[worry]

Maark Abbott, on 10 August 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

worry, on 10 August 2016 - 08:24 AM, said:

Not to wade too far out, but yes, in fact, the IMDB message boards are a bottomless cesspool admixture of vile and inane, and always have been. They are the grandaddy of Web 2.0's legacy of self-righteous mean-spirited blather. They kinda have a special place in my heart.

Sort of like 4chan, but less... Ehhhh... 4channy?

Hmm, there's something about IMDB boards that are unique imo, or at least a step above the anger havens that came after. It's that combination of Youtube comment level quality and pretentious movie dork style self-righteousness, that marries so well together. So it's like conversations that go back and forth between brief one-liner sniping and long movie review length bloviating, but everyone is really trying hard (as opposed to a lot of Web 2.0 & boards, where it's basic trolling). Every single thread is a flame war, but focused like on whether Rizzoli & Isles are better than Franklin & Bash. And it's at the top layer of the web, so it's just as likely to be your middle-aged auntie as a college age film snob. Maximum acrimony over the absolute lowest of stakes subject matter -- I love it.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

I know plenty of men who pretty much said "I've no interest in seeing a female-led Ghostbusters" and decided it was going to be terrible from that fact - but it's up to them. I dare say as much of that is attachment to the originals as it is anything to do with gender if you really scrutinised it.

I have also seen a fair bit of throat-jumping-down on the basis of "You don't like it just because it's women". And all the arguments about how empowering it is. As far as I can see it isn't - can anyone who's seen the film confirm if Leslie Jones' character is as much the Angry Black Chick trope as she looked in the trailers?

For me, a film has to do more than cast women to be empowering for them. It has to put the same work in as any other film, not just get a free pass on its casting choices.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 11 August 2016 - 06:22 AM

[Tsundoku]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 11 August 2016 - 06:21 AM, said:

I know plenty of men who pretty much said "I've no interest in seeing a female-led Ghostbusters" and decided it was going to be terrible from that fact - but it's up to them. I dare say as much of that is attachment to the originals as it is anything to do with gender if you really scrutinised it.

I have also seen a fair bit of throat-jumping-down on the basis of "You don't like it just because it's women". And all the arguments about how empowering it is. As far as I can see it isn't - can anyone who's seen the film confirm if Leslie Jones' character is as much the Angry Black Chick trope as she looked in the trailers?

For me, a film has to do more than cast women to be empowering for them. It has to put the same work in as any other film, not just get a free pass on its casting choices.

Amen.

I admit to being intrigued by the premise, but that first trailer was ... ugh. I didn't hate it because it was women, I hated it because it was poo. I thought Wiig and McKinnon looked cool, but I admit to a bias against McCarthy (except in Gilmore Girls, shhhh ... my secret shame) and Jones was just a terrible stereotype. I liked the idea of Hemsworth doing the himbo thing, thought that could have been hilarious, but it wasn't enough to overcome my "Meh". Being blanket-accused of not liking it because of my gender or perceived cis-whatever-Patriarchy Fuck Yeah wasn't exactly going to drive me to buy a ticket either.

Interesting article on why it flopped, although I do detect a wee hint of smugness or schadenfreude. Is anyone familiar with any known or perceived leanings of this site?

http://careymartell....served-to-bomb/

EDIT: turns out there's a documentary of Ghostbusters fans? "Ghostheads", apparently on Netflix. I never would have though that particular fandom was active or large enough for anything like that. Goes to show, I guess.

This post has been edited by Captain Needa: 11 August 2016 - 09:51 AM

[Andorion]

I haven't seen Ghostbusters, so can't comment regarding that, but on the topic of sexism in movies, I am so angry with Marvel's treatment of Black Widow.

Black Widow to me is the coolest Marvel character. She is smart, competent and formidable. Winter Soldier would be a sad mess without her. And yet Marvel don't give her a movie of her own, and they massacre her character in Avengers 2, making her a Damsel in Distress for Bruce Banner. That storyline was so stupid, so demeaning to her character arc....

Never mind, its a rantworthy thing.

[Macros]

Not to mention we never get to see tony stark in those tight leather trousers

[QuickTidal]

Andorion, on 11 August 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

I haven't seen Ghostbusters, so can't comment regarding that, but on the topic of sexism in movies, I am so angry with Marvel's treatment of Black Widow.

Black Widow to me is the coolest Marvel character. She is smart, competent and formidable. Winter Soldier would be a sad mess without her. And yet Marvel don't give her a movie of her own, and they massacre her character in Avengers 2, making her a Damsel in Distress for Bruce Banner. That storyline was so stupid, so demeaning to her character arc....

Never mind, its a rantworthy thing.

I think PART of the issue with Black Widow is that her character source material...is relatively sexist in the first place. Writing her out of that sexist (and stereotyped) origin SHOULD have happened in Iron Man 2 when she first appeared...but it didn't so they just followed along and ended up writing her more terribly as a result. I mean her role in the Ultimates comic version of the Avengers was mainly love interest for Tony. A kickass one...but still relegated to that role (her first scene in that comic is about a sex tape getting out FFS).

