Men in Black: International (2019)
Technically set in the same universe as the original Men in Black trilogy but retaining little of its charm, the 2019 franchise reboot may no longer have had the surefire chemistry of leads Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, but the studio saw some definite buddy cop potential in Thor: Ragnarok duo Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, hiring them to front a new spin on the franchise.
Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. Men in Black: International producer Walter F. Parkes and director F. Gary Gray were at loggerheads throughout the production over what the film ought to be, and its “edgy” and modern immigration commentary got pushed further and further into the background. There was a slew of rewrites, with Parkes and Gray arguing long into post-production, despite the latter’s fruitless attempts to abandon ship.
With such conflicting ideas happening behind the scenes, you’d imagine that International would turn out to be a real mess, but the resulting movie was something even worse: completely forgettable. The original trilogy’s appealing, goofy sci-fi fun was gone, replaced by a string of extraterrestrial moments that just fell flat. Thompson and Hemsworth clearly tried their best, but the story lacked any depth, leaving fans asking why the movie existed in the first place.
Ghostbusters (2016)
As a concept, an all-female Ghostbusters reboot was bound to ruffle the worst kind of feathers when it was announced, but a subsection of “fans” of the original two Ghostbusters movies dedicated a staggering amount of hours to miring Paul Feig’s comedic effort in misogyny, racism, pine-ons, and review-bombing before it was even released, collectively creating one of the worst eras of fan entitlement we’ve ever had the misfortune to witness.
Despite the vitriol aimed at it, 2016’s Ghostbusters wasn’t even a bad movie. It was basically fine and genuinely funny in places, no different to any average multiplex comedy that comes and goes. It just wasn’t the Ghostbusters people remembered. Nothing is. Not Ghostbusters 2, nor legacy sequels Afterlife or Frozen Empire. None of them has lived up to the first one because it was a flash in the pan where no amount of injecting new characters or stories can wow audiences.
Ghostbusters cast some of the funniest female comedians going, and it was co-written by Katie Dippold, who is only now getting the recognition she deserves with the phenomenal Widow’s Bay, so there was a notable level of talent behind the film. It may be a culturally significant bad movie reboot, but the negative reaction toward it was largely for reasons that have little to do with the film itself. Sony’s 2016 effort simply remains part of an ongoing failure to relaunch the IP in any creatively significant way.
