As we try earnestly to ignore the hysterical response of a great many fanboys to the casting of an all-female Ghostbusters reboot, we can instead pay closer attention to the very funny women who have been chosen to bear the brunt of geek criticism and try to bring Ghostbusters into the new millennium.
Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon all appeared on the SNL 40th Anniversary show, partly because they are funny and partly because they needed an excuse to hang out together. And hang out they did, posing for their first candid photograph since the announcement that they will (apparently) ruin a lot of men’s collective childhoods by proving that women are not afraid to cross the streams.
Everyone looks a bit tired and the worse for wear in the picture, but it does reinforce the fact that these ladies are perfectly good successors to the original team of ghost hunters – and not just because Bill Murray says so. They will not even be repeating the original roles, instead occupying brand new parts in a brand new story with, presumably, some brand new ghosts. Frankly, I welcome this reboot far more than some of the other ideas for a sequel that have been bandied about in recent years. The original film is not going to go anywhere, and perhaps we will actually get a reboot that’s worth the price of a ticket.
Paul Feig will be directing Ghostbusters, which comes out on July 22, 2016. Before then, we can expect to hear a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth from the general direction of some of the male population, while everyone else will, hopefully, wait and see whether the movie is any good before dismissing it out of hand