Another issue is that Marvel doesn't really have a first tier female character like Wonder Woman And so they went with the one who often was on the Avengers. They could have gone with She-Hulk...but I hazard they might screw her up...and I think the closest they get after BW is Captain Marvel (who has only been a woman since AFTER the MCU got started).

But yes, I agree Ando...they have damaged Black Widow, and she deserves a whole movie to fly in...as she's easily the best part of Winter Soldier.

[Tattersail_]

I haven't given this much thought until now but I do know people in work, thought the trailers looked shit and that they did make comments about the cast being women. The world is so fucking pc these days that it seems to me that they create these sort of problems/solutions to just piss me off. Why, if they really wanted to re-do Ghostbusters, did they decide to just go along with casting female protagonists? What was the reason, does anyone know? Just because the original had a cast of men? Why not show how far we've come and cast a mixture? Men working with women, you know, like modern industry? It's like those talking about the next James Bond and pushing for 007 to be a woman or a black man just because we haven't had one before. Why not create a new film, with a new title and have your protagonist be whatever you want? The next Tomb Raider should be Idris Elba, no! No it fucking shouldn;t because Tomb Raider is Lara Croft and Lara Croft is Tomb Raider, not Larry Croft. The cast of Ghost Busters is epic, fucking fantastic, but i've had no pull to want to go see it. I cannot pin the reason why, I love Melissa McCarthy and think she's funny in all her films, same with Kristen Wiig, in fact if a movie came out this summer with that same cast called something else, like Fantasm of Wall, i'd probably want to go watch it, cause of the intrigue maybe and the trust in the stars.

[Andorion]

QuickTidal, on 11 August 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

Andorion, on 11 August 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

I haven't seen Ghostbusters, so can't comment regarding that, but on the topic of sexism in movies, I am so angry with Marvel's treatment of Black Widow.

Black Widow to me is the coolest Marvel character. She is smart, competent and formidable. Winter Soldier would be a sad mess without her. And yet Marvel don't give her a movie of her own, and they massacre her character in Avengers 2, making her a Damsel in Distress for Bruce Banner. That storyline was so stupid, so demeaning to her character arc....

Never mind, its a rantworthy thing.

I think PART of the issue with Black Widow is that her character source material...is relatively sexist in the first place. Writing her out of that sexist (and stereotyped) origin SHOULD have happened in Iron Man 2 when she first appeared...but it didn't so they just followed along and ended up writing her more terribly as a result. I mean her role in the Ultimates comic version of the Avengers was mainly love interest for Tony. A kickass one...but still relegated to that role (her first scene in that comic is about a sex tape getting out FFS).

Another issue is that Marvel doesn't really have a first tier female character like Wonder Woman And so they went with the one who often was on the Avengers. They could have gone with She-Hulk...but I hazard they might screw her up...and I think the closest they get after BW is Captain Marvel (who has only been a woman since AFTER the MCU got started).

But yes, I agree Ando...they have damaged Black Widow, and she deserves a whole movie to fly in...as she's easily the best part of Winter Soldier.

I don't know a lot about the Black Widow source material but given how fantastic she was in Iron Man 2 and Avengers, I would have taken the Red Room stuff lightly touched upon in Avengers 2, and made a movie with the whole demon-of-the-past trope with some flashbacks and linking that to Hydra and hence Captain America storyline.

[Abyss]

Re Black Widow - the character is rooted in a (rumoured) Soviet program that basically produced sex assassins. Comic-history wise, her first few appearances involved her seducing Hawkeye or whoever and then making him jealous so he would kill Iron Man or whoever. They could jetison the sex elements and just focus on the assassin part, but it wouldn't really ring true to the character. The link with Banner in Avengers 2... i waver because it's playing down to the character but utterly something Fury would ask her to do, and it's not like anyone else could have done.

But she could totally carry her own movie and it's a shame it will likely never happen.

Re GHOSTBUSTERS - at root it just isn't that great a movie. The cast verges on secondary. But that will be lost on many.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 11 August 2016 - 02:41 PM, said:

Re Black Widow

But she could totally carry her own movie and it's a shame it will likely never happen.

If WONDER WOMAN succeeds, and I expect it will, it will be the biggest thing that sticks in the MCU's craw...that DC beat them to a SOLID female-led superhero movie. ESPECIALLY when they had 8 goddamned years to make one, and they chose not to. CAP MARVEL will be too little too late at that point.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 11 August 2016 - 02:48 PM

[D'rek]

Studlock, on 10 August 2016 - 07:23 PM, said:

@ D'rek--the base line numbers of voting before the film was out was 12, 921. 7, 547 who were men and 1, 564 who were women. These aren't insignificant samples of people (both men and women). Self-selection may be playing a part however (i.e. people who are more emotionally invested in voting voted, and that's why there is a bigger divergence between men and women) so it could still be a 'vocal minority' in that sense.

