This ain't your dad's GHOSTBUSTERS and that's awesome

If you believe the internet, Paul Feig's Ghostbusters is either the Greatest Thing to Ever Happen or a Sign of the Coming End-Times.

In reality, it's neither, but it's a lot closer to the first than the second. I like the old Ghostbusters movie just fine, but it's never been a part of my cultural canon for several reasons, not least of which is its unsettling sexual predation. Sigourney Weaver's character Dana Barrett is subjected to disrespectful and disgusting behavior from most of the men who interact with her. Bill Murray's Peter Venkman is by far the worst offender, and to see Dana essentially handed over to him as a trophy at the movie's end never sat well with me.

Gender-flipping the script would solve some of the power dynamic issues of the original, in which Dana has basically no choice but to put up with Venkman's creepy come-ons in the hope that the Ghostbusters can help her, but Feig and co-writer Katie Dippold have done more than simply cast women in a "man's story." In this one regard, the Internet armchair critics were right: this isn't your childhood Ghostbusters. 

It's way better.

It's funnier.

It's smarter.

Yeah, I know them's fightin' words.

There's a specific and fundamentally different resonance to these Ghostbusters being women. Women are very familiar with having our narratives ignored, with being told we don't know what we're doing, with being told we don't really even understand our own lives, let alone the world at large. Ghostbusters not only acknowledges this fact, it centers the movie around it.

That everyday trauma is the reason that Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) has spent her career running from acknowledging her past. As a child, she saw a neighbor's ghost in her bedroom for over a year. The only person to believe her was her high-school friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), with whom she wrote a book (hilariously titled Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal). Eventually, the film implies, the exhaustion of having to defend her personal experience from the critics and bullies led Erin to give in and pursue the publicly (read: male) sanctioned path of professional academe, even at the expense of denying the truth of her own life. When she becomes a Ghostbuster, it's because she's determined to use science for validation. Unlike Abby and the delightfully demented Holtzman (Kate McKinnon), Erin deeply cares that people believe her, and she's initially willing to sacrifice her principles to prove herself. It's a genuinely moving moment when Erin confesses her ghost story to the rest of the gang and Patty (Leslie Jones) immediately says she believes her. (Holtzman may have some questions.)

Holtzman always has questions.

The villain of the movie, Rowan, is also a nerd with something to prove ("It's always the sad pale ones," Abby quips), but his approach is completely different. Where Erin and the Ghostbusters plan to use observation and experimentation to validate their own experiences (and keep the city safe from threats it doesn't even realize exist), Rowan's lack of personal validation has led him to use science for personal gain and destruction. When the Ghostbusters ask him not to release a ton of angry ghosts on an unsuspecting New York, he retorts that they must have been treated with the dignity and respect he has been denied. "No, not really," Abby responds. "The world pretty much dumps on us all the time." The difference is that women are used to it.

The problem of uninterrogated white male privilege, in fact, lies at the center of the movie. New York's Mayor Bradley (Andy Garcia) is an idiot whose (female) assistant keeps him (mostly) together, but you have wonder how he ever got elected. (Or perhaps not, given the fact that a Tribble-haired sentient Cheeto is currently a strong candidate for the Presidency.) When smug debunker Martin Heiss (Bill Murray) turns up at the Ghostbusters' door unannounced and uninvited, he expects them to prove their story to him on the spot, and becomes irritated with their lack of "graciousness" (a virtue nearly always coded as female) when they don't do as he demands. (His comeuppance -- hoist with his own petard, as it were -- is incredibly satisfying.) Even Secretary Kevin, beautiful, bumbling Kevin, has no understanding of his own mediocrity. He genuinely believes that his graphic designs -- floating hot dogs, giant-boobed ghosts -- are perfect for his employers. He honestly thinks that pushing a bunch of buttons on the power box saved the day. ("Oh, sweet Kevin, the two are unrelated," Holtzman tells him, but it's clear she doesn't get through). Kevin will get what he wants at the end of the day because he's cute and inspires a certain protectiveness in actual adults, not because he's actually good at anything.

Okay, he's good at being cute.

