‘Ghostbusters’ Is a Perfect Example of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken | Hacker News Reader

‘Ghostbusters’ Is a Perfect Example of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken

fivethirtyeight.com

31 pointsthampiman40 comments

The new ghostbusters movie looks awful - it's not a thing about women leads, it's that it looks really bad in a way the original isn't. I know that's subjective, but watch the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ugHP-yZXw

Just bad.

There are a lot of bad movies, but this one walks around in the corpse of a much loved and nostalgic intellectual property that a bunch of people wanted. They got that.

Is this really about sexism?

This pattern has shown up a lot recently when an intellectual property is used by something that the original audience doesn't fit into (e.g. the last fable game that got canceled). It's a pretty silly use of an IP - the original audience is where the value comes from.

The movie looks really bad but as someone who saw the movie, it's actually pretty good and funny. The quatuor works perfectly, there is no feminism message at all, it's just a good comedy.

Maybe it won't be your type of humor, but this is not a bad movie in any way. People are just rating the movie without seeing it, which is pretty stupid in the first place. Because of that I expect the score to be much higher, hopefully a lot of people won't listen to the haters and see for themselves.

Simply casting typically male roles (comedic lead, scientist, etc.) with female actors is feminist. The movie doesn't need to have a feminist "message" to be feminist. Note: when I say feminist I mean that entirely as a good thing.

> Simply casting typically male roles (comedic lead, scientist, etc.) with female actors is feminist.

No, it is not. Print roles as male only that is mysogenic. Comedic lead and scientists are only typically male roles because they are - and a lot of freak White guys are trying to "fight hard" to prevent that móveis and the internet changes it.

I find that trailers are almost always a bad reflection on the movie.

- Sometimes the trailer is great, and the movie sucks.

- Sometimes the trailer sucks, and the movie is great.

- Sometimes the trailer sucks, and the movie sucks for totally different reasons

But very rarely do I see a trailer, and then watch the movie and think "oh yeah, the trailer captured that pretty well".

The fact that the trailer looks bad (and it does!), tells me very little about what the movie will be like, except for highlighting which actors are in it, and triggering my personal responses to those actors (I'm personally not a fan of Melissa McCarthy).

[edited to add, because I forgot]

> Is this really about sexism?

The fact that people don't like the trailer? No.

The fact that so many people are going out of their way to rip into a movie they haven't seen, in ways that are more caustic than they would typically be for an unsatisfying reboot/sequel that hadn't switch the gender roles? Yes, I think that is based on sexism.

  it's not a thing about women leads, it's that it looks
  really bad in a way the original isn't

If the article was just about negative reviews from professional reviewers who had seen the film, sure.

But if there are 12,000 reviews when the film isn't out in cinemas yet? That sounds like a symptom of activism by people who haven't seen the film.

I actually agree with much of the articles reasoning, other than the title, and everything about Ghostbusters:

> More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women, and that appears to be happening with the new “Ghostbusters.”

The thing with the new Ghostbusters has nothing to do with them being women. I'd see Bridesmaids 2 or any other comedy with Kristen Wiig (probably have), and I like Paul Feig fine.

The problem with the new Ghostbusters is that it's not Ghostbusters, not that it's necessarily a bad comedy.

The old Ghostbusters is shot and built up as a dark disaster movie, that just happens to be really funny. The new one is a Paul Feig movie (again, not knocking). It doesn't fit.

I noticed the same thing in the last season of Veep when Ianucci left. Instead of it shot more like an Office-type documentary (without the interviews, like its predecessor The Thick of It), if you look at the Christmas episode (of Veep) as the clearest example, it's shot like any other honestly mediocre sitcom, with saturated colors and honestly phoned in jokes.

Sorry about the tirade, but as a guy who does like good female media (Broad City and Lady Dynamite are my latest favorites), seeing this argument be made with terrible examples is unfortunate.

The thing is that we have been in the work of parody for so long time that we don't ever know were it started. Get the Rocky series blockbuster, for example. We had a much better history, with a black man and boxe. But then someone stole the idea and put a white man against his worst enemy: another white man with diferent world view (Russians).

I find it funny how most of people that discredit the OP conclusion also thinks they are right when they are in the opposite situation. I don't see you Bros complaining when Hollywood whitewash history.