Yeah, but the upper-normative line numbers indicate a comparative decrease of 72.8725% which is within 3 normative pars of sigma. So there's really no non-trivial way we can discount the trans-associative effect and establish a concurrent periodical supposition, ergo we cannot establish an accurate Gosset-Neyman estimation within any sort of plausible confidence interval.

QuickTidal, on 11 August 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

Another issue is that Marvel doesn't really have a first tier female character like Wonder Woman

Especially not one they still had the movie rights to...

QuickTidal, on 11 August 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

They could have gone with She-Hulk...but I hazard they might screw her up...

D'rek wants a (good) She-Hulk movie!!!

I wonder, if they did do a She-Hulk movie, and did it with the later iconic version of her (when she doesn't even need to be angry to switch forms), do you think it would still "work" and people would "get it" with modern audiences?

(Not that I'm 100% sure I even "get it"... but from my understanding the idea is that only male comic characters would ever get the unlimited-powers-for-good without a big downside (a la Superman), while any female characters that got superpowers would always have to have either a horribly tragic backstory and/or get consumed by the powers and be evil. So the idea was for She-Hulk to be subversive of that - she gets amazing superpowers (traditionally masculine ones at that) with pretty much zero downside (unlike He-Hulk who has to go rage monster to use them) and she doesn't turn evil/destructive from them. Does that sound about right?)

[Nevyn]

Studlock, on 10 August 2016 - 07:23 PM, said:

So apparently Apt failed statistics. When looking at Ghostbuster's specifically the average rating is 4.1 out of 10, average men rating is 3.6 out of 10, and average women rating is 7.7 out of 10 (which is a non-great score, basically agreeing with critics opinion of it being a fine movie, nothing less and nothing more). What's interesting here is that the men's average score is significantly lower than the women's average score--highlighting a pretty big difference in opinion between men and women on this specific movie before it even came out. None of your conclusions actually make any statistical sense (but aren't apparently because statistical analysis is a pseudo-science--I doubt you understand enough actual science to come to that conclusion, and you definitely don't understand statistics enough to come to any sensible conclusion). That there is more men than women explains why the average is so low. And this follows his other work on the issue: http://fivethirtyeig...aimed-at-women/


The funny thing is the article didn't even say the movie was good, or great, or even worth your time. If you had actually read instead of letting your own implicit, (or in the case of embarrassing individual who uses terms like SJW seriously explicit) bias you would have come to a similar conclusion. That article wasn't about the aesthetic quality of Ghostbusters, it was using Ghostbuster as case study to highlight a bias between men and women when it comes to rating things on the internet--a topic that come up in the thread before hand. Now you argue this is 'vocal minority' or that people on the internet are 'assholes' (though that wouldn't follow--if people on the internet were simply assholes, and there wasn't divergence between opinion between men and women you would see a similar rating for both men and women), but the way you're arguing it is idiotic. Of course you can dislike the movie without being explicitly or implicitly sexist about (and looking at the 7.7 rating, most women weren't that hot about it either) but that article shows that a rather larger number of men have a bias toward that film because it is a women-centric movie (if not in its themes then its casting). None of your arguments have actually refuted that, or gave a more convincing explanation as to why the divergence is there.

@ D'rek--the base line numbers of voting before the film was out was 12, 921. 7, 547 who were men and 1, 564 who were women. These aren't insignificant samples of people (both men and women). Self-selection may be playing a part however (i.e. people who are more emotionally invested in voting voted, and that's why there is a bigger divergence between men and women) so it could still be a 'vocal minority' in that sense.

I have not seen the movie and have little opinion on it.. But wanted to respond to the bolded portion (by me) above because it is not a true statement, and is especially problematic when taking someone else to task for their understanding of stats.

What the numbers in that article show is that:
On IMDB, far more men rated it than women.
On IMDB, men gave it a far lower average rating.

It does not say WHY either of those is the case. The conclusion that male bias accounts for the difference is your own. The stat only shows that the difference exists.

[QuickTidal]

That's a good point about how they'd handle She-Hulk and if audiences would get it. I'm not sure to be honest. I would HOPE they went with the revisionist version. The MCU has a formula..and one would hope that they could fit She-Hulk's revisions int that formula....because if not, then they'll screw her up.

[Tsundoku]

Interesting point about who is more likely to be a victim of violence out in public. Some stats I did not know.

http://www.news.com....00f9ca2e4aa259c

[Tsundoku]

An article about compulsory national service for both genders in Norway. I put it in the 'whatever you want' thread in the Inn, but it could have easily gone here:

http://forum.malazan...ost__p__1249860

Makes me wonder about all the trendy attention-seeking flakes (genuine hermaphrodites notwithstanding) who identify as the 'gender of the week' though.

This post has been edited by Captain Needa: 28 August 2016 - 09:29 AM