Even Rowan's opinion of his genius is overblown and misguided. He brags about being so intelligent that he sees things nobody else has thought of. Yet, as the Ghostbusters examine his lab after stopping his first attempt to unleash the "Fourth Cataclysm," Abby remarks with surprise that he's using most of the same technology that they are. The reason, Holtzman points out, is that he's been reading the book Abby and Erin wrote. Rowan's standing on the shoulders of (female) geniuses to make his plan happen, but his self-righteous anger obscures any acknowledgement of the women whose work make his possible. (And any good scientist knows you've got to cite your sources.)

It's no coincidence that the "glory days of old New York" that Rowan uses his ghostly powers to create involve almost solely markers of masculinity. Ads for whiskey "for today's man" and movies such as "Fists of Fury" and "Taxi Driver" line the streets. I can't help reading the villain's misogynist nostalgia for the days when men dominated pop culture as a less-than-subtle jab at the disaffected douchebros who are so attached to "their" Ghostbusters that they're willing to burn shit down (on the internet, if nowhere else) rather than accept that women could be part of something popular that isn't porn.

If the new Ghostbusters has a major flaw, it's that things come almost too easily for our heroes, especially during the climactic ghost battle. Sure, the gang are wicked smart, but all the equipment works as it needs to when it needs to. Problems come up only to be solved immediately. New York never genuinely feels in peril because these four women are too supremely cool to let that happen. It smacks a little bit of wish fulfillment, and I can see critics taking issue with it, especially since Feig has a keen eye for the struggles of everyday dorks (witness his episodes of The Office or any of his movies with McCarthy). But honestly, I don't really have a problem with this, because it is wish fulfillment for a lot of viewers like me, and wish fulfillment is a valid goal of cinema. These women have been doubted and derided and denied all their lives, but they were always good at what they're passionate about, and it's delightful to see them realize that too. And heck, if Iron Man can be a genius with technological infallibility, why not the Ghostbusters?

You knew this was coming, admit it.

In the end, though, it isn't technological superiority or engineering genius that really wins the day. It's female friendship, and the movie is unabashed in its celebration of this. Erin literally leaps into the abyss to save Abby. Holtzman gives a charmingly jittery speech about having felt so different and outcast that she worried she'd never have any friends, only to find three women who love and encourage her. The city of New York lights up its skyscrapers in honor of the Ghostbusters' thrilling heroics, and the four women hug as they bask in the acknowledgement they have always wanted -- because what human doesn't? -- but so rarely received. Ghostbusters celebrates women as competent and cool and badass, without turning them into objects for sexual consumption or dismissing them as somehow exceptions to their gender. When I want to watch a movie that plasters a permagrin on my face for a couple of hours, I know who I'm gonna call.

Who killed the world? BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Let's just get this out of the way up front: I don't hate Zack Snyder's movies. 300 is deeply flawed, Orientalist, ableist, and many other -ists, but I also find it compellingly watchable. Snyder has a lovingly homoerotic eye for beautiful male bodies, for one thing (a trait remaining strong in BvS), and can frame a beautiful picture for another. Watchmen was about as good an adaptation of that lumbering behemoth as I think comic fans could expect. And I actually really enjoyed about 60% of Man of Steel, the first of half of which played more like a contemplative Terrence Malick film than a smash-'em-up superhero flick.

So I was enthusiastic, but a bit concerned, going into Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. For one thing, that's a stupidly long title, and the "v" in place of "vs." suggests all the action and excitement of a Supreme Court decision. For another, it seemed to signal that this movie would be even more overstuffed than the last, as it attempted to introduce the future Justice League while also being a Batman movie and possibly a Superman movie, although the order of the guys in the title is a little confusing. But hey, it promised me Jason Momoa, so I was willing to give it a shot.

All visual entertainment should contain Jason Momoa. It is known.

Spoiler alert: Jason Momoa is in this movie for about 8 seconds, and that is nowhere near enough Jason Momoa. Henry Cavill is only shirtless in one -- ONE -- scene in this movie. Ben Affleck is...kind of hot? I'm all confused and rather angry. Thanks, Zack. 