And last, when did you guys started to think that the "old" stuff is yours? They have legally owners, and they can change to fit or create a better history/world (and some guys like you keep thinking in ways to put it worse), like star wars and the woman and black as main characters.

> The thing is that we have been in the work of parody for so long time that we don't ever know were it started. Get the Rocky series blockbuster, for example. We had a much better history, with a black man and boxe. But then someone stole the idea and put a white man against his worst enemy: another white man with diferent world view (Russians).

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "someone stole" the idea of Rocky for Rocky IV. Sly both wrote and directed that. It's as regular a sequel as anything.

> I find it funny how most of people that discredit the OP conclusion also thinks they are right when they are in the opposite situation. I don't see you Bros complaining when Hollywood whitewash history.

I explicitly said that I'm not discrediting OPs conclusion, I however did not agree with how they arrived there.

The collective "Bro"-thing I don't feel worthy of responding to.

> And last, when did you guys started to think that the "old" stuff is yours? They have legally owners, and they can change to fit or create a better history/world (and some guys like you keep thinking in ways to put it worse), like star wars and the woman and black as main characters.

I can't answer for "us guys", only for me, but I have no problem with them doing whatever they want with Ghostbusters. All I am saying is that the reviews in this specific case isn't about sexism, but the movie not being at all relatable to the original one(s) in tone. Nothing to do with gender. As much right as they have to make the movie, the fans of the original have a right to opinions on it, without it being sexism, simply because the new characters happen to be women.

Personally I liked the new Star Wars, but it's entirely beside the point, but since you brought it up: SW:TFA was so true to SW:ANH that I'm inclined to call it a true remake, much in how Interstellar worked as an homage/rehash of 2001 with slight twists. I happened to like that one too.

When I saw the new Ghostbusters trailer in the cinema (yes, I still go there), I thought it was a parody film. I'm not kidding.

Nowadays, people always try to find ways to be offended. A women-led movie got bad ratings? It must be the patriarchy! Nobody wonders if it might have been just a bad movie, as I, as a man, also enjoy women-led movies (I mean movies in the cinemas, not what you think :P). Hoewever, the new Ghostbusters just looks like a big horrible painful joke, and that's why the ratings tanked.

Given it's so hard to even assess statistically, how many men are among movie raters, this entire article stands on weak feet.

Have you watched the movie

I won't argue that an average score on its own doesn't provide you with information about the diversity of opinion that led to that average, I'm sure we could do better in this regard. Perhaps something like Amazon does with the graphical representation showing how many people gave each star rating on a product review.

What I do have two problems with is the framing of this article when it comes to the new Ghostbusters film. This quote is a useful starting point for looking at those problems:

"More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women"

First of all, is the new Ghostbusters film meant to be aimed at women? If you look at it at a superficial level perhaps. To me, when you take on a beloved film franchise, you should make something that stays true to the spirit of the earlier films. The earlier Ghostbusters films have appeal across the board, why can't the new film have the same?

Secondly, the issue people are having with the Ghostbusters reboot is not really because all the new Ghostbusters are female. I, for one, think it was a good idea to do so, as it provided something new, and could have helped it to break from conventions whilst still providing something recognisable as a Ghostbusters film. The main problem people have with the film (and yes, they are just basing it on trailers at this point), is that it appears to be a generic, formulaic comedy with Ghostbusters dressing. For example, with the 'sassy black lady' Ghostbuster, the vast majority of the backlash isn't because she's a woman, the majority of the backlash is because she's playing a hackneyed stereotype. There were other parts of the trailers that were similarly paint-by-numbers Hollywood comedy.

Perhaps the trailers did the film a great disservice and there are better moments to be found in the film itself, but early impressions are not too great IMO.

No, main problem is its another effing REBOOT hijacking original name.

Technically the original movie wasn't the first to use the "Ghostbusters" name, and there were some legal issues around that. This is why there was a "Ghostbusters" cartoon that was not tied to the movie franchise, and a "The Real Ghostbusters" cartoon that was tied to the franchise.

The original Ghostbusters was a laugh, but what made it so memorable for me was the weird texture and depth built-in to its lore and tech. Classic!

