANT you kissing one of THOSE folks". That Dan (a man who had close black friends and loved blues music) was struggling with an answer for DJ's dilemma but didn't want to push him, was not a man exhibiting the bigotry or hate of racism. After all, HIS patience and willingness to talk out the the matter was certainly more successful than Roseanne's hysterical coercion attempts ("you BETTER kiss her and not make us look like bigots") in ultimately convincing DJ to go through with the kiss. And if Dan were really a racist, would he have really been as happy as he was with DJ's final decision? Please, trying using your brain.
You're kind of right, in the sense that the virtue-signaling of the woke crowd never actually improves their lives. They only seem to get more bitter and unhinged the more that they actually get what they demand! (Which is quite often, if the now seemingly endless political and corporate pandering to LGBTQ and 'BIPOC'/diversity are any indication.) They just never seem to get happier.
Of course they are paying absolutely no price. Voicing any open opposition to their culturally-ingrained leftist agenda is much, more likely to cause you to pay a price today.
^This and then some!
And let's just ignore the ratings skewering that would be caused by the pro-woke mob jumping in to give it 10s to protect against the trolls, combined also with interference from IMDb and probably Sony studios as well to skewer it even more. Let's just ignore that the rating jumped from up from years sitting at a 5.4, to suddenly a 6.9. Everything is certainly on the up and up there.
It is definitely an accurate reflection of moviegoers that its rating is higher than Ghostbusters 2. We know how secretly, actually beloved that 2016 is among the Ghostbusters fanbase. After all, it only had a planned sequel be immediately canceled and was excluded from a new DVD boxset release. That's definitely a 7/10 movie. Totally honest rating.
Agree with you completely, SASKIA47. Great points, with this one being especially pertinent:
<i>So their system should already be weeding out bot bombardment. So why Ghostbusters of all things gets a further application on the ratings is to me clear political posturing.</i>
This was a case of a politically preapproved movie being promoted by woke media as a 'cause', therefore leading IMDb to do their part to protect and elevate it. They certainly would never go through this kind of trouble for a movie for with say, overtly conservative or Christian themes that got bombarded with a bunch 1 votes in a campaign from angry liberals (something I bet it'd be easy to find happened to for example, a Dinesh D'Souza documentary).
Still, even that doesn't entirely explain the mystery of why the movie sat at a 5/10 for years, before shooting up to nearly a 7. The automatic answer from the usual (woke crybaby) suspects is to complain about how 'troll votes' skewered the initial score, yet that doesn't explain why it took YEARS before fixing this troll vote problem allowed for an actual score jump (and a big one). I can only pinpoint the fact that it was almost immediately following the announcement of Ghostbusters 2021 that 2016's score started climbing up. We know that that a lot of feminists were quite upset by the announcement, bemoaning the fact that the GB fanbase of 'toxic manbabies' were being rewarded with a movie they actually wanted.
So you look up one day and suddenly GB 2016's score is nearly two whole points higher.
Draw your own conclusions (which are pretty easy).
Pretty close, but <b>5</b> would actually be the most correct rating and IS the rating it sat at for years before the sudden and unexplained jump by almost 2 points that occurred more recently. What could possibly justify such a major abrupt ratings jump?? It trended ALL the way up to a 6.9, managing to jump up ahead of Ghostbusters 2. I've never once prior to this POS flick heard of such a highly unusual voting trajectory and administrative manipulations taking place on an IMDb movie page. Not ONCE.
This movie is almost definitely a citable turning point when politically correct wokeness, which while not new, essentially 'Pearl Harbored' its way through Hollywood and entertainment culture, putting us in an ongoing war ever since.
Wrong forum - this is the disaster that is Ghostbusters 2016 (aka Girlbusters).
(That's ok, just type the name of 2021 movie into the search bar, and the forums will come up.)
Yes woke Grrlbusters did so well that a planned sequel movie was quickly canceled. It did so well that Ghostbusters 2021 was announced right off the bat as an apology/correction of sorts, and replacement for 2016 in the franchise. Unlike 2016, the new movie enjoyed an overwhelmingly warm reception from the actual GB fanbase. On top of all that the recent Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection boxset release included the 2021 movie as the *true* third GB movie, and left out the 2016 movie entirely.
Plus it's safe to say mostly everyone, other than the activist wokesters who were probably more interested in defending the idea of the movie than watching it, was happy to just forget Grrlbusters ever existed. Likely including the actors.
You're right, that is one hell of a woke success story!
LOL, it was likely just a very minor lifestyle adjustment.
At the rate it's going, it could theoretically surpass even the original Ghostbusters. I wish I was joking, but this fucking movie sat at 5/10 for years before climbing up to nearly a 7/10 seemingly overnight. With just another year on the same trajectory, a top 250-level score would be possible.
And I'm sure IMDb, which went out of its way to protect the movie from 'unusual activity', would look into this very unusual and unexplained ratings jump were it brought to their attention, right??