But back to the movie itself. BvS is a terrible Superman movie, mostly because everyone seems so intent on telling Clark that he should just say "fuck it all" and not be Superman, even when the world is in imminent and immense danger. It also spends essentially zero time on the Lois and Clark relationship, although it does find time for another romantic mini-moment at the scene of a citywide disaster, so I guess there's a point for continuity. On the other hand, it's a fairly decent Batman movie. I'd put it on par with The Dark Knight Rises, but on second thought that's kind of a backhanded compliment. I was often befuddled and occasionally actively angry watching that movie, and that's kind of how I felt here too.

The logic in this movie is at the level of buying a gyro at Arby's: not only is it unholy and terrible, it's not something that would even occur to the average humanoid.

These gyros aren't food. They're from Arby's.

Characters in this movie know things they really couldn't possibly know. They act in ways that living people with brains and motives would not act. I mean, two people forge an unlikely and immediate alliance based on the fact that they literally have mothers with the same name. (Spoiler: it's Bruce and Clark. You, dear reader, knew that, because you are an intelligent person who makes logical connections between concepts, unlike basically every character in this movie.) Lex Luthor appears to be a wealthy hipster on a meth bender. I think Bruce Wayne may also be on the meth or something, because he keeps having...nightmares? hallucinations? DARK KNIGHTMARES. There we go. They do not make sense, but it's okay, because nothing else really does either. There is no sense. There is only smash.

All this isn't to say there aren't bright spots in the movie, because there are. Not literally, of course. This movie is visually very dark, as in "difficult to see things because all the fights happen at night."

You basically need Knight-vision goggles to watch this movie, is what I'm saying.

But Snyder has an eye for impressive, overwhelming visuals, and I suspect if you watched this movie with the sound off, you would probably enjoy it a lot. Things go boom and smash very well here. Visually, at least, the titular "gladiator match" between Batman and Superman looks cool, even if the motivations behind it make no sense. As I mentioned earlier, Snyder also has a loving eye for the muscular male body that I'm totally down with, and he provides a Batman training montage that gives a more visceral sense of the physical effort it takes to stay Batman than anything since Nolan's Batman Begins. (In this particular respect, BvS surpasses DKR, as there is no magic knee-brace silliness here.)

This looks hard. #that'swhatshesaid

The scene revisiting the climactic battle scene from Man of Steel from the ground works very well in establishing the sense of terror that the average resident of a comic book metropolis like, uh, Metropolis would likely feel when buildings are being smashed to pieces by flying aliens. It also gives Bruce Wayne what would be a decent motivation for taking down Superman -- Supes cannot be trusted with such immense power, and he's hell on real estate values -- if it were not for the fact that the Dark Knight also smashes through buildings with abandon, just at night instead of during the workday. I guess citywide destruction doesn't matter if it's cocktail hour. But because Jeremy Irons explains Batman's motivations, I buy it, because he is gruff and authoritative and British.

The other element that works well is Diana Prince, who is called "Miss Prince" exactly once in the movie and "Diana" or "Wonder Woman" exactly zero times, but we all know who she is. Wonder Woman occupies the best four minutes of Batman v Superman. This is largely because she is neither Batman nor Superman. For one thing, she smiles, which is not an expression either of Our Heroes is allowed. For another thing, she excels at focusing on the Actual Enemy at Hand, possibly because she is not preoccupied with a dick-measuring contest. It is a sign of how underwhelming much of this movie is that 8 seconds of Aquaman and 4 minutes of Wonder Woman are the best moments of this 2.5-hour behemoth.

Her expression of irritation at the end -- I totally get it.

The final battle takes place at a deserted location in Gotham -- you know it's deserted because Bruce literally says so, so, I guess I owe Zack Snyder props for listening to the criticism of MoS's stupid ending battle? -- and there's a lot of whiz-bang smashy stuff and a villain that looks kind of like a cave troll, and then some sad things happen but they're not too sad because we all know that the stars of this movie have already been signed to multiple sequels.

At the very end of the movie, Bruce tells Diana, "We break things, tear them down, but we can rebuild. We can be better. We have to be." Here's hoping this applies to the new DC universe of movies, too.