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Five years after theGhostbustersreboothit theaters, starMelissa McCarthyis still unsure why the female-led film received such harsh criticism.
“There’s no end to stories we can tell, and there’s so many reboots and relaunches and different interpretations, and to say any of them are wrong, I just don’t get it,” McCarthy said.
She continued, “I don’t get the fight to see who can be the most negative and the most hate-filled. Everybody should be able to tell the story they want to tell. If you don’t want to see it, you don’t have to see it.”
Melissa McCarthy.Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic
ThePaul Feig-directed film was the target of some especially nasty onlineattacks, with cast memberLeslie Jonesconsidering deleting her Twitter in 2016 over the hate she received on the platform as some criticized her character for being stereotypical.
In an interview with Jess Cagle’s SiriusXM show last May, Feigsuggested" the anti-Hillary [Clinton] movement" contributed to the hate hisGhostbustersfilm received.
“I think some really brilliant author needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined we were with Hillary [Clinton] and the anti-Hillary movement,” he said. “Everyone was at a boiling point. I don’t know if it was having an African American president for eight years that teed them up, they were just ready to explode.”
The director added, “It’s crazy how people got nuts about women trying to be in power or be in positions they weren’t normally in. And it was an ugly, ugly year.”
Kristen Wiig, who starred inGhostbustersalongsideKate McKinnon, Jones and McCarthy, said in a 2015 interview withThe Los Angeles Timesthat the backlash surrounding just the announcement of the film was “surprising” to her.
“Some people said some really not nice things about the fact that there were women,” she said at the time. “It didn’t make me mad, it just really bummed me out. We’re really honoring those movies.”
Columbia/Feigco/Kobal/Shutterstock
McCarthy hasspoken abouttheGhostbustersbacklash before, tellingEntertainment Weeklyin 2016, “I just thought, ‘Really? Are we still there?,’ " before adding, “It’s a movie. I never gave it another thought. You just have to go, ‘Well, I hope you get out a little more. The world is fun.’ I really think it’s the minority.”
SinceGhostbusterspremiered in 2016, the supernatural franchise has inspiredanother movie, one that completely ignores the 2016 film.Ghostbusters: Afterlife,which was first announced in 2019, is a sequel to the original franchise and does not feature any of the four leads from the 2016 movie. It’s set to be released in November.
When news of the sequel first broke, Jonescalled the film"so insulting” onTwitter.
“Like f—k us. We dint count,” she wrote. “It’s like something trump would do. (Trump voice) ‘Gonna redo ghostbusteeeeers, better with men, will be huge. Those women ain’t ghostbusteeeeers’ ugh so annoying. Such a d—k move. And I don’t give f—k I’m saying something!!”
source: people.com
