Ghostbusters: The scene altered to mock its internet backlash
Paul Feig and the Ghostbusters crew want to make one thing clear - they ain't afraid of no haters
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Your support makes all the difference.Ah, the perpetually ruinous ways of the internet, sending a film to damnation before it's actually been seen by any human eye.
Needless to say, it's been deeply frustrating to see the pre-release narrative of Ghostbusters taken beyond the reasonable, usual constructs of reboot-critique, and into the realms of male nerd hysteria; particularly with the barely-veiled misogyny which has tinged the most extreme corners of the film's internet-fuelled backlash.
Now, the film prepares itself to launch into cinemas whilst simultaneously being chased by the monstrous elephant in the room; yet, it looks as if director Paul Feig and his Ghostbusters cast have made the decision to fight the beast head-on, instead of attempting to tiptoe around its most unsavoury parts.
Speaking to Yahoo Movies, the cast revealed one scene's dialogue had been altered to mock the most ludicrous aspects of the film's backlash, in which the team read out the trolling comments left on a video they uploaded to YouTube.
"It was added [to the script]," Melissa McCarthy stated. "We did something on the day that slightly tweaked it." With co-star Kristen Wiig adding, "I feel like the part was in [the script] already. But we changed what was said."
It sounds as if screenwriters Paul Feig and Katie Dippold had almost pre-empted the film would receive a level of sexist backlash; which isn't particularly surprising, since it's fairly well-known that women are accustomed to having a pretty bad time on the internet in general.
But, as McCarthy explains, the fluidity of the script gave plenty of room for alteration and improv moments; meaning some of the comments in the scene would be altered to reflect real life attacks on the film.
"[The script] is very loose," said McCartthy, "I think it’s how most of us work. You have a great script that [Paul] and Katie Dippold wrote, and then what’s so great about Paul is that on the day, we get what’s written and he says, ‘now have a little bit of fun with it’. It doesn’t mean you go wildly off topic or try to switch stories, but you can change it up just enough to really surprise who you’re talking to."
Ghostbusters hits UK cinemas 11 July.
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