Movie review
July 14, 2016 · 117 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot follows four women who form a paranormal research team to battle a ghost invasion threatening Manhattan using proton packs and traps. The story delivers standard supernatural comedy with the team proving their competence against bureaucracy and the threat. The deliberate all-female lead casting creates visible girl-power framing through marketing emphasis, team dynamics, and light gender-reversed humor with a dim male receptionist, though these stay secondary to the ghost plot rather than driving activist messaging.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Ghostbusters.
Woke representation / casting
Deliberate all-female casting in the iconic Ghostbusters lead roles as an explicit gender-swapped reboot, with marketing and public discussion centering women replacing male originals and creating clear audience-visible identity signaling.
Woke political dialogue
Virtually absent from the script; no activist speeches, modern political rants, or ideological messaging beyond one quick comedic reference to online sexism comments.
Identity-driven story themes
Female protagonists succeed as scientists and investigators with occasional light empowerment beats and reversed-gender humor, but these remain incidental support for the supernatural comedy rather than central identity-politics drivers or unearned girlboss dominance.
Western institutional / cultural critique
None; the film contains no modern activist framing of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, or Western institutions as flawed systems, nor any present-day systemic oppression messaging.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant; the film introduces entirely new original characters in a standalone reboot with no alterations to 1984 canon figures or events.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Intense, well-documented backlash across social media, YouTube, and news explicitly accused the project of pushing feminist propaganda, forced diversity, and political correctness through gender-swapping, generating massive pre-release outrage and culture-war status.
Creator track record context
Paul Feig has a consistent record of female-centric comedies and publicly framed this film around empowering women leads while attributing criticism to misogyny and later politics, supporting the identity-focused approach.
Production
