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Ten years ago, on this very day, the third Ghostbusters movie premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre a week before it saw release in theaters everywhere…

Oh, no… I’m not talking about Afterlife, that came out years later.

I’m referring to the one directed by Paul Feig. The one with the all-female cast.

The divisive one.

Ten years ago, I wrote a bit on this thing shortly before this saw release and you can read that here if you’d like. But to make a long story short, I saw the trailer they put out for this thing, I thought it sucked, and I moved on with my life. It didn’t look like a good movie, the comedy bits were painfully unfunny, and there was no reason for me to waste time or money on something that I know I’m not going to like. How can I know this based on the trailer? Because the trailer is supposed to sell you the movie. If it convinces you to watch the movie, great. The trailer convinced me that I wouldn’t like this movie based on the comedy.

Then I heard the online noise because people were upset at the all-female cast and that became a blanket statement of “we don’t want men watching this thing.” Never mind that most fans were upset that they weren’t getting a third Ghostbusters movie with the original cast – which is what they wanted all these years and they somewhat got that with Afterlife. James Rolfe made a video illustrating this very point and the media nailed him hard because they thought “he didn’t want no women in Ghostbusters” or something stupid like that. Noted “alleged” comedian Patton Oswald made a scene over this without having seen the video, which showed how much of a tool he turned out to be.

And so when I heard that bit about not wanting any white men to watch, I decided, “You know what? If you don’t want me to watch, I will not watch.” Not that I needed the help – the trailer more than convinced me that this wouldn’t be worth my time – but if the people making this film do not want me to watch this film, then I won’t. And it became one of the few films on this list that I absolutely will not watch under any circumstances. Whatever curiosity I might have had or could have had for this film were easily sated with reviews from other content creators and most importantly, word of mouth from trusted folks who saw the film and flat out told me, “Yeah, this movie sucks. Go watch Bridesmaid instead.”

And then the movie bombed and the people involved blame white men for not watching the movie… you know, the same white men they wanted nothing to do with in the first place and said as much.

Ten years have passed and we’ve seen other films fall into the same trap; they feature a female protagonist, they say stupid things about not wanting male audiences, the male audiences don’t show up, the movie bombs, and they cry foul rather than admit they fucked up. Hollywood had adopted the wrestling mentality of blaming the audience for their own failings rather than admit that they’ve put out a shit product and alienated a portion of their paying audiences. Tell that audience to fuck off and they’d be more than happy to do so.

Ten years later and I still haven’t seen the movie. No real desire or incentive to do so. I did (and still do) feel bad for the cast who just wanted to make a good film and for a time, they did embrace the roles, taking some photos with sick children and things of that nature. I thought it cool that they did stuff like that and only wished that they had a better movie. Like I said back then, if they had just done a movie that was similar in tone to the original movie with the new cast, I would have been fine with that. I probably would have given it a watch on Netflix or whatever.

This thing, however? Not so much… and it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal because how many movies have I skipped out on because I’ve seen trailers and/or commercials for these things and decided it’s not for me? There’s quite a few. I lost count. And maybe some day, if it popped up on a streamer and I had nothing better to do, I’d figured… sure, why not? But since they told me flat out that they don’t want me watching their film… again, I’m more than happy to oblige if that’s how you feel about it. I’ve got plenty of other stuff I can watch or occupy my time with.

Because if you’re not going to value me as a viewer or potential customer, why should I reward you with my time and money? And unfortunately, that would be a question I find myself asking a lot of people these days. What happened to the days where humanity strived to be better? Or is that just a catchphrase we put on a T-shirt for ten bucks a pop at Walmart?

Oh well… the story continues, I suppose.