(No - the answer is no.)
Well said. There is a long-running "bottom 100" list and the original 5.2 rating wouldn't put Grrlbusters anywhere near that list. It was not rated as one of the worst ever made. While the Ghostbusters fanbase was certainly frustrated to be given a new movie resembling nothing of what fans ever envisioned for a third Ghostbusters movie, which is a COMPLETELY understandable movie fan reaction, it wasn't like it was a life or death matter for them! It was not that serious. There is no evidence of any coordinated effort by them to sabotage the movie's scores. Authoritarian SJW media scolds telling us this was happening and yammering on about the 'toxicity' of 'incel manbabies' was not proof of anything.
Of course no one took this movie as seriously as the SJW activists did. When media sycophants coordinated their own very personal attack campaign against the movie's detractors, it was THEY who engaged in sabotage - it was they who turned heated yet commonplace entertainment discourse aggressive and toxic. Even participants from the film, evidently whom are too fragile and unprofessional to handle a negative movie review, piled on to the condenmnation of all the wrongthinking moviegoers. Nevermind that moviegoers have a right to their opinions as part of a process known as 'customer feedback', which USED to be something companies relied on to help shape their products. It didn't USED to be that that customers were only allowed to have approved opinions.
Yet still to this day the main legacy of this movie, according to the media, is that of how 'misogynistic and toxic' Ghostbusters fans are. Toxic because they were offered a brainlessly politically correct, unfunny mess of a movie that was a disrespectful stain on a franchise that once brought them so much joy. They felt betrayed, and for daring to say such a thing, THEY were vilified.
It's such corrupt bullshit. No chance in hell this movie rates higher with Ghostbusters fans than Ghostbusters 2 (as per their IMDb scores). Find even ONE fan who's watched all Ghostbusters movies and would claim Grrlbusters to be better than any of the others.
It's not like I'm saying that its IMDb rating needs to be 1.0/10. I just happen to believe that ANY opinions about movies, no matter how positive or how negative, should be allowed to be expressed freely. And IMDb users are supposed to have the freedom to vote those opinions on this site accordingly, per the <i>availability</i> to vote any movie 1-10. IMDb had never before prior to this movie stated that certain movies were 'off-limits' (and they still don't officially state that). No one had any reason to believe that politically correct social agendas would play a role in how you were allowed to vote on a movie.
How could IMDb even objectively distinguish between movies targeted for disproportionate 'trolling' and ones that aren't? How do they know that troll-voting has never happened to many, many movies prior to Grrlbusters in 2016? Or DO they in fact know that it happened to many movies prior to that, but just never cared to step in until the fat woke ladies in ghost hunter constumes came along? With there being a "bottom 100 rated movies" list, what prevents the assumption that any ONE of those movies were victims of this 'unusual voting activity' they claim? All of those movies have lower scores than Grrlbusters had at its lowest before the rigging kicked in, too. What made IMDb decide to care enough to start intervening? Or rather, WHO told them to care enough to intervene?
Right, and there's a difference between the 'progressive' of old and the radical woke cultism of new. Yes the original show had its share of kumbaya liberal messaging, yes this kind of thing isn't new from Hollywood. Still, we had in the 1990s a fun/comedic original show that inserted a PC message here and there...and we'll have in the 2020s a fully PC, diverse/'inclusive', preachy-in-tone remake of an old show that no longer cuts the PC mustard! We KNOW because we're seeing all too much of this recently.
What was progressive 30+ years ago is 'problematic' and backwards today (which is arguably why leftism is a dead-end!). Quantum Leap centered around two decent and heroic, <i>white male </i> leads. Can you guess where they went 'wrong' there? Why yes! A (TV) world where 'white male saviors' (or basically good white guys) exist can simply no longer be allowed according to our betters. So the reboot will of course correct this as a matter of urgency, along with adding a MUCH stronger dose of messaging than the simple tolerance and respect toward ALL promoted in the old show. It will instead consist of in-your-face, unforgiving admonishments of all things white, straight and male.
But not to worry because white straight males will still make their share of appearances - as exclusively villainous or incompetent characters to be denigrated, but still. Can't wait to not watch it!
Well isn't that convenient? You're so adamant that fake 1/10 votes from non-viewers were a plague on the movie yet deny that fake 10/10 votes are even possible (despite that it is the same trolling behavior). You're so hilariously full of it. Despite what the controlled woke-shill media convinced you to think, you have no way of knowing how many people fake-voted against the movie or if the amount was substantial enough to have unfairly sabotaged the IMDb score. You just know that (as you were told) a politically pre-approved movie that wasn't supposed to be attacked, was attacked, which is therefore is wrong and sexist/racist/homophobe/etc.
So you 'do the right thing' and jump to its defense despite the fact that what it seems, you didn't watch it yourself. Surely you'd have something more to say about the movie itself than "haters didn't watch it" if you did, wouldn't you? You definitely didn't watch it.
