To guys complaining about the long lapse in uploads: it's not like he has an entire production team. It takes a long time doing this stuff, and I doubt he wants to ignore family/friends just to cover such a stupid movie.
@@ThePreciseClimber , Winston literally is just an average black guy from New York in the 1980’s, and he isn’t overly stoic; he’s not a man baby, and he isn’t a womanizer either.
Yea it's very funny but he was in all regards, supposed to be the every man in the 1980's. He was the guy who didn't go to college, had a blue collar collar background, and in the original scripts was a decorated Marine Corp. veteran, and of course the token black guy.
Fun fact: The announcement trailer for this movie was uploaded on February 14, 2016 on Valentine's Day. In Ghostbusters 2, when Peter asks the psychic woman when would the world end, she says Valentine's Day, 2016. Tragic.
It really helps to realize that Ghostbusters was shot as a horror movie. Compare it to other horror movies of the time and it has similar lighting, camera work and tone. A lot of the comedy came from the deadpan way they handled the horror.
The point of the GB was that it was about four blue collar enterpeneurs starting a company, and they were buddies at this job doing their thing like any other jobber. It just happens their thing is hunting ghosts. They werent really heroes, or very strong or brave, they just are there doing their job, getting their paycheck and leaving, maybe saving the city in the process.
@@yusukeelric That's what help sold the movie or as bit of writing genius it just worked. There's a certain reality with their intelligence. In another of my comments I mentioned the core Ghostbusters (minus Winston) were very smart and they didn't actually spend their days on the paranormal side of their studies before forming Ghostbusters. Truth in television. Their actual credible degrees were shit in terms of finding a non-research job. Psychology is the only legitimate field but Venkman's degree is non-clinical and you really couldn't see a guy like him being sensitivity to people anyways. Metallurgy was a garbo field in the 80s, and Quantum and Nuclear physics? LMAO. Outside of teaching none of these provided practical jobs for their time.
It also helps to realize that Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't really shot as a movie at all. Paul Feige allegedly didn't have a script as such and instead very loosely followed the events in the original Ghostbusters. This video already comments on the directing (or lack thereof) style Feige used for GB2016: - tell the actors in a couple of sentences how he thinks the scene should play out - start rolling the cameras and shout "be funny" - never shout "stop" but instead keep the cameras rolling so the actors go on and on and on This is the main reason why GB2016 looks more like a stream of SNL sketches that have a very loose connection to each other than an actual movie.
And I think that's a key element of a lot of good comedy. It doesn't hit you over the head with it. Unless you're a Mel Brooks, you can't just do joke-joke-joke.
When it comes to the comedy writing of this movie I remember the words of a famously insane criminal, "If you have to explain the joke, then there is no joke."
From what I understand, Winston was the stand in character representation of the audience themselves. He was just your average guy looking for a job, he wasnt a scientist, didnt know anything about ghosts. This makes him the target for the exposition when it was needed as a proxy for the audience. He also represented standard reactions, where the other Ghostbusters were scientists whos goals and purpose was to be around ghosts and see all the spooky, dangerous stuff, Winston was the one who had never been around those sorts of things and had the most skeptical reactions like what anyone would have if they saw these things. This not only gave the audience some one to sympathize and connect with on a "yeah, thats about how I would react in that situation." but he also served as the grounded in reality type having to process everything that was happening from a skeptical viewpoint. "If the pay is good, ill believe anything you say" which meant they had to convince him of everything along the way, like with the twinky scene, so he could understand the situation he was getting himself in and him having to adapt. At least thats how I always saw him.
Absolutely. That's also how he was portrayed in Ghostbusters 2, in the Ghostbusters video game (which basically used the script from the cancelled Ghostbusters 3), and in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Hell, I think that it's also how they portrayed Winston in both of the animated TV series based on the Ghostbusters.
@@nadrewod999 For Real Ghostbusters, yeah he was the every man type. They also made him a bit younger compared to his movie counterpart. Not sure about the cameo he had in Extreme Ghostbusters along with Ray and Peter. When that originally aired I wasn’t watching it. I didn’t watch all of the original series either once it became the Slimer show and Janine and Peter became boring. >_>
Aside from just being the clueless initiate to the complicated worldbuilding and exposition, he was also the straight man to the more goofy or unusual characters-Ray was a clown, Egon was an autistic robot, and Peter was a speed fiend carnival magician; Winston's subdued handling of the insanity around him was essential to highlighting the comedy. When *everybody's* some kind of wacky cartoon caricature, then none of them stand out as uniquely funny, it just makes the movie seem desperate-but when you have a good straight man like Ernie Hudson, it gives the viewer a frame of reference that casts the more absurd elements in high relief without breaking willing suspension of disbelief. It's the reason performers like John Cleese and David Mitchell are so exceptionally well regarded in comedy circles.
Credit where it's due: When Patty called the ghost the 3rd scariest thing on the train, I actually laughed. That was more or less the ONLY time I laughed in the entire movie.
A sign that your actors are good at improv humor is when other actors struggle to not laugh in character. I've seen it countless times in games and shows and movies. A scene was clearly improv, and you see the preformers struggle to hold a straight face for the scene. If you look at the other actors they never struggle, or hold back a laugh.
Like in that scene in the Office, where Jim stabs Dwight’s workout ball and he immediately rushes off screen to laugh because the ball pops and makes Dwight fall on his ass instead of slowly deflating like in other takes.
A great example is the Sonic 06 dub. They laugh a lot and their jokes are actually funny. I don't the problem is simply that there's improv. It's that they actors are not good at it. If you're gonna do an entire movie with improv, get people that can improv.
I love the times that Colin Mochrie got Ryan Styles to break down laughing on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (look up "arctic tern" with their names for an example)
Well one of the very few things the Nostalgia Critic said that was wise was that the difference between drama and comedy is that drama can be bad in so many different ways but with a comedy there’s only so many ways you can say “That’s not funny”.
@@ablosch2452 Most people don't, some dislike him because they think he's whiny and obnoxious, other people dislike him because of the whole "Change the channel" fiasco when it was revealed that he was pretty careless about the toxic people he hired in the workplace (Mike Mchaud and that guy who played Jew Wario). I still watch his old reviews from time to time but I don't really keep up with channel awesome anymore.
Winston is just your average likeable guy. The scene where the ghost train passes through him as he screams is great. My friend bought this movie as a joke gift for me. I have always hated joke gifts because they are a waste of money, but this was a waste of money that contributed to their DVD sales profit...
When you really look at his performance he was the straight man out of the group since he doesn't have any science expertise in which some of the stuff (and by extension to the audience) needed to be explained in layman's term. Along with asking the questions that none of the other 3 were thinking at the time.
"And then you have Winston, the black guy" To be fair, in the ghostbusters animated series, which is meant to take place right after the first GB movie, you had several episodes in that where Winston saved the day, because he didn't think like a scientist but as a regular joe, which is what the circumstance needed to help solve it.
I love how Possum just makes jokes just after explaining how to do good jokes, and how ghostbusters 2016 fails. They actually make me laugh, and in the next second I'm like: "Ohhh, so that was what he was talking about!"
The Paul Anderson Resident Evil movies are equally incoherent "adaptations" of their source material. He could have a field day with that franchise as it started off mediocre and proceeded to dive off a cliff, both as adaptations and as movies on their own merit. Doing the whole series in one video like Elvis the Alien did, oh that could be a beautiful teardown with how utterly insane the retcons get by the end.
They should have called it Jokebusters. There are people laughing uncontrollably then these 4 come in and suck the humor out of the building then send you a bill.
You know... The wonton soup thing reminded me of a joke I once heard which had a simular structure but managed to land. The joke was part of a longer comedy performance, and essentially it goes like this: "A man walks through the forest. All of the sudden a robber shows up, threatening the man 'your money or your life!'. The man begs 'Please Sir, I don't have any money.' The robber asks 'Got a watch? Maybe any other valuables?' and the man says no. So the robber says 'Well, I guess you can carry me for a bit instead'." and that's when the joke ends. Of course, the audience doesn't really react to it, there's nothing funny about it. The comedian then remarks that this didn't land in the way he's used to and moves on. Throughout the performance, he tries to re-tell the joke a few times, every time eliciting no applaus or laughter and every time wondering what went wrong (did he screw up the performance, or is the audience maybe just too dense to get his high-brow sense of humor?). At the end of the performance, he tells the joke one last time: "A man walks through the forest. All of the sudden a robber shows up, threatening the man 'your money or your life!'. The man responds 'Of course, here take my purse. There's three hundred bucks in there!'. 'Aw, crap', responds the robber. 'That means I gotta walk today!'" Of course, the difference as to why the wonton joke falls flat whereas the robber joke didn't is that the robber joke exists on a meta level. It works much better because the audience gets told it's a joke and because it is acknowledged that the joke kinda sucks, just to then subvert those expectations in the end when it's revealed that every single repetition is part of a continuous plot. The joke is played on the audience rather than on any of the characters.