The previews I've seen of the reboot present like schlock; some writing-by-committee mess. Based on my recent disappointment watching Finding Dory, I suppose muddled writing to be a common affliction in Hollywood, even for the top studios.

How does the author know which reviewers are female or male?

I do wonder how the review sites could allow reviews for a movie that isn't released yet, seems the few prerelease viewers isn't worth the chance of being gamed(or guarantee?)

There is a movie rating website called filmaffinity http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/main.html that has an interesting feature called "Movie Soulmates".

It matches your movie ratings against the rest of the users, selecting the ones with a highest coincidence.

Then you can discover unseen films highly rated by people with, allegedly, your same taste.

I also found Tastekid http://www.tastekid.com/ and FilmFish https://www.film-fish.com/ quite accurate.

I strongly enjoy movies by Studio Ghibli, and they mostly are female-led. Lets look at the latest, exclusively female-led movie from 2014 called When Marnie Was There.

IMDB: Men made 7779 votes with average 7.7, women made 2881 votes with average 7.9

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3398268/ratings-male

That is 0.2 points difference. If we look at ponyo, the difference is even less, with 0.1 points difference. If there is a bias, it is not exactly tanking the rating, and someone would have work hard to identify if its because women rate women-led movies higher than average, or males who rate it lower.

I have no opinion on Ghosbusters, but I just wanted to add that maybe it's not all out of spite and out of hatred towards media aimed at women? I'm a man and I would on average rate any rom-com that I saw with my fiancee much lower than she would - but at the same time, she would usually rate any action move that I liked much lower than I would. It's not because I hate women or she hates men - it's just.....not everything is for everyone? I have no idea how you would reflect it in ratings though?

The argument of the article seems to be that meta-ratings sites don't handle that class of movie well, more than it is claiming that "men are misogynistic and hate any media aimed at women".

To some extent it's the nature of a polarising topic. It's just that when it's a male/female split, it's easier to detect and analyse, so it's easy to build an article around.

The argument here is when men post internet reviews of "female oriented films", they tend to be far more critical than women are of "male oriented films". And in this case at least, (based on people who probably haven't seen the movie) men are more likely to post negative reviews of "female movies" than women are to post positive reviews.

So, to use your example, Internet meta-scores for rom-coms are not very helpful. Sure, if your fiancee wants to see one, you can work out how much you're going to hate it based on how badly other men reviewed it, but if she wants to go see one with her sister, then the internet scores tell her almost nothing. She really wants to know "do people who normally like rom-coms like this movie?" but she gets to see a relatively meaningless "5 out of 10" (based on 10 women averaging 9/10, and 20 men averaging 3/10)

I don't buy that Ghostbusters success will hinge on the gender of the lead actors - the leads in the new film have a lot to live up to in Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray.

The trick is the controversy. I know a lot of people who absolutely love Total Recall. There was a remake a few years ago, and it was bad (like everyone expected). People saw it or didnt, and nobody complained about it "ruining their childhood" or publicly boycotted it. I can't help but feel the different reaction is due to the gender recasting.

Similar statements was made when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out, and it had nothing to do with gender. How does Jar Jar Binks fit with your theory?

Nobody complained about it doing that prior to its release. It was hotly anticipated. Lineups around blocks were lined up. when it turned out to be bad, decades of anticipation turned to outrage. That was all after it came out.

You mean, the trailer for ghostbuster turned decades of anticipation to outrage, but in the case of star wars, the trailer was fine but the actually movie wasn't?

This is mostly covered in the article, but anyway:

I see a few overlapping effects here:

1) Aggregators like Tomatometer rank based on broad appeal. That's why Toy Story is one of the highest scored of all time (if you don't like Toy Story, you're dead inside), and Fight Club can be beloved to many but still not A grade.

2) Audiences are slowly getting tired of cynical reboots. Sure, I understand the harsh reality that means Hollywood has to play as risk averse as possible, and that recycling beloved IP has slightly-better-than break even results on average, but you can't expect movie watchers to gush over story retreads.

3) Yes, the loudest and most obnoxious voices on the internet are also the ones who will go to the most trouble to tank your reviews. This is not specific to movies. The fact that men are doing this for Ghostbusters does not reveal an inherent misogyny overall, just that said mysoginistic neckbeards are more likely to invest their time in trolling the internet (the 4chan effect).

