Castle Magus

"Here’s my new mashup this time featuring Gremlins and Ghostbusters. Both movies aired in 1984 and both have some of the most iconic 80s themes songs."

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I've watched Ghostbusters fairly recently, but it has been a while since I've seen any of the Gremlins movies.

You know how TERF means "trans-exclusionary radical feminist," right? I'm starting to feel like there needs to be a term/acronym that means something along the lines of "asexual/aromantic-exclusionary (radical?) ...um... LGBT-supporters... ...?" Needs some work, but that would be the gist of it. This is assuming, of course, that there isn't already a term/acronym like that and I'm simply not aware of it. And, with that said, this certainly isn't a new phenomenon or anything.

Take this Polygon article about the most recent Ghostbusters movie, for example. Basically, the article seems to take the stance of "They must kiss/confess love/fuck/whatever, or it just doesn't count at all." Fuck off with that shit. Look, if they made another new Ghostbusters movie involving these characters, and they made Phoebe openly gay, I would be totally fine with that (and if other Ghostbusters "fans" have a problem with that, they can fuck off, too), but at the same time, don't go shitting all over things that don't exactly match up with how you wish they were. "Not every queer romance needs to be clearly spelled out on screen, but..." has very strong "I'm not a racist, but..."/"I'm not a homophobe, but..." energy.

Also... Phoebe Spengler is "so, so queer-coded" because of... her hair and the way she dresses? Uh, so, was Egon Spengler "so, so queer-coded," too, then? Because Mckenna Grace in these new movies was explicitly and intentionally made up to look almost exactly like how Harold Ramis looked in the original movies. I mean, sure, it could be both of those things, but it's way more the latter than the former in intention, though. And I don't recall anyone trying to claim that Phoebe was "so, so queer-coded" in Afterlife (especially considering the chemistry she had with Podcast [a male character] in that movie).

And, lastly, "in case you're lucky enough to have not watched the newest new Ghostbusters movies" (emphasis mine). Implying that anyone who has watched them is "unlucky"? Fuck off with that shit, too. The new Ghostbusters movies (i.e. Afterlife and Frozen Empire, anyway[1]) are fine. Admittedly, I didn't like Frozen Empire nearly as much as I did Afterlife, myself, but it's not "a frankly bad movie" either, and I don't feel "unlucky" to have seen it.

(I don't feel comfortable putting the "homophobia" tag on this because it doesn't really fit, and I don't have an "acephobia"/"aphobia" tag yet [nor do I feel like putting one just on this one post], but if I ever, sadly, find a reason to make another post in the future that would need a tag like that, I'll add it and backtag this one with it as well.)

[1] - I thought the 2016 movie (Ghostbusters: Answer the Call or whatever the fuck they're calling it now) was okay, too (despite the intensely shitty trailers for it), but that's neither here nor there, as that movie has nothing to do with the newer ones, which were actual, passing-the-torch sequels of the originals, rather than a failed attempt at a reboot.

Follow-up to this.

I also find it interesting that the NovelAI image generation thing definitely knows who some fictional characters are, but not others.

For instance, even if it decides to embellish or take liberties at times, it mostly at least kind of knows:

• Mr. Spock (the only input I gave the AI was, simply, "Mr. Spock"): #1, #2, #3.
• Captain Picard (again, prompt was only "Captain Picard"): #1, #2, #3
• Superman: #1, #2, #3
• Batman: #1, #2, #3 (though with the "Batman" prompt, it really seemed to want to make Batman into Batwoman or Batgirl, though, for instance:) #4, #5, #6
• Wolverine: #1, #2, #3

I'm going to stop there, at least with saving and uploading, because I just don't much feel like messing with it more, at least to that extent, for now. I did try a few more prompts that I won't bother uploading.

For "Captain Kirk" (the first prompt I tried after "Mr. Spock"), it just gave kind of generic looking blonde guys wearing vaguely Star Trek-ish uniforms, but that was as close as it got, so it at least sort of recognized him, but not really?