One day my father and my uncle were walking along the beach. Lots of sand, seashells and seaweed, of course. But at one point they come across a brick that's just sitting there inexplicably. My uncle nudges my father and says, "I bet I can throw that brick higher up in the air than you can." My father is game. So he takes the brick, hefts it in his hand for a bit, and then hurls it up in the air with all his might. Wooosh... thump. A pretty good throw. But my uncle is unimpressed. He picks up the brick, twirls his arm around and puts his whole body into the throw. The brick goes up and up... but it doesn't come down. Wait... not funny? Well I have a better one: This joke take place decades ago during the time in aviation when planes flew lower and passengers were allowed to do all kinds of things on the plane. On this particular flight, a lady was sitting on the plane with a small dog on her lap, but the dog clearly was having a poor experience. It kept yipping over and over and loudly, annoying all the other passengers. The woman, however, was just as annoyed by the man sitting next to her, who was smoking a huge cigar and filling the whole plane up with smoke. Of the two of them, the man broke first, saying to the woman, "If you can't shut your dog up, I'm going to throw it out the airplane door!" Just as fed up, the woman says, "Only if you throw that cigar out first!" And yes, they've both become so frustrated and sick that that after a few moments of negotiation they both decide to go along with it. But since they don't trust each other, they're going to throw them out at the same time. So they count... one, two, three... and they both toss the dog and the cigar out the door. But the woman immediately runs to the back of the plane, kicks open the emergency exit, and manages to snatch the dog as it blows past. And do you know what was in its mouth? That's right... the BRICK.
@@gustavferreira627 I just wish the devs realized it should aim for a more casual audience. Because most people would associate a game about ungulates fighting to be very gimmicky & silly for a hyper competitive fighter game. There doesn't seem to be any downside to being casual, they would still develop a competitive community but it would be easier to get into.
" and winston, the black guy" That alone made me laugh harder than the entire movie. To be honest, the dynamic of handyman way out of his field played well off of the others more tempered reactions.
Thank god you're back and well. I was worried the feminists got you cancelled. Unrelated edit: Please open a PO box, I'd like to send you some physical -garbage- fanmail.
One good example of how comedy isn't just constant jokes is "The Martian" which is a Sci-Fi/Drama movie, but won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. The Martian has a few well timed jokes that change the overall tone of the movie, and makes it more funny than it is dramatic.
With regards to stupid characters, they eed to have internal logic. I'm reminded of a scene from Red vs blue. Back during blood gulch the blues were about to go on a trip and Church asks the other two if they're ready and we learn Caboose has filled his gun with crayons (pretty sure that was what happened) Church assumes that makes sense to Caboose and moves on. Another good one from Caboose is "...time is made of circles, that is why clocks are round" that's stupid but it has internal logic.
Here I was just thinking "Gosh, when will Possum drop part 2 of his Ghostbusters 2016 review?" And lo, does it appear! Keep on keepin' on, Possum. This small cephalopod appreciates you.
Voice of the Unfailing Logic once said: "Humor is the easiest existing art form. If you can find flaws from yourself or from other people, then you know how to tell a joke."
Winston was the common every man that would do, say, or believe anything as long as there was a paycheck in it. He was the straight man that grounded all of their crazy scientific mayhems.
Scorsese is a master at allowing improvisation. The Joe Pesci scene in Goodfellas, "I'm funny how". The Matthew McConaughey Beating his chest and humming in The Wolf of Wall Street are two great moments of improv... but they were just moments, one scene, not an entire damn movie. great improv is hard, the best ensemble cast I felt was Second City TV and the best stand up comic that improvised all the time was Robin Williams.
What's interesting about the Straight Man principle is that post-Zeppo Marx Brothers proved that you could actually have full-sized comedic sequences while both/all characters are a comic relief, but that was because they employed an interesting trick that this movie clearly didn't think of: The main characters (Groucho and Chico) would talk nonsense almost constantly, however their own nonsense were not the same - as such, when Chico would start talking nonsense, it made just as little sense to Groucho as it did other, non-comedic characters, and thus, for a brief second, Groucho would take on the role of the straight man, and vice versa. If the two characters were just two different mouthpieces for the exact same ideas and inaccurate world-views, then these comedic bits wouldn't have been funny at all. On a side note, I think at the 21:50 bit, after playing the audio and video super-fast, you should've cut to Dark Helmet saying: "No go past this part - in fact never play this again!"
6:12 Joking? No, I think that was a threat. The current cut of the movie is his warning to us, the 3-hour cut, if it does exist, is the full on assault. Also, another good point about the Slime scenes that can be made is how the original movie established Egon's love for sample collecting, which he tasks Peter with in the beginning when they investigate the library. Peter's interaction with the slime in the library helps set up his iconic reaction when he's slimed later on in the hotel.
I'm typically the type of person who's like "Well, people like what they like; I won't judge." Not with this movie though. If you genuinely enjoyed this movie, then please don't recommend ANYTHING to me. Ever. Also, I'm apparently a woman who hates women ... Even though I grew up watching a plethora of funny women throughout my life. Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, The Golden Girls, Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne, Joan Rivers, Madeline Kahn ... But apparently Ghostbusters 2016 was the first time women starred in any comedic roles ever. Uh huh. Sure.
I know right? I suspect you have seen Clue just from the list of very funny women you named off. You know the scene I am talking about. Every time I watch Clue I just go in to my horse laugh when that one comes on.
@@targetdreamer257 Clue is an amazing movie because of its cast. The cast made a pretty basic movie into something REALLY special and hilarious. And Madelyn Kahn is iconic in it.
Agreed; Lucille Ball was hard-working, talented, fortunate, and successful. She had no need to defend herself. Such winners never have to lash out at others for setbacks, because if they do have reverses, they, honestly and bravely, identify and correct what they did wrong. Incompetent people blame everybody else for their failures, and repeat the same behaviours. Men or women, culture, race, etc., the same facts apply. Success is a behaviour, not merely a result.
"it-it- the f it flam flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing breathl heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heathing..." Horse laugh every time!
One issue with the characters is there are examples where the main cast are all “comic relief” characters who play off of each other. Take the Marx Brothers for example where each brother has a specific comedic role. Groucho specializes in insults and quips, Harpo can’t speak so he relies on visual gags and slapstick, Chico is versatile but he mostly makes puns and plays off of his brothers, and Zeppo is the straight man but also a parody of the romantic lead in films back then. Each brother has their own brand of humor and they are able to play off each other really well and the humor is smart, the Swordfish scene from Horsefeathers is a great example of this. Then you have films like these where their main source of humor is the characters screaming, being dumb, and gross out humor.
I have an idea about the wonton joke to connect it to the plot hilariously: Gabby only gets one wonton in her soup, but later they're chasing a Chinese ghost into a Chinese restaurant. Somehow she gets turned around chasing him and then falls (or gets spilt on) in a vat of soup and a thousand wonton fall on her (or the ghost knocks them on her).
Y’know, now that you mention Mr. Pecker (as my dad fondly calls him due to how obnoxious he is in the original film), I’m sure he loved seeing his old nemesis Bill Murray take on a spiritual successor to his character as the actor who portrayed him admitted to getting harassed in public for years afterward due to folks not liking what he did in the film.
And top that off with "we, the writers and cast and crew of the new one, think that you being buried in marshmallow creme after being mocked wasn't enough; you should've died."
8:04 "Venkman stares back in horror" The combination of this sentence and Bill Murray's dead look in his eyes is several orders of magnitude more funny than Ghostbusters (2016) ever was to me.