At any rate, even if too many 1/10 votes from non-viewers was the problem needing correcting, then why'd it take so long for a 'corrected' version of the rating to finally come about? Why didn't it go up from 5.2 to 6.9 in its very first year of release, rather than several years later? If I had to cite one thing, I'd cite the new Ghostbusters movie announced in 2020 being a turning point. After all, the announcement of a movie that promised to be along the lines of what Ghostbusters fans would want to see, and so essentially apologizing for the last movie AND rewarding the 'toxic incels' with something they want, caused no end of consternation to feminists. After the hard work they put into to shilling for Grrlbusters (via ugly hit job on those critical of it), the new movie naturall felt like a personal attack on THEM (what goes around, comes around huh losers?). So they attacked back. And isn't it funny how these attacks against GB 2021 - including from the moron Leslie Jones herself who compared the movie to of course, TRUMP - were somehow acceptable?
Are there many people who would give 10/10 to a movie they don't plan to watch? Well with just <i>any </i> movie there probably wouldn't be too many, but this wasn't just any movie was it? It can't be ignored what was decided was 'at stake' in terms of politics and social agenda, and so if the media is desperately telling people that fake 1/10 votes are being given by 'hateful bigots', then guess what the outraged are going to do in response? Not just the ones who didn't watch but the ones did watch it but didn't actually feel it was quite THAT good.
You see, it didn't matter whether the movie was filmed, written, plotted or acted well or respectful of its source material - none of that was important when there was a MESSAGE to sell. And it had WOMEN now fighting the ghosts! So it grew sort of a 'cult following', but only amongst those who lapped up the media propaganda that the movie was really a CAUSE to be defended against incel manbabies.
Fuck this movie. And fuck Leslie Jones, the femcel womanbaby.
Up to 6.[b]9[/b] now. IMDb is officially a complete joke. I'd love to see the SJWs who cried foul about 'incel trolling' explain this sudden overnight ratings surge. I'd just like to see them explain the merits of this movie while leaving the audience drama and politics completely out of it.
Notice it has jumped ahead of Ghostbusters 2. Who the fuck is buying that? Just think about how much fun and joy the Ghostbusters franchise brought millions of fans going all the way back to the 80s. Think about the childhood memories, the toys, the Saturday morning cartoon, Nintendo games, the movie's endlessly quotable lines and still hilarious scenes. What a shining moment it was for at least three great comedic stars. Jump ahead to 2016 and these fans who had so long been eager for a new release, were finally offered one - only to learn that it resembled nothing of the original in spirit, was instead heavy on trendy political correctness and braindead, juvenile-minded humor, and featuring subpar excuses for 'comedic stars'. Not only that, but the creators and their paid off media lackeys then staged a campaign to denigrate and dehumanize fans who were not happy with this disrespectful dumpster fire of a movie offering. (Probably creating some Trump supporters in the process given the year it was - lol.)
Now imagine that fanbase having a sudden 'epiphany' in the last year or so that this tasteless reboot with all its baggage, and all the abuse they took, "was not so bad after all". Is that realistic? Of course not, because there's no shot in hell that this movie would ever win over those fans. So then where would this sudden substantial change in IMDb score be coming from? As far as I can gather, it can only be coming from the people who fought most hard to defend it in 2016. The change in score happened leading up to the release of Ghostbuster 2021, which these people were pretty vocal in opposing as 'a slap in the face to 2016'. So they obviously decided to activate a campaign to get 2016 movie's IMDb score raised, whether it involved actually WATCHING it or not (which you know they didn't). Naturally the now compromised IMDb opted to go along with these shenanigans, telling you all you need to know how much you can ever trust them again as a movie source.
But fortunately, the influence of these triggered turds IS limited to IMDb, since NO where outside of the site has the movie been actually reevaluated.
What utter and complete BS. Seriously get over yourself. What does getting 'scared off' of watching a movie mean anyway? (Unless you mean because of the ghosts?) You either want to see a movie or you don't, and there is never an obligation to watch anything - not even a woke movie. (Sorry if that offends you!)
Thousands of people didn't suddenly, all at once decide to watch this forgettable little shit remake they had no interest in years ago, and they most certainly didn't change the general consensus from what it was for many years (since even the critics who watched it could barely work up praise for it - they just defended the IDEA of the it). Now, there ARE movies that over time went from poorly received to much more praised - even attaining 'classic' status (Scarface, Vertigo, Blade Runner, even It's a Wonderful Life are some examples)...BUT this tended to happen as gradual reappraisals lead by professional critics and filmmakers, for movies that were decades old and were originally underpromoted, released in poorly cut versions, or were just poorly understood for their time. This is not the case with Grrlbusters, which is only five years old, and has undergone no re-examination from critics OR from fans (ONLY the IMDb score changed). It has been reviewed as between average and unwatchably awful, and is still the same exact movie it was in 2016 - a movie that is virtually impossible to find any fans of. A movie that its own distributing studio disowned.