Others it didn't seem to know at all, though, like "Mr. Data" (just random girls, mostly) or "Dr. McCoy" (just random doctor looking people, both male and female).

It definitely knew "Spider-Man" (though it tended to sometimes give him extra limbs... you know, like a spider, so it wasn't exactly wrong, per se). And none of the several results I got even tried to feminize him the way it did with Batman.

It knew "Super Mario" enough to give me characters that looked like Princess Peach or Daisy or Rosalina, and sometimes they were even wearing a Mario-ish hat. It also gave a couple rather disturbing images of (what kind of looked like) Mario's head on a generic female body.

It did a better job (for the most part) with "Sonic the Hedgehog" than what the first movie initially did with him.

And it knew "Samus Aran," for sure, though a lot of the results for that particular prompt were of a rather NSFW-ish nature.

It also knew "Godzilla."

"Ghostbusters" was rather interesting because though it mostly just gave generic anime-looking people with vaguely Ghostbusters-ish clothing and (sometimes) equipment, rather than any specific characters from the movies (or cartoons), a couple of the results were actually of landmarks that looked quite like the GB firehouse or the Shandor building (complete with ghost vortex above it) rather than people, and there was even an image of a hearse (not Ecto-1, mind you, just a plain red hearse, but still, that's somewhat relevant to Ghostbusters), or even images of what looked vaguely like the ghost in the Ghostbusters logo. All of that with just a "Ghostbusters" prompt. I kind of wish now that I'd saved those (though it probably wouldn't be too difficult to get other similar images later, if I really wanted to).

It even kind of knew "Doctor Who," giving me guys who sort of looked like The Doctor (typically David Tennant or Matt Smith looking guys, and also a couple Jodie Whittaker looking women), but it also gave me a couple of Dalek-ish and Cybermen-ish aliens. And... an image of a person with what looked a bit like a TARDIS/police box for a head, which I just had to save.

And on that note, I think I'll stop right there, for real.

(Transcribed and expanded a bit from a Twitter thread, rather than just embedding a bunch of tweets.)


(Previous trailer, for reference.)

I'm seeing some people calling this Ghostbusters 3. This is (subjectively speaking and in my opinion) incorrect, because I consider Ghostbusters: The Video Game[1] to be Ghostbusters 3. Afterlife would be Ghostbusters 4. To be fair, Afterlife is the third movie to follow the original two movies, so in that sense, it is basically GB3; but it's not the thirdsecond sequel (and the story of The Video Game was based, at least in part, on the old script for what would have been the third movie, Ghostbusters III: Hellbent, had it actually been made).

The 2016 Ghostbusters movie was okay for what it was (despite the trailers for it sucking rancid asshole), and I liked it well enough once I finally saw the movie itself, but since that was a remake and not a sequel, I don't consider it to be Ghostbusters 3, either. The trailers for Afterlife, by contrast, are doing it right, i.e. they're making me want to see the movie. Doesn't guarantee that the movie itself will be good, of course, but it's a good start, at least.

(EDIT) And yeah, I watched the trailer with the mini-Stay Puft guys invading a grocery store and a ghost trap rolling around on a RC car, and I too couldn't help but think "man, this movie is far too somber and solemnly self-referential and pretentiously up its own ass."

</sarcasm> ¬_¬ (/EDIT)

While I'm on the subject of Ghostbusters, I still someday want to go back and watch all of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, too. (Or, at least, up to the point where it switched to "Slimer And," though I'd probably just go ahead and watch all of it.) That and Extreme Ghostbusters. To this day, the only episode(s) of that that I've seen all the way through is the two-part series finale, "Back in the Saddle," which brought back the original Ghostbusters.