Scenes draggin on for far too long is usually a sign of inexperienced writers. That's why lot of amateurs fall into that trap. FYI: I am working on a GDD in what little spare time I have. I want my game to be a tribute to old N64/ PS1 RPGs, especially FF9, Valkyrie Profile and Paper Mario. Obviously I had to learn how to write scenes and characters, as well as dialogue. The script is over 800 pages long and when I look back at earlier scenes, they also tend to drag on. That's because you have to develop a feeling for when to best end a scene. Same goes for humor, btw. I wanted my game to be mostly light-hearted and adventurous, but hard-hitting and "brutal" (not to be confused with being gory and violent) at the right times. My first attempts at humor felt almost as clumsy as the jokes in Ghostbusters 2016. Why? Because characters weren't yet developed enough. As time went on and the characters got more fleshed out, the humor almost wrote itself. But for that to happen, your characters need to have diverse personalities. With Ghostbusters 2016, we have three women who all have the same defining character trait of being socially awkward nerds. Sure, one is a bit fatter, the other one a bit more nerdy, but that is not enough to make them different from one another. The black woman is often credited as being the only not-so-bad character here and that's because she is the only one who isn't a socially awkward nerd with a little bit of a twist. The reason why scenes drag on is because that's what socially awkward nerdy scientist characters in fiction tend to do. They give overly long and complicated explanations and tend to get lost in trivial details, thus dragging the scene out until one of the other characters cuts them short.
One piece of writing advice I've heard is that you should start a scene as late as possible. In other words, if the scene consists of people talking at a table in a restaurant, it's not necessary to show characters coming, sitting down, telling the server their order, then making smalltalk before getting to the point of the scene. You can just cut to the part that matters.
An added suggestion to the bike flipping note. Imagine if the bike was also in the air (off-camera) for far longer than it should have been. So the bike blows up, goes up and off-camera, the characters then discuss things or even walk away to get their next bit of gear, a pause... THEN the bike comes back down. THAT would have been funny. Then with your version of the wantons, have the food truck dump a bunch of wantons on the car, then one of the girls who were annoyed with Abby about the whole wanton thing from before, makes a quip like, "Enough wantons for you?", cue eye roll from Abby. Then cut to them exiting the car, unable to drive it as you suggested of them now not having the car.
It’s interesting. Both you and RLM had a segment on how some of the jokes could of worked if at least edited properly. There’s a fan edit called Ghostbusters III that removed %75 of the improv humor. Really wanna watch that one. Who knows, maybe there’s a decent movie trapped in this mess.
PAUL FEIG: "Hmmm...the original Ghostbusters movie cast did SOME improvisation...maybe I should have these women do A LOT of improvisation. Hey, ladies! Are you comedians of ANY sort." FEMALE GHOSTBUSTERS CAST: "Nope." PAUL FEIG: "PERFECT!!! Do improvised comedy throughout the WHOLE MOVIE! That will SURELY turn out well."
I would've told him that I have a dog named Mike Rotch. Then as I was leaving thirty seconds later, I would've said to him, "why don't you lick Mike Rotch"
"If everything is a joke and we aren't supposed to take it seriously why should we care about anything. " Me: looking at Mel Brooks filmography. I think the issue is writers have lost the ability to properly blend multiple types of comedy to make a single film. Blazing Saddles is best remembered because it uses multiple types of humor (blue, dark, satire,ect..) to poke fun at western movies with the backdrop of an extreme serious issue of racism. The Biggest issue is in today's overly sensitive climate which seems to lack all subtlety must joke would simply go over peoples heads or be taken to seriously.
Which is why someone needs to be a Mel Brooks and say, "Fuck it" and release something in the spirit of Blazing Saddles in this day and age, cause I'm tired of all the sensitivity. I'm about to blow my own brains out if I have to deal with "THE MESSAGE" over and over again.
@@illusioNery I thought that was what Seth MacFarlane's " A million ways to die in the west" would be, but it didn't work. I atribute it to the lead character he played was whiny and unlikeable. Like a character from the awful Wagons East migrated into a Mel Brooks movie.
@@illusioNery Too bad everyone is too darn sensitive and snow-flakey to handle something like that. Blazing Saddles is hilarious. I didn't see it til the 90s when we got it on VHS (I was a teen then), but my father saw it when it was originally in the theaters. He and his friend went to see it. He said it was so funny they had no choice but to see it again because of all of the laughter by the audience. Wish I could've experienced that. It's a shame that people are so darn sensitive and easily offended now over something that one should not be offended over. We'll never get movies like that again. Even shows like In Living Color probably can't be replicated due to ïts not being politically correct by modern-day standards and would offend someone. -_-
If you want an example of Blazing Saddles made recently, look to Django Unchained. However, it's unfair to say that Mel Brooks' movies lacked substance with serious moments. There was always something at stake, and the characters had serious moments to juxtapose the comedy. The serious moments just tend to be softened with some levity, because he's not out to teach you something, just shine a light on it and let you come to your own conclusions. In the movie, Bart arrives at the town he's been made sheriff of, and every townsperson loses their collective mind and avoids him, with an elderly woman saying, "Up yours, n*" to his face. This has a sentimental yet comedic payoff later when she sneaks out at night to give him a pie through the office window and apologized for her insult earlier. In Spaceballs, you have the ongoing quarrel between Lone Star and Vespa. In Young Frankenstein, Frederick struggles in making his creation sane while the villagers are going to lynch him. In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Marian was constantly in danger of Sheriff Marvin. So even in a Brooks movie, there are moments that aren't just jokes and you can take something seriously.
A good joke with the wanton soup would be the delivery guy telling her the restaurant listened and did something about sending wanton soup with only one wanton. And it is a wanton soup with two.
You know, I can't remember the last time a comedy movie really had me going, the occasional chuckle sure but never genuine laughs that I think about over and over. Genuinely the funniest thing I can think of that came out of movies in recent years is the thumb drive joke in The Batman, that was so creative and came out of nowhere. It's amazing how movies actually centred around comedy fail so fucking hard at making good jokes. But I think this video touches on the core problem here, it's the fact they constantly try to be funny. There's no breathing room between jokes because it's all jokes, which means there's no carefully crafted sections at all. I can remember many funny parts from American Pie 2 even though I haven't watched it in like...idk 12 years or some shit, minimum. Mainly because the comedic moments actually stand out and in between...there is actually something, just anything. Characters have serious talks, have emotional moments, have general conversation, they act like real human beings.
The strategy with writing comedy for a story: Keep it 50% funny and 50% completely serious, meaning: keep *a strict balance* between funny moments and serious moments. Also, don't use the same joke more than two times or stretch out the joke for more than its acceptable time duration. Don't make any character try to be funny while something serious is going on. Disney's Lab Rats did kinda the opposite.
I appreciate that you came back to finish this review after all that time. Shows that you care about the overall message instead just chasing easy views.
Around 18:00 minutes about goofy chats and their straight men. That's exactly what happens when they take the goofy char out of the show they were in (away from their straight man) and make them the focus of a new show. Know what happens? People realize the goofy char is too obnxious and annoying without their straight man and the show eventually gets axed.
The trick is to have an even balanced of straight men and the crazy man because if you have the entire film/show centering around the straight man then that show/film becomes extremely boring to watch, and it have the entire show/film centering around the crazy man then that show/film becomes asinine to watch through.
Lol at "and then you have Winston..." Erie Hudson had a lot more lines and character development, but it was cut in editing. If only Female Ghostbusters knew about editing
The thing is that even in the final edit, Winston is still a funny and relatable character. He's the perfect audience stand-in, and his bemused reactions are the best punctuation for every joke that happens once he's introduced. Leslie Jones is just noisy.
The real problem with this movie was the fact they shot it all as a comedy. If they followed in the OGs footsteps and just sort of leaned into the comedy it could have worked, the jokes might have been on par with what we had but that would have been it. They didn't do that, instead opting to do what can be described as "SNL the movie" with my guess a vast majority going to the edits on those adlib scenes with cgi being the next thing, with little to no money going into writing. You can have great editing skills but if you have no content to edit there's only so much one can do and this movie should be a great example of that.
To be fair, some comedians can improv practically everything and have it be good, but it's a rare skill that none of these actors had. Example of someone who had that skill, Robin Williams.
It's not rare at all. Improv requires practice to be good at, just like any artistic skill. "It took me 34 years to become good at creating a painting in 10 seconds." Robin Williams was good at improv because he'd been doing it so much even well before he hit the mainstream with Mork & Mindy. None of the people in this movie have done much with improv, the director is just a hack who thought, "They're funny, so I can just put them in a movie together and let them be funny!" as if every kind of comedy is the same. With Robin, though, his improv would still involve a great deal of takes to get the right one. Each take would be a new joke, and most would be funny, but he didn't always land the right joke on the first try. And with that, he still knew the power of editing, as did those he worked with. What's more, Robin's costars wouldn't suddenly adlib and improv at every possible moment with him, they always went back to the script. There's undoubtedly no movie at all with Robin where he and several others in the film were improving the whole way through. Even if the actors in this movie were good at improv, it's not a good idea to let 4 or more people improv whole scenes together unless you were dealing with a comedy troupe who were accustomed to that, like the Whose Line crew. The cast of this movie clearly hadn't done much together prior to this movie, and we know SNL the past 20-30 years hasn't been a wellspring of comedy. So the issue is a combination: Each of the main actors aren't well versed at improv, they don't have a history of doing improv together, and the director doesn't actually know what's funny and where to cut. He's a guilty white male who wants to be an ally by turning a camera towards "funny women" and then laughing at everything they do.
