Max Landis Reviews ‘Ghostbusters,’ Says ‘Some Of It’s Racist’ & Tells Story Of His Own Pitch
Max Landis is best known for writing films such as “Chronicle,” “American Ultra,” and “Victor Frankenstein,” but he’s also well known for freely sharing his opinions about the film industry. In a series of tweets, Landis provided his opinion about Paul Feig‘s “Ghostbusters” reboot and shared the story of his own pitch for the movie that eventually fell through.
Landis first says that the film is “pretty whatever,” and that though there are “very funny parts,” the third act “gets really horribly dumb” and that the “racist stereotype character,” i.e. Leslie Jones’ Patty Tolan, “is as advertised.” He expands further criticizing the film’s lack of internal consistency as to “how the ghosts work,” the inclusion of a “big sassy yelling black woman,” and the weirdness of a scene where “everybody shoots a ghost in the dick.” He ultimately says that it’s “pretty bland and kind of funny and parts of it don’t make sense and some of it’s racist,” and is surprised that the film provoked strong reactions either way.
He also criticized the discourse surrounding the film on both sides, describing the treatment of James Rolfe, the Cinemassacre YouTube critic who refused to see “Ghostbusters” on principle, as “appalling,” calling it “a lot of garbage white knighting and bullying,” but also said that the amount of sexism towards the film “was literally everywhere” and was “not a made up thing.”
Then, Landis goes into the story of how he pitched his own “Ghostbusters” movie back in 2014 but ultimately lost the job. He describes how his pitch was positively received by executives and all he had to do was meet with Ivan Reitman, but the meeting kept getting postponed until he received an email from an executive that Paul Feig had swooped in and won over the hearts of the execs. Landis made sure to say that he doesn’t harbor any negative feelings towards Feig, that he’s not bitter about what happened, and that the new “Ghostbusters” will “stand or fall on its own merits.” He also added that his version was “not a sequel to ‘Ghostbusters 2,’ but more as a sequel to the property itself; think ‘Aliens’ to ‘Alien,’ ‘T2’ to ‘Terminator.'”
For the full review and pitch story, check out the collected tweets at Slashfilm, and to read Landis’ full pitch, head over to his website.
READ MORE: Max Landis Wonders If The Flop Of ‘American Ultra’ Means That Original Movies Are Dead
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