The all-female reboot of “Ghostbusters” had a great opening last night, taking in $3.4 million at U.S. theaters. This puts the movie on its way to finishing its opening weekend around $38-$40 million (though some trackers believe it could hit up to $50 million). That’s actually $1 million more than “The Heat” earned on the evening before its opening night.
Along the way, Paul Feig’s comedy, starring Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon has earned another fan: Harold Ramis’ daughter, Violet Ramis Stiel. Her late father starred in the 1984 “Ghostbusters.”
In an open letter published on Splitsider, Ramis Stiel explains that, since the announcement of the film came so soon after he father’s death, she was initially wary of the project. But that the misogynistic hate it received turned her opinion around.
“As much as I wanted to stomp my foot and align myself with the opposition,” she writes, “there was no way I could stand behind the viciousness and ugliness that seemed to fuel these fundamentalists. From flat-out rejection of women as funny, to remarks about the actors’ looks, to the invocation of GB84 as ‘untouchable’ and disgust with ‘reboot culture’ generally, I was shocked by the anger and outrage. Are these people for real? I wondered. Sure, the timing sucks, but damn! I mourn my dad’s absence in this world as much, if not more, than anyone, but for people to say that he is “rolling in his grave” or would never have let a female-centered cast happen is INSANE. In his personal life, Harold Ramis was a kind, generous, and gracious person. Professionally, he was always about sharing the spotlight and making the other guy look good. Please, stop using my dad as an excuse to hate the new ‘Ghostbusters.’ It degrades his memory to spew bile in his name.”
Having a daughter herself, Ramis Stiel totally now gets what a big deal this is for little girls. To give girls a chance to look up to their own ghost-busting idols makes even the close timing to the death of her father have meaning.
“The new movie is not the original and it’s not trying to be. Give it a chance and go see it! Or don’t, that’s fine. But resist the urge to hold on so tightly to the past that you choke off new life. I reserve my right as an almost 40-year-old to mutter about how everything was better when I was young, but let’s let this generation have their own ‘Ghostbusters.’ Let’s give my nine-year-old daughter a chance to put on a proton pack and feel like a badass. In the spirit of my dad and his love for movies and comedy above all, I’ll be there for ‘Ghostbusters’ 2016 opening weekend with my kids, eating popcorn, wearing my Egon Spengler tribute pin, cheering on the new crew, and laughing loudly, from the heart.”
And much like Violet Ramis Stiel is ignoring what the Internet has to say about the film, so too should you. As Walt Hickey over at 538 points out, “Ghostbusters” is a perfect example of how the online film ratings system is broken.
As we pointed out earlier in the week, Ghostbros are flooding the IMDb page for the film, giving it 1/10 ratings, despite the literal impossibility that they had even seen the film. Hickey brought up the fact that men intentionally sabotage the reviews of entertainment aimed at women earlier this summer. But when it comes to “Ghostbusters,” he sees the IMDb case as only a small part of the larger online ratings system issue.
“Most fundamentally, single-number aggregations — like those used by sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and IMDb — are a pitiful way of explaining the diverse views of critics,” he writes. “More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women, and that appears to be happening with the new ‘Ghostbusters.’”
Essentially, we have to figure it out for ourselves. As Hickey concludes, “The moral of this story [is that] each site that aggregates ratings and reviews has its own skew one way or another, and it’s up to the user to determine which heuristic most accurately matches what they’d consider an ideal rating.”
And judging from the pre-sale numbers for “Ghostbusters,” it seems like a lot of people have already decided they’re going to see it. We’ll have to check out its full box-office performance come Monday morning.