Deja vu, this is just like the Wonder Woman review. When you critiqued that movie I thought, well it sounds pretty campy, but it doesn’t seem too bad. And then I watched Critical Drinkers review. You do such a good job at not only explaining bad writing, but delving into how to correctly write plots and jokes that I consider your videos incredibly educational.
I haven't seen this film, but I find it really annoying that, whenever there's a Ghostbusters film on TV, it's _always_ this one. Every. Fucking. *Time.*
Huh, really?, I think I only had seen this movie in TV like.. Twice, maybe three times, but the one going on TV is always the first one, not even the sequel
So true. Female Ghostbusters movie has been shown on British telly at least once a month for the past two years. I can't remember the last time one of the original movies was shown.
HOLY SHIT!!!! I was just binge watching your videos last night, and I was thinking how you haven't uploaded in a second... AND NOW YOU'RE BACK!! Welcome back, can't wait for more videos!!
Ghostbusters (2016) felt like a tabletop roleplaying game where the gamemaster announces they want to run a Ghostbusters scenario and, knowing the players have all seen the old Ghostbusters movies, asks the players to draw up their own characters. Unfortunately the gamemaster and the players all have the sense of humour of stoner fratboys, and the GM has no real story planned but instead throws random events at the players and letting them ramble on and on. The players all decided to play a "zany comic relief" character. The rant about Wanton soup and the potato chip scene are stuff happening at the gaming table, with one player ordering food from a Chinese restaurant while the other one had brought a backpack full of snacks and soft drinks.
"It tries way too hard at all times but it just comes off as desperate" So it's the equivalent of watching a thirty year old dude trying to act like a snarky teenager for two hours
Zul: "Are you a god?" Ray: "Uh... no." Zul: "Then *DIE!!"* *[Blasts the Ghostbusters with lightning]* Winston: "Ray, when someone asks 'Are you a god' you say YES!"
I think another part of the reason the improvisation doesn't work in this movie could be that the actresses simply aren't good at it. Compare them to Robin Williams in Aladdin. It is said that he improvised the majority of the Genie's spoken dialogue in that movie. Part of the reason it worked was Williams' comedy style centered around improv. These actresses clearly hadn't done much improv before, hence why their jokes aren't funny.
Dan Aykroyd said in an interview that they had to go back and do re-shoots for 40 million dollars because Paul Feig had refused to shoot important scenes that were needed. No wonder this movie turned out so bad. The director is the real problem here.
"Paul Fieg would just spit in my mouth, but he'd probably miss." *Cuts to Aldi commercial* 🤣🤣🤣 Now THATS how to do a punchline! 60 seconds of ad libs about how to spit would have killed that joke dead.
You don't even need to compare this to the original. If this was the original Ghosbusters film, it would have still bombed. The fact that it IS related to the original film just makes it WORSE
You describe Winston with one phrase, “the black guy”. He is more than just that, he is the dependable, down-to-earth, blue-collar American, who, despite witnessing freaky events beyond the average person’s experience and being afraid, stays with the three protagonists at the climax. By being black he is a welcome change from the racist image of the cowardly black from earlier times.
@@Seeker118 I’m pretty sure OP gets the joke but also wanted to explain of how good a character Winston truly is, like the many other characters in the OG, unlike the characters you can’t even remember in the demake.
The GB all represent different kind of workers. The ones that are passionate, or very knowledgable, or the one with the silver thonge. Winston is the one Who is there for the paycheck, everything else is just the job. Of the 4 hes the one i feel the most identified with. like. We are all a little like winston when we are looking for any job just because we have to pay the rent.
I really can't understand how you have so little subscribers. Your reviews are so fucking good and funny. Everytime I just laugh out loud like n idiot, even when rewatching old videos. Please CZcams algorithm, grant this Possum the subs and patreons he so much deserves
"So I was left with this makeshift flesh light and nothing to shove up my ass" I mean you could've asked big Billy for some help I'm sure he would've been happy to oblige ya
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It seems this movie took so much out of Possum, he had to take 4 months to recover.
Where are the ads man I don't see em
Holy shit man took you long enough.
To guys complaining about the long lapse in uploads: it's not like he has an entire production team. It takes a long time doing this stuff, and I doubt he wants to ignore family/friends just to cover such a stupid movie.
THANK YOU MAN FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO
"Then we have Winston, the black guy" i didnt expect that, and thats why it is funny.
"It's funny 'cause it's true!"
@@ThePreciseClimber , Winston literally is just an average black guy from New York in the 1980’s, and he isn’t overly stoic; he’s not a man baby, and he isn’t a womanizer either.
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr Sheesh lighten up
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr
Just your average boi, and also voice of the audience.
Yea it's very funny but he was in all regards, supposed to be the every man in the 1980's. He was the guy who didn't go to college, had a blue collar collar background, and in the original scripts was a decorated Marine Corp. veteran, and of course the token black guy.
Fun fact: The announcement trailer for this movie was uploaded on February 14, 2016 on Valentine's Day. In Ghostbusters 2, when Peter asks the psychic woman when would the world end, she says Valentine's Day, 2016. Tragic.
OH NO
“Valentines Day, bummer.”
Now THAT is ironic.
Jfc dude lol
She actually predicted the fall of society itself.
An actually time traveller.
The jokes in this were funnier than all of the jokes in Ghostbusters (2016)
bruh why you insulting possum like that?
@Spring David You're right, saying something is funnier than Ghostbusters (2016) isn't really saying anything at all.
My grandma's funeral was funnier because it had more spirit in it.
@@justiron2999 oh brother this guy stinks
@@strickshot :D
It really helps to realize that Ghostbusters was shot as a horror movie. Compare it to other horror movies of the time and it has similar lighting, camera work and tone. A lot of the comedy came from the deadpan way they handled the horror.
The point of the GB was that it was about four blue collar enterpeneurs starting a company, and they were buddies at this job doing their thing like any other jobber.
It just happens their thing is hunting ghosts. They werent really heroes, or very strong or brave, they just are there doing their job, getting their paycheck and leaving, maybe saving the city in the process.
@@yusukeelric They're blue collar exterminators.
@@yusukeelric That's what help sold the movie or as bit of writing genius it just worked. There's a certain reality with their intelligence. In another of my comments I mentioned the core Ghostbusters (minus Winston) were very smart and they didn't actually spend their days on the paranormal side of their studies before forming Ghostbusters. Truth in television. Their actual credible degrees were shit in terms of finding a non-research job. Psychology is the only legitimate field but Venkman's degree is non-clinical and you really couldn't see a guy like him being sensitivity to people anyways. Metallurgy was a garbo field in the 80s, and Quantum and Nuclear physics? LMAO. Outside of teaching none of these provided practical jobs for their time.
It also helps to realize that Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't really shot as a movie at all.
Paul Feige allegedly didn't have a script as such and instead very loosely followed the events in the original Ghostbusters.
This video already comments on the directing (or lack thereof) style Feige used for GB2016:
- tell the actors in a couple of sentences how he thinks the scene should play out
- start rolling the cameras and shout "be funny"
- never shout "stop" but instead keep the cameras rolling so the actors go on and on and on
This is the main reason why GB2016 looks more like a stream of SNL sketches that have a very loose connection to each other than an actual movie.
And I think that's a key element of a lot of good comedy. It doesn't hit you over the head with it. Unless you're a Mel Brooks, you can't just do joke-joke-joke.
When it comes to the comedy writing of this movie I remember the words of a famously insane criminal, "If you have to explain the joke, then there is no joke."
"Pushes Harley out the windows"
If you have to explain the joke, you are the joke
Brevity is the soul of wit
Smash cut to all his fans asking what _"you'd turn it off when I was halfway across"_ meant.
