The trailer for the female-led Ghostbusters reboot has this week earned itself the dubious distinction of being the most-disliked movie trailer ever to appear on YouTube.
The movie, which has faced unusually harsh criticism almost since it was announced, even for a remake of a popular and beloved film, has officially entered the list of YouTube’s 100 most disliked videos.
Screen Crush went ahead and looked at the numbers, finding that the trailer, which only went online last month, has earned itself a whopping 507,610 dislikes. (It has since jumped to 535,000).
To put that in perspective, they noted that the trailer for last year’s Fantastic Four, a genuine cinematic abomination and a lightning rod for some not inconsiderable nerd rage, scored itself a mere 20,175 dislikes.
Even Batman v Superman, the latest from divisive director Zack Snyder, which was vocally reviled by certain sections of the internet, only managed to accrue 3771 dislikes for its final trailer.
The ratio of views to dislikes would seem to be far outside of what you might organically expect for a movie of this type; consider the fact that the Facebook version of the same trailer has just 12,000 ‘angry’ votes, alongside a comparable 22 million views.
A quick glance at the YouTube comments reveals what’s really going on; a swirling mess of anti-women nonsense, running the gamut from accusations of “feminazi” propaganda to complaints that female-led films aren’t funny.
Sony have reportedly been deleting the more extreme comments, but currently, there are some people actually, literally wishing death on director Paul Feig (these people may need to take a deep breath and chill the fuck out).
As Screen Crush also point out, the majority of the most disliked videos on YouTube also have women front and centre – Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Madonna and Adele all feature, alongside two versions of ‘Let It Go’, from Frozen.
It’s hard to say for certain that people are specifically taking time out of their days to downvote and pile on a movie trailer because it puts women in roles once played by men, but based on all the available evidence, it sure as shit seems like that’s what’s happening.
The internet: still the f’kn worst.
There’s currently an unofficial campaign to get Ghostbusters to a million dislikes, which may well happen by the time the film is out in July.
Source: Screen Crush.