I have no trouble with an all female lead cast. I just wish they didn't waste all that potential on such a crappy regurgitation.

So you've seen it already?

The internet matters. A cultural consensus has formed and that means a lot of people won't see this movie because the internet "decided" it was bad before anyone had seen it. The way I see it, a small number of overtly mysogynist trolls exploited a widespread subtle cultural mysogyny to tank a movie.

Ratings (for movies or whatever) are not broken, they just are a limited model of appreciation by a cohort. All statistical models have their limits, that does not make them «broken», just somewhat inaccurate (ie. with varying levels of accuracy).

The author shows it with the gender of the voters, but it would very probably have been the same with IQ, education level, zipcode, country, income level, etc

>Essentially, male users were more likely to rate television shows with a female-heavy audience lower than female users would rate male-centric television lower.

If you look at the gender breakdown on imdb for movies that have been out for a while (meaning that people have actually have had the time to watch them), it seems like the differences between the genders are nowhere near as big as for the new ghostbusters movie. The original Ghostbusters for example is 7.8 (m) vs 7.6 (f) [0]. It doesn't look like imdb provides the gender breakdown of votes in their publicly available dataset[1], but it would be interesting to see someone preform a more rigorous analysis (than me looking at movies I can remember at the top of my head).

[0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/ratings-male

[1] http://www.imdb.com/interfaces/

Ghostbusters may not be out where the author is from, but it certainly is here. It's not possible to dismiss all of the reviews as bogus.

> So, do you have a preconceived notion of how good or bad the “Ghostbusters” movie is going to be? Of course you do, you clicked on an article with “Ghostbusters” in the title.

I blindly clicked because of fivethirtyeight in the url.

"if we aggregate the ratings, they don't show what we want".

"we blame men who obviously didn't even see the movie, don't ask us how we know".

... because the movie wasn't out yet...?

>Men were tanking the ratings of shows aimed at women.

Yes. and Im one of those men. Maybe, just maybe STOP marketing those 'women shows' to men?

Remember recent Deadpool marketing campaign around Valentines Day painting it as a romantic comedy? This is what most 'movies and shows aimed at women' do, because they just cant let of the male market $$. "Hey go watch this cool new SciFi movie" never mentions its a Urban fantasy romance novel with 70% screen time taken by woman protagonist crying on someones shoulder.

The last "movie" I enjoyed was Terminator 2. Not too long after that, I realised that I had seen all possible combinations of ways that you can tell a story in 90 minutes.

Music Industry and Film Industry have essentially just become about personalities and big money. They can peddle garbage because everyone buys it.

I just hope that books are not next because that is all that remains of quality entertainment.

Have you considered looking towards foreign films, which may have a different way of telling a story? Some were popular in the US, like Amélie and Pan's Labyrinth, and of course there's the Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film.

Less popular ones include those listed at http://the-artifice.com/best-foreign-films-last-15-years/ , like Run Lola Run/Lola rennt, Noi the Albino/Nói albínói, Moolaadé, Second Skin/Segunda Piel and The Celebration/Festen.

No Hollywood film has covered female genital mutilation, which is the topic of Moolaadé, and Festen is part of the Dogme 95 movement,"to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology."

There's also Russian Ark/Русский ковчег, which is a single, uninterrupted, 87-minute take through centuries of Russian history while going through the Winter Palace at the Hermitage Museum. Or any number of other lists of notable foreign films, like http://www.salon.com/2015/01/24/7_must_see_foreign_films_tha... or http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-f... .

Really? You haven't seen any original stories in films after 1991?

To give a counterexample, what about Memento? What had you seen before Terminator 2 that was like Memento?

There's only seven possible plots for books, so I guess they're over too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

I would find it very hard to fit e.g. the Song of Ice and Fire into any of the 7 categories without moving the goalposts.

I know. The "seven basic plots" idea works, but only if you completely ignore the subtly and nuance of story-telling that authors have used most of the time. The point I was making was that you can't just boil every movie since Terminator 2 down to a rehash of what's come before. If the poster I was replying to is going to be over-simplify film plots then you also have to accept we can over-simplify book plots to get to the same point.

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