A wise man
From what I understand, Winston was the stand in character representation of the audience themselves. He was just your average guy looking for a job, he wasnt a scientist, didnt know anything about ghosts. This makes him the target for the exposition when it was needed as a proxy for the audience. He also represented standard reactions, where the other Ghostbusters were scientists whos goals and purpose was to be around ghosts and see all the spooky, dangerous stuff, Winston was the one who had never been around those sorts of things and had the most skeptical reactions like what anyone would have if they saw these things. This not only gave the audience some one to sympathize and connect with on a "yeah, thats about how I would react in that situation." but he also served as the grounded in reality type having to process everything that was happening from a skeptical viewpoint. "If the pay is good, ill believe anything you say" which meant they had to convince him of everything along the way, like with the twinky scene, so he could understand the situation he was getting himself in and him having to adapt. At least thats how I always saw him.
Yep. He was the every-man character and avatar for the Average Joe.
Absolutely. That's also how he was portrayed in Ghostbusters 2, in the Ghostbusters video game (which basically used the script from the cancelled Ghostbusters 3), and in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Hell, I think that it's also how they portrayed Winston in both of the animated TV series based on the Ghostbusters.
@@nadrewod999 For Real Ghostbusters, yeah he was the every man type. They also made him a bit younger compared to his movie counterpart. Not sure about the cameo he had in Extreme Ghostbusters along with Ray and Peter. When that originally aired I wasn’t watching it. I didn’t watch all of the original series either once it became the Slimer show and Janine and Peter became boring. >_>
And what does Patty do? Scream
Aside from just being the clueless initiate to the complicated worldbuilding and exposition, he was also the straight man to the more goofy or unusual characters-Ray was a clown, Egon was an autistic robot, and Peter was a speed fiend carnival magician; Winston's subdued handling of the insanity around him was essential to highlighting the comedy. When *everybody's* some kind of wacky cartoon caricature, then none of them stand out as uniquely funny, it just makes the movie seem desperate-but when you have a good straight man like Ernie Hudson, it gives the viewer a frame of reference that casts the more absurd elements in high relief without breaking willing suspension of disbelief. It's the reason performers like John Cleese and David Mitchell are so exceptionally well regarded in comedy circles.
Credit where it's due: When Patty called the ghost the 3rd scariest thing on the train, I actually laughed. That was more or less the ONLY time I laughed in the entire movie.
If they cut the suck it joke like Possum did, that would've genuinely been kinda funny too.
A sign that your actors are good at improv humor is when other actors struggle to not laugh in character. I've seen it countless times in games and shows and movies. A scene was clearly improv, and you see the preformers struggle to hold a straight face for the scene.
If you look at the other actors they never struggle, or hold back a laugh.
Like in that scene in the Office, where Jim stabs Dwight’s workout ball and he immediately rushes off screen to laugh because the ball pops and makes Dwight fall on his ass instead of slowly deflating like in other takes.
Because they are to busy trying to be the “funniest” one.
A great example is the Sonic 06 dub. They laugh a lot and their jokes are actually funny. I don't the problem is simply that there's improv. It's that they actors are not good at it. If you're gonna do an entire movie with improv, get people that can improv.
I love the times that Colin Mochrie got Ryan Styles to break down laughing on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (look up "arctic tern" with their names for an example)
"I'm escaping to the ONE place that hasn't been corrupted by Capitalism...《Visibly trying desperately not to laugh》....SP-ACE!!!"
Well one of the very few things the Nostalgia Critic said that was wise was that the difference between drama and comedy is that drama can be bad in so many different ways but with a comedy there’s only so many ways you can say “That’s not funny”.
Didn't Jay Bauman say that about some Adam Sandler shitfest too?
You don’t like Nostalgia Critic?
@@ablosch2452 Most people don't, some dislike him because they think he's whiny and obnoxious, other people dislike him because of the whole "Change the channel" fiasco when it was revealed that he was pretty careless about the toxic people he hired in the workplace (Mike Mchaud and that guy who played Jew Wario). I still watch his old reviews from time to time but I don't really keep up with channel awesome anymore.
Who tf is Nostalgia critic
@@NYUMIR he's an old youtuber who would make comedic reviews of old nostalgic movies
This movie is basically lowbrow humor, lowbrow female humor and slapstick. It's basically if Amy Schumer or Sarah Silverman was a movie.
That is cursed!
That's both cursed and on point.
Accurate
The phrase “Amy Schumer movie” is a thousand times scarier than The Shining.
Again and again abd again etc.
Winston is just your average likeable guy. The scene where the ghost train passes through him as he screams is great.
My friend bought this movie as a joke gift for me. I have always hated joke gifts because they are a waste of money, but this was a waste of money that contributed to their DVD sales profit...
When you really look at his performance he was the straight man out of the group since he doesn't have any science expertise in which some of the stuff (and by extension to the audience) needed to be explained in layman's term. Along with asking the questions that none of the other 3 were thinking at the time.
That scene is really great! HAHAHAHA
@@mistermann4163 good point
Should have gone with the white elephant
The moment before was pretty fucked up. Those floating heads……
"And then you have Winston, the black guy"
To be fair, in the ghostbusters animated series, which is meant to take place right after the first GB movie, you had several episodes in that where Winston saved the day, because he didn't think like a scientist but as a regular joe, which is what the circumstance needed to help solve it.
I love how Possum just makes jokes just after explaining how to do good jokes, and how ghostbusters 2016 fails. They actually make me laugh, and in the next second I'm like: "Ohhh, so that was what he was talking about!"
It is good to have you back !
I just can't get over the fact that this movie nearly cost 3 ½ times as much as the original from 1984.
To be fair, this movie carries the "brand" name with it, which will inflate the budget.
Not an excuse for the quality though.
Actually, it was closer to 5 times. Sorry.
Thanks inflation
@@ninonook677 inflation doesn't even make up for half of what caused the increased budget cost
@@zk0rned ... woooooosh
I really need like an hour and a half long video of you absolutely destroying a whole franchise. It really makes my day seeing you have new content
YES!! I neeeeed this
The Paul Anderson Resident Evil movies are equally incoherent "adaptations" of their source material. He could have a field day with that franchise as it started off mediocre and proceeded to dive off a cliff, both as adaptations and as movies on their own merit. Doing the whole series in one video like Elvis the Alien did, oh that could be a beautiful teardown with how utterly insane the retcons get by the end.
They should have called it Jokebusters.
There are people laughing uncontrollably then these 4 come in and suck the humor out of the building then send you a bill.
It's like my friend who cycles through four sex jokes.
You know... The wonton soup thing reminded me of a joke I once heard which had a simular structure but managed to land. The joke was part of a longer comedy performance, and essentially it goes like this: "A man walks through the forest. All of the sudden a robber shows up, threatening the man 'your money or your life!'. The man begs 'Please Sir, I don't have any money.' The robber asks 'Got a watch? Maybe any other valuables?' and the man says no. So the robber says 'Well, I guess you can carry me for a bit instead'."
and that's when the joke ends. Of course, the audience doesn't really react to it, there's nothing funny about it. The comedian then remarks that this didn't land in the way he's used to and moves on. Throughout the performance, he tries to re-tell the joke a few times, every time eliciting no applaus or laughter and every time wondering what went wrong (did he screw up the performance, or is the audience maybe just too dense to get his high-brow sense of humor?).
At the end of the performance, he tells the joke one last time: "A man walks through the forest. All of the sudden a robber shows up, threatening the man 'your money or your life!'. The man responds 'Of course, here take my purse. There's three hundred bucks in there!'. 'Aw, crap', responds the robber. 'That means I gotta walk today!'"
Of course, the difference as to why the wonton joke falls flat whereas the robber joke didn't is that the robber joke exists on a meta level. It works much better because the audience gets told it's a joke and because it is acknowledged that the joke kinda sucks, just to then subvert those expectations in the end when it's revealed that every single repetition is part of a continuous plot.
The joke is played on the audience rather than on any of the characters.
One day my father and my uncle were walking along the beach. Lots of sand, seashells and seaweed, of course. But at one point they come across a brick that's just sitting there inexplicably. My uncle nudges my father and says, "I bet I can throw that brick higher up in the air than you can." My father is game. So he takes the brick, hefts it in his hand for a bit, and then hurls it up in the air with all his might. Wooosh... thump. A pretty good throw. But my uncle is unimpressed. He picks up the brick, twirls his arm around and puts his whole body into the throw. The brick goes up and up... but it doesn't come down.
