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Sam and Friends BookThere's something about using various Asian cultures to support one race that kinda gets under my skin, and frankly there's a lot of things that I actually like I could complain about that kinda makes me hypocritical for giving it a pass. Like Japanese Sab Shimono voicing Chinese Uncle Chan in Jackie Chan Adventures. It's one of those problems that Hollywood has with diversity. They're more concerned with name actors than giving smaller actors the chance to become name. There are lots of able actors of any race, but they'll double certain races as other races or just cast white people outright because of name recognition.
I'd argue that the original Star Wars was the first franchise picture, or at least the one that set franchises into motion. The groundwork for blockbusters and franchises has been set for franchises quite some time ago, even though they probably didn't use that exact term. I'd say the blame lies more in the fact that everything has to be attached to a new film to be relevant, and I mentioned that in a Looney Tunes thread. Like in the 90's, LT characters became retro chic somehow, leading to Taz getting his own show and Tweety being American Hello Kitty. Then someone said "we have to make a movie" and since Looney Tunes Back in Action failed then somehow the Looney Tunes weren't hip enough to put on t-shirts. It's an obnoxious paradox I've always said where you either have a crappy movie that's a success that does lead to merchandising (the Smurfs movies, say what you will, we got the amazing Peyo comics translated out of it), yet leading to more of the crappy film version, or the film version tanks and the characters are tossed into the mothballs. That is, unless the company feels they need to get their money worth and reboots things.
In honesty, I find the fact that they Sony wanted a Ghostbusters movie at all a little cynic. I can see the frustration that lead them here, though. The third movie kept being frustratingly close to getting greenlit and one thing or another kept setting it back. I honestly don't think we needed a third film, but I'm sure Sony was ticked off that one was supposed to happen by now. I give a lot of credit for Paul Feig and co for trying to make the best out of this situation and by smartly having a one off alternate universe film that doesn't retroactively smear the original film. By all means, Sony could have stepped in and made their own crappy GB3 film or an actual reboot/remake, and that would rightfully incur wrath. Still, it's strange that those who didn't like the movie, didn't want the movie, and wanted the film to fail are concerned that the film did only okay (not nearly the massive bomb that most of this summer's films were) and that's going to hurt the prospects of a future GB movie...that they wouldn't like either. That's...weird. It's like the moviegoers that really hated Tron Legacy were ticked Disney wasn't making another one because Tomorrowland failed to get an audience. You can't want more films unless you like the idea of more films.