And, just for the sheer hell of it, I kind of want to watch the live-action show The Ghost Busters and the follow-up cartoon based on that (both of which have fuck all to do with any of the above) someday, too. I recall one day when I was a kid saying that I wanted to see Ghostbusters, meaning the 1984 movie of course, but when the people with whom I was spending the night that day got back from the video rental place, they had that live action thing which had nothing to do with what I thought of as Ghostbusters (having only seen The Real Ghostbusters up to that point). I was disappointed at first, but it actually wasn't too bad, at least based on the almost nothing that I recall of it now. I just remember that it wasn't terrible, at least, or so I thought as a kid, even though I still rather would have seen the movie. ¬_¬

[1] - Note, I have not played the Remastered version myself, as I have the original version on Steam and see no real reason to rebuy the remaster, but since Remastered is apparently the only version available to buy on Steam now, oh well.

<Alucard> I'm interested in this. </Alucard>

Okay, so while the actual 2016 Ghostbusters movie itself was all right, the trailers for it, in my opinion, sucked ass.

This, on the other hand, I find to be a decidedly non-ass-sucking trailer for a new Ghostbusters movie.

Just... don't look at the comments under that video, though. *headdesk*

Yeah, I finally got around to watching the 2016 Ghostbusters movie the other day.

It's fine. It's good. It's mostly inoffensive. It's not great the way radical feminists would make it out to be, nor is it terrible the way Irredeemably Toxic Shithole-types would make it out to be either.

I also watched Star Trek Beyond a day or two before that. I was actually more annoyed with that than I was with Ghostbusters. As I've said elsewhere, at least when I said "Man, this is stupid" while watching Ghostbusters, at least it was done with a smile still on my face. Not so much with Beyond. It was far too action-y, as I feared from watching the trailer, and all the cutesy dumbshit like using Beastie Boys as a weapon and Kirk on a motorcycle and all that was just stupid. I did like the callbacks to Star Trek Enterprise in Beyond though. That was pretty neat.

Oh, and I watched The Force Awakens and Rogue One as well. Those were straight up great. For TFA, it did indeed show that the style of J.J. Abrams is much better suited to Star Wars than it was to Star Trek.

My main complaint, overall, was against the Wilhelm scream. (EDIT, years later) Since that link there no longer works, given that my original Twitter account no longer exists, the gist of that now non-existent Twitter thread, as best as I can recall now, is that I basically think the Wilhelm scream is overused, and its use will completely bring me right out of my suspension of disbelief when I'm watching something that uses it, similar to the Howie scream and the like. (/EDIT, years later)

(EDIT) Having finally seen the movie... yeah. This is 98% accurate (again, except for the "Meninist" stuff at the end). (/EDIT)

I don't know how good this is as a review of the movie itself, as I still haven't seen it yet, but as a "review" of all aspects of the Fan Dumb and Hate Dumb surrounding this movie, this is absolutely spot on.

(Except for the bit at the end involving the asshole "Meninist" characters. That I found to be unconvincing, because if they'd truly been representative of actual Irredeemably Toxic Shithole-types, they simply would have threatened to rape and/or kill the "little girl" who claimed to like the movie, as is their wont, rather than decide to "go complain about real shit.")

I considered reviewing Ghostbusters 2016, but I don't have to. I'm in near total agreement with @BlackNerd - https://t.co/ArORfUvR6O

— Dan Shive (@dantheshive) July 16, 2016

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I've seen the Black Nerd in a Nostalgia Critic crossover, but I think I'ma finally subscribe to him outright. Maybe go back and watch some of his old stuff. If nothing else, he seems happier and less negative/pessimistic than most of the other reviewers I watch.

(Also, wait... Chris Hemsworth was in nuTrek? What? Who did he play? ...George Kirk? That was Thor? Holy shit, I had no idea.)

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Yeah... yeah, that's about what I expected. Interest in ever seeing this movie myself: circling the toilet bowl, on its way down.

(EDIT) Joe's surprised that they're talking about turning nuBusters into a new franchise? Hell, they were already talking about that shit over a year ago. (/EDIT)

...and it's not even out yet.

( Embedded tweets behind cut )