Wait... not funny? Well I have a better one:
This joke take place decades ago during the time in aviation when planes flew lower and passengers were allowed to do all kinds of things on the plane. On this particular flight, a lady was sitting on the plane with a small dog on her lap, but the dog clearly was having a poor experience. It kept yipping over and over and loudly, annoying all the other passengers. The woman, however, was just as annoyed by the man sitting next to her, who was smoking a huge cigar and filling the whole plane up with smoke. Of the two of them, the man broke first, saying to the woman, "If you can't shut your dog up, I'm going to throw it out the airplane door!" Just as fed up, the woman says, "Only if you throw that cigar out first!" And yes, they've both become so frustrated and sick that that after a few moments of negotiation they both decide to go along with it. But since they don't trust each other, they're going to throw them out at the same time. So they count... one, two, three... and they both toss the dog and the cigar out the door. But the woman immediately runs to the back of the plane, kicks open the emergency exit, and manages to snatch the dog as it blows past. And do you know what was in its mouth?
That's right... the BRICK.
The garbage movie review king has returned to his glorious throne.
Hey! A fellow Them's Fightin' Herds player!
@@gustavferreira627 I hate that game now, I'm more into the lore.
@@Thintech1 I take it it's too hard for you?
@@gustavferreira627 I just wish the devs realized it should aim for a more casual audience. Because most people would associate a game about ungulates fighting to be very gimmicky & silly for a hyper competitive fighter game. There doesn't seem to be any downside to being casual, they would still develop a competitive community but it would be easier to get into.
All Hail the King of Possums!
" and winston, the black guy" That alone made me laugh harder than the entire movie. To be honest, the dynamic of handyman way out of his field played well off of the others more tempered reactions.
Thank god you're back and well. I was worried the feminists got you cancelled.
Unrelated edit: Please open a PO box, I'd like to send you some physical -garbage- fanmail.
Lol
Got me worried too
Don't worry man, thay are just talking without doing anything XD
I’ve watched him for 2 years and this Chad never disappoints
He will just reincarnate himself as another animal, complete with a prequel or a backstory showcasing his rivalry with said animal
Can you imagine the torture that would be a 3 1/2 hour cut of this nightmare?
It'd be worse than watching Deadpool
@@jeremyallen492 that's hard to do
When the world needed him most....
He returned with a six-pack of beer and a no-fucks-given attitude
One good example of how comedy isn't just constant jokes is "The Martian" which is a Sci-Fi/Drama movie, but won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. The Martian has a few well timed jokes that change the overall tone of the movie, and makes it more funny than it is dramatic.
That's a good example. It's such a balanced film.
With regards to stupid characters, they eed to have internal logic. I'm reminded of a scene from Red vs blue. Back during blood gulch the blues were about to go on a trip and Church asks the other two if they're ready and we learn Caboose has filled his gun with crayons (pretty sure that was what happened) Church assumes that makes sense to Caboose and moves on. Another good one from Caboose is "...time is made of circles, that is why clocks are round" that's stupid but it has internal logic.
@Jamie Pritchard Kind of? I don't know it's current status but the last few seasons have been... polarising to say the least.
Here I was just thinking "Gosh, when will Possum drop part 2 of his Ghostbusters 2016 review?" And lo, does it appear! Keep on keepin' on, Possum. This small cephalopod appreciates you.
Do you have an only fans?
Voice of the Unfailing Logic once said: "Humor is the easiest existing art form. If you can find flaws from yourself or from other people, then you know how to tell a joke."
I feel like it took this long for Possum to make a part 2 is to recover from the travesty of the first part.
Winston was the common every man that would do, say, or believe anything as long as there was a paycheck in it. He was the straight man that grounded all of their crazy scientific mayhems.
Scorsese is a master at allowing improvisation. The Joe Pesci scene in Goodfellas, "I'm funny how". The Matthew McConaughey Beating his chest and humming in The Wolf of Wall Street are two great moments of improv... but they were just moments, one scene, not an entire damn movie. great improv is hard, the best ensemble cast I felt was Second City TV and the best stand up comic that improvised all the time was Robin Williams.
Also, men are better at improv...and comedy in general
What's interesting about the Straight Man principle is that post-Zeppo Marx Brothers proved that you could actually have full-sized comedic sequences while both/all characters are a comic relief, but that was because they employed an interesting trick that this movie clearly didn't think of: The main characters (Groucho and Chico) would talk nonsense almost constantly, however their own nonsense were not the same - as such, when Chico would start talking nonsense, it made just as little sense to Groucho as it did other, non-comedic characters, and thus, for a brief second, Groucho would take on the role of the straight man, and vice versa. If the two characters were just two different mouthpieces for the exact same ideas and inaccurate world-views, then these comedic bits wouldn't have been funny at all.
On a side note, I think at the 21:50 bit, after playing the audio and video super-fast, you should've cut to Dark Helmet saying: "No go past this part - in fact never play this again!"
6:12
Joking? No, I think that was a threat. The current cut of the movie is his warning to us, the 3-hour cut, if it does exist, is the full on assault.
Also, another good point about the Slime scenes that can be made is how the original movie established Egon's love for sample collecting, which he tasks Peter with in the beginning when they investigate the library. Peter's interaction with the slime in the library helps set up his iconic reaction when he's slimed later on in the hotel.
"Dropping off or picking up?" is a funnier joke than anything in Ghostbusters 2016
The 4 month break totally wort it.
I'm typically the type of person who's like "Well, people like what they like; I won't judge." Not with this movie though. If you genuinely enjoyed this movie, then please don't recommend ANYTHING to me. Ever.
Also, I'm apparently a woman who hates women ... Even though I grew up watching a plethora of funny women throughout my life. Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, The Golden Girls, Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne, Joan Rivers, Madeline Kahn ... But apparently Ghostbusters 2016 was the first time women starred in any comedic roles ever. Uh huh. Sure.
I know right? I suspect you have seen Clue just from the list of very funny women you named off. You know the scene I am talking about. Every time I watch Clue I just go in to my horse laugh when that one comes on.
@@targetdreamer257 Clue is an amazing movie because of its cast. The cast made a pretty basic movie into something REALLY special and hilarious.
And Madelyn Kahn is iconic in it.
Agreed; Lucille Ball was hard-working, talented, fortunate, and successful. She had no need to defend herself.
Such winners never have to lash out at others for setbacks, because if they do have reverses, they, honestly and bravely, identify and correct what they did wrong.
Incompetent people blame everybody else for their failures, and repeat the same behaviours.
Men or women, culture, race, etc., the same facts apply.
Success is a behaviour, not merely a result.
"it-it- the f it flam flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing breathl heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heathing..."
Horse laugh every time!
I'd TOTALLY sit for a 3.5 hour cut of the GOOD Ghostbusters.
Lmao Ghostbusters: The Snyder Cut
@@certifiedintellectualjames5053 The snyder cut's 4 hours...
Watch the first two and... I dunno, an episode or two of the cartoon?
@@Khenal Play the game.
The Queens joke is honestly my favorite joke of the whole movie.
One issue with the characters is there are examples where the main cast are all “comic relief” characters who play off of each other. Take the Marx Brothers for example where each brother has a specific comedic role. Groucho specializes in insults and quips, Harpo can’t speak so he relies on visual gags and slapstick, Chico is versatile but he mostly makes puns and plays off of his brothers, and Zeppo is the straight man but also a parody of the romantic lead in films back then. Each brother has their own brand of humor and they are able to play off each other really well and the humor is smart, the Swordfish scene from Horsefeathers is a great example of this. Then you have films like these where their main source of humor is the characters screaming, being dumb, and gross out humor.
The "Mike Hat" - "My Cat" scene made me want to throw something at the screen. It was beyond stupid and went on way too long
made me want to design and build a gun just to shoot myself fuckin shit never shoulda seen the light of day
The possum, the myth, the legend has returned 🙌
I have an idea about the wonton joke to connect it to the plot hilariously: Gabby only gets one wonton in her soup, but later they're chasing a Chinese ghost into a Chinese restaurant. Somehow she gets turned around chasing him and then falls (or gets spilt on) in a vat of soup and a thousand wonton fall on her (or the ghost knocks them on her).
Y’know, now that you mention Mr. Pecker (as my dad fondly calls him due to how obnoxious he is in the original film), I’m sure he loved seeing his old nemesis Bill Murray take on a spiritual successor to his character as the actor who portrayed him admitted to getting harassed in public for years afterward due to folks not liking what he did in the film.
What's actually funny, he wasn't technically WRONG, just a bit of an asshole about it.
And top that off with "we, the writers and cast and crew of the new one, think that you being buried in marshmallow creme after being mocked wasn't enough; you should've died."
Jesus, some people take movies too seriously...
8:04 "Venkman stares back in horror"
The combination of this sentence and Bill Murray's dead look in his eyes is several orders of magnitude more funny than Ghostbusters (2016) ever was to me.
Scenes draggin on for far too long is usually a sign of inexperienced writers. That's why lot of amateurs fall into that trap.
FYI: I am working on a GDD in what little spare time I have. I want my game to be a tribute to old N64/ PS1 RPGs, especially FF9, Valkyrie Profile and Paper Mario. Obviously I had to learn how to write scenes and characters, as well as dialogue. The script is over 800 pages long and when I look back at earlier scenes, they also tend to drag on. That's because you have to develop a feeling for when to best end a scene.
Same goes for humor, btw. I wanted my game to be mostly light-hearted and adventurous, but hard-hitting and "brutal" (not to be confused with being gory and violent) at the right times. My first attempts at humor felt almost as clumsy as the jokes in Ghostbusters 2016. Why? Because characters weren't yet developed enough. As time went on and the characters got more fleshed out, the humor almost wrote itself. But for that to happen, your characters need to have diverse personalities.
With Ghostbusters 2016, we have three women who all have the same defining character trait of being socially awkward nerds. Sure, one is a bit fatter, the other one a bit more nerdy, but that is not enough to make them different from one another. The black woman is often credited as being the only not-so-bad character here and that's because she is the only one who isn't a socially awkward nerd with a little bit of a twist. The reason why scenes drag on is because that's what socially awkward nerdy scientist characters in fiction tend to do. They give overly long and complicated explanations and tend to get lost in trivial details, thus dragging the scene out until one of the other characters cuts them short.
One piece of writing advice I've heard is that you should start a scene as late as possible. In other words, if the scene consists of people talking at a table in a restaurant, it's not necessary to show characters coming, sitting down, telling the server their order, then making smalltalk before getting to the point of the scene. You can just cut to the part that matters.
The "third-scariest-thing-in-Queens" joke is actually decently funny, but the scene should've cut (or at least segued better) right afterwards.
The lord of all marsupials is back, rejoice!
An added suggestion to the bike flipping note. Imagine if the bike was also in the air (off-camera) for far longer than it should have been. So the bike blows up, goes up and off-camera, the characters then discuss things or even walk away to get their next bit of gear, a pause... THEN the bike comes back down. THAT would have been funny.
Then with your version of the wantons, have the food truck dump a bunch of wantons on the car, then one of the girls who were annoyed with Abby about the whole wanton thing from before, makes a quip like, "Enough wantons for you?", cue eye roll from Abby. Then cut to them exiting the car, unable to drive it as you suggested of them now not having the car.
When we needed him the most, he returned.
It’s interesting. Both you and RLM had a segment on how some of the jokes could of worked if at least edited properly.
There’s a fan edit called Ghostbusters III that removed %75 of the improv humor. Really wanna watch that one. Who knows, maybe there’s a decent movie trapped in this mess.
PAUL FEIG: "Hmmm...the original Ghostbusters movie cast did SOME improvisation...maybe I should have these women do A LOT of improvisation. Hey, ladies! Are you comedians of ANY sort."
FEMALE GHOSTBUSTERS CAST: "Nope."
PAUL FEIG: "PERFECT!!! Do improvised comedy throughout the WHOLE MOVIE! That will SURELY turn out well."
The return of the king
ngl, i totally forgot that there was gonna be a part two
but that just makes this a pleasant surprise
That "Mike Hat" joke was really funny... in 1991... when I was in kindergarten.
I would've told him that I have a dog named Mike Rotch. Then as I was leaving thirty seconds later, I would've said to him, "why don't you lick Mike Rotch"
holy shit hes alive.
but more importantly, why did the goblin turn on the stove?
To heat up the fireplace poker
It would've at least been amusing if the dogs name was "Mike Hunt".
That's the type of joke that Deadpool would run into the ground
Mike Oxlong?
"If everything is a joke and we aren't supposed to take it seriously why should we care about anything. " Me: looking at Mel Brooks filmography. I think the issue is writers have lost the ability to properly blend multiple types of comedy to make a single film. Blazing Saddles is best remembered because it uses multiple types of humor (blue, dark, satire,ect..) to poke fun at western movies with the backdrop of an extreme serious issue of racism.
The Biggest issue is in today's overly sensitive climate which seems to lack all subtlety must joke would simply go over peoples heads or be taken to seriously.
Which is why someone needs to be a Mel Brooks and say, "Fuck it" and release something in the spirit of Blazing Saddles in this day and age, cause I'm tired of all the sensitivity. I'm about to blow my own brains out if I have to deal with "THE MESSAGE" over and over again.
@@illusioNery I thought that was what Seth MacFarlane's " A million ways to die in the west" would be, but it didn't work. I atribute it to the lead character he played was whiny and unlikeable. Like a character from the awful Wagons East migrated into a Mel Brooks movie.
Mel Brooks was a great satirist and was able to break the 4th wall successfully. His movies go well above the level of drek we have today.
@@illusioNery Too bad everyone is too darn sensitive and snow-flakey to handle something like that. Blazing Saddles is hilarious. I didn't see it til the 90s when we got it on VHS (I was a teen then), but my father saw it when it was originally in the theaters. He and his friend went to see it. He said it was so funny they had no choice but to see it again because of all of the laughter by the audience. Wish I could've experienced that. It's a shame that people are so darn sensitive and easily offended now over something that one should not be offended over. We'll never get movies like that again. Even shows like In Living Color probably can't be replicated due to ïts not being politically correct by modern-day standards and would offend someone. -_-
If you want an example of Blazing Saddles made recently, look to Django Unchained.
However, it's unfair to say that Mel Brooks' movies lacked substance with serious moments. There was always something at stake, and the characters had serious moments to juxtapose the comedy. The serious moments just tend to be softened with some levity, because he's not out to teach you something, just shine a light on it and let you come to your own conclusions.
In the movie, Bart arrives at the town he's been made sheriff of, and every townsperson loses their collective mind and avoids him, with an elderly woman saying, "Up yours, n*" to his face. This has a sentimental yet comedic payoff later when she sneaks out at night to give him a pie through the office window and apologized for her insult earlier.
In Spaceballs, you have the ongoing quarrel between Lone Star and Vespa. In Young Frankenstein, Frederick struggles in making his creation sane while the villagers are going to lynch him. In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Marian was constantly in danger of Sheriff Marvin.
So even in a Brooks movie, there are moments that aren't just jokes and you can take something seriously.
A good joke with the wanton soup would be the delivery guy telling her the restaurant listened and did something about sending wanton soup with only one wanton.
And it is a wanton soup with two.
Happy to see you back in the saddle my dude.
Giddy up cowboy
I was literally just thinking yesterday about how much I missed this channel. Very good timing
You know, I can't remember the last time a comedy movie really had me going, the occasional chuckle sure but never genuine laughs that I think about over and over.
Genuinely the funniest thing I can think of that came out of movies in recent years is the thumb drive joke in The Batman, that was so creative and came out of nowhere. It's amazing how movies actually centred around comedy fail so fucking hard at making good jokes.
But I think this video touches on the core problem here, it's the fact they constantly try to be funny. There's no breathing room between jokes because it's all jokes, which means there's no carefully crafted sections at all.
I can remember many funny parts from American Pie 2 even though I haven't watched it in like...idk 12 years or some shit, minimum. Mainly because the comedic moments actually stand out and in between...there is actually something, just anything. Characters have serious talks, have emotional moments, have general conversation, they act like real human beings.
Watch "The Producers".
THE MAN THE MYTH THE POSSUM HAS RETURNED
The King has returned
The strategy with writing comedy for a story:
Keep it 50% funny and 50% completely serious, meaning: keep *a strict balance* between funny moments and serious moments. Also, don't use the same joke more than two times or stretch out the joke for more than its acceptable time duration.
Don't make any character try to be funny while something serious is going on. Disney's Lab Rats did kinda the opposite.
I appreciate that you came back to finish this review after all that time. Shows that you care about the overall message instead just chasing easy views.
Guess who's back?
Back again?
Possum's back
Back my friend
"...because nobody wants to see Doctor no more, they want Possum, i'm chopped liver"
Around 18:00 minutes about goofy chats and their straight men. That's exactly what happens when they take the goofy char out of the show they were in (away from their straight man) and make them the focus of a new show. Know what happens? People realize the goofy char is too obnxious and annoying without their straight man and the show eventually gets axed.
The trick is to have an even balanced of straight men and the crazy man because if you have the entire film/show centering around the straight man then that show/film becomes extremely boring to watch, and it have the entire show/film centering around the crazy man then that show/film becomes asinine to watch through.
Lol at "and then you have Winston..."
Erie Hudson had a lot more lines and character development, but it was cut in editing. If only Female Ghostbusters knew about editing
The thing is that even in the final edit, Winston is still a funny and relatable character. He's the perfect audience stand-in, and his bemused reactions are the best punctuation for every joke that happens once he's introduced.
Leslie Jones is just noisy.
@@DistractedGlobeGuy agree. Even though I think Leslie Jones was the least annoying character out of the 5.
@@kebuhrogers sure. "Least annoying", in this context, still means something about on par with a typical Rob Schneider performance though.
@@DistractedGlobeGuy "the least pointy kidney stone"
Been binge watching your vids. Glad nature's most glorious creature is back with reviews.
"It throws everything at the wall to see what sticks."
You know what else sticks?...Shit. Shit sticks to that wall.
The real problem with this movie was the fact they shot it all as a comedy. If they followed in the OGs footsteps and just sort of leaned into the comedy it could have worked, the jokes might have been on par with what we had but that would have been it. They didn't do that, instead opting to do what can be described as "SNL the movie" with my guess a vast majority going to the edits on those adlib scenes with cgi being the next thing, with little to no money going into writing. You can have great editing skills but if you have no content to edit there's only so much one can do and this movie should be a great example of that.
why did you stop posting videos for 4 months?
why is this a two parter?
why did the goblin turn on the stove?
To be fair, some comedians can improv practically everything and have it be good, but it's a rare skill that none of these actors had.
Example of someone who had that skill, Robin Williams.
It's not rare at all. Improv requires practice to be good at, just like any artistic skill.
"It took me 34 years to become good at creating a painting in 10 seconds."
Robin Williams was good at improv because he'd been doing it so much even well before he hit the mainstream with Mork & Mindy. None of the people in this movie have done much with improv, the director is just a hack who thought, "They're funny, so I can just put them in a movie together and let them be funny!" as if every kind of comedy is the same.
With Robin, though, his improv would still involve a great deal of takes to get the right one. Each take would be a new joke, and most would be funny, but he didn't always land the right joke on the first try. And with that, he still knew the power of editing, as did those he worked with. What's more, Robin's costars wouldn't suddenly adlib and improv at every possible moment with him, they always went back to the script. There's undoubtedly no movie at all with Robin where he and several others in the film were improving the whole way through.
Even if the actors in this movie were good at improv, it's not a good idea to let 4 or more people improv whole scenes together unless you were dealing with a comedy troupe who were accustomed to that, like the Whose Line crew. The cast of this movie clearly hadn't done much together prior to this movie, and we know SNL the past 20-30 years hasn't been a wellspring of comedy.
So the issue is a combination: Each of the main actors aren't well versed at improv, they don't have a history of doing improv together, and the director doesn't actually know what's funny and where to cut. He's a guilty white male who wants to be an ally by turning a camera towards "funny women" and then laughing at everything they do.
Your back the gigachad has returned. I love your videos and you are probably my favorite CZcamsr. You are genuinely funny. Thanks for the new video
"Comedy is not subjective, humor is, Comedy has structure"
"It made you hard, I mean scared" dude that line killed me. Also accurate
Welcome back, brotha! Thank you for putting all that time into a good review like this
Deja vu, this is just like the Wonder Woman review. When you critiqued that movie I thought, well it sounds pretty campy, but it doesn’t seem too bad. And then I watched Critical Drinkers review.
You do such a good job at not only explaining bad writing, but delving into how to correctly write plots and jokes that I consider your videos incredibly educational.
HOLY SHIT, HE RETURNS!
Edit: Well, I'm glad you finally finished the review. It's good to have you back.
The myth, the legend! Good to see you again possum, was starting to worry that some of them holly weirdos got the drop on you!
Oh thank God he's back
I haven't seen this film, but I find it really annoying that, whenever there's a Ghostbusters film on TV, it's _always_ this one.
Every.
Fucking.
*Time.*
I saw, and you do well in maintain the max of distance of this you get. Trust in me, never see it. You´re making the best for yourself.
Huh, really?, I think I only had seen this movie in TV like.. Twice, maybe three times, but the one going on TV is always the first one, not even the sequel
Pretty much speaks your opinion on this movie LOL
So true. Female Ghostbusters movie has been shown on British telly at least once a month for the past two years. I can't remember the last time one of the original movies was shown.
HOLY SHIT!!!! I was just binge watching your videos last night, and I was thinking how you haven't uploaded in a second... AND NOW YOU'RE BACK!! Welcome back, can't wait for more videos!!
2:43 i had to rewind that like "What did he just say?" Lol
My favorite joke is when they released the Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection Boxset when Afterlife was released and DIDN'T include Ghostbusters 2016.
2:35 true, even Filfy Frank, the godfather of stupid comedy knew to put an overcomplicated storyline in his videos to keep the audience invested
Ghostbusters (2016) felt like a tabletop roleplaying game where the gamemaster announces they want to run a Ghostbusters scenario and, knowing the players have all seen the old Ghostbusters movies, asks the players to draw up their own characters. Unfortunately the gamemaster and the players all have the sense of humour of stoner fratboys, and the GM has no real story planned but instead throws random events at the players and letting them ramble on and on. The players all decided to play a "zany comic relief" character. The rant about Wanton soup and the potato chip scene are stuff happening at the gaming table, with one player ordering food from a Chinese restaurant while the other one had brought a backpack full of snacks and soft drinks.
Upvote for referencing Ralph's remark on "comedy" vs "what you find funny." I cite that line all the time.
Thank you for coming back from the dead!
"It tries way too hard at all times but it just comes off as desperate"
So it's the equivalent of watching a thirty year old dude trying to act like a snarky teenager for two hours
Ha
How do you do, fellow kids?
@@kyon813 Ghostbusters 2016 was closer to Deadpool
@@kyon813 Insert the Steve Buscemi My dudes meme
Zul: "Are you a god?"
Ray: "Uh... no."
Zul: "Then *DIE!!"*
*[Blasts the Ghostbusters with lightning]*
Winston: "Ray, when someone asks 'Are you a god' you say YES!"
I never even thought about humour vs comedy vs subjective vs objective in my life….thank you, I’m a little less dumb
I think another part of the reason the improvisation doesn't work in this movie could be that the actresses simply aren't good at it. Compare them to Robin Williams in Aladdin. It is said that he improvised the majority of the Genie's spoken dialogue in that movie. Part of the reason it worked was Williams' comedy style centered around improv. These actresses clearly hadn't done much improv before, hence why their jokes aren't funny.
I think the entire beginning of Aladdin is pure improv. He was just givenna table with a cloth over it with stuff underneath and told to run with it
Dan Aykroyd said in an interview that they had to go back and do re-shoots for 40 million dollars because Paul Feig had refused to shoot important scenes that were needed. No wonder this movie turned out so bad. The director is the real problem here.
Totally not the shit script
"Paul Fieg would just spit in my mouth, but he'd probably miss." *Cuts to Aldi commercial* 🤣🤣🤣 Now THATS how to do a punchline! 60 seconds of ad libs about how to spit would have killed that joke dead.
It's only been 4 months, but it's felt like a whole year! New Possum video day is always a great day!
You don't even need to compare this to the original. If this was the original Ghosbusters film, it would have still bombed. The fact that it IS related to the original film just makes it WORSE
You describe Winston with one phrase, “the black guy”. He is more than just that, he is the dependable, down-to-earth, blue-collar American, who, despite witnessing freaky events beyond the average person’s experience and being afraid, stays with the three protagonists at the climax. By being black he is a welcome change from the racist image of the cowardly black from earlier times.
Humor is lost on you
Yea he's right take a joke
@@Seeker118
I’m pretty sure OP gets the joke but also wanted to explain of how good a character Winston truly is, like the many other characters in the OG, unlike the characters you can’t even remember in the demake.
The GB all represent different kind of workers. The ones that are passionate, or very knowledgable, or the one with the silver thonge. Winston is the one Who is there for the paycheck, everything else is just the job. Of the 4 hes the one i feel the most identified with. like. We are all a little like winston when we are looking for any job just because we have to pay the rent.
Thanks for the official tenth millionth virtue signal.
"... and then you have Winston, the black guy." hahahaha! the 80s were awesome
I really can't understand how you have so little subscribers. Your reviews are so fucking good and funny. Everytime I just laugh out loud like n idiot, even when rewatching old videos. Please CZcams algorithm, grant this Possum the subs and patreons he so much deserves
"So I was left with this makeshift flesh light and nothing to shove up my ass" I mean you could've asked big Billy for some help I'm sure he would've been happy to oblige ya