@boodger: They were saying it was going to be bad because the entire focus of the movie was on the female cast, not on being ghostbusters, and they were right. It was a lazy virtue signal cash grab and everyone could see it for what it was. Making the ghostbusters female doesn't add anything of substance but they were treating it as if it was some great step forward for women to finally be seen...which is why they were roundly mocked.
They weren't mocked because the ghostbusters were recast as female, they were mocked because they were treating it as if it was the only thing that mattered. They COULD have done a perfectly fine funny Ghostbusters movie with an all female cast, it was obvious from the get go that they weren't concerned with making a good movie at all. They were after a nostalgia bait, virtue signalling cash grab remake and it was so obvious that everyone roundly mocked it knowing it was going to be terrible, and they were RIGHT.
Look at what has been happening in movies and TV. You have Anne Boleyn being played by a very dark skinned woman, despite it being a critical point that she was very pale skinned historically because a Black Queen of England doesn't make sense for the time period. The same for the Jarl Haakon also being played by a Black woman, despite it being a key detail that HE was a Nordic man and that a black female viking leader would be a very abnormal historical phenomenon to say the least.
Hence the absurdism of making male swapped version of A League of their Own would be equally absurd. Heck that awful movie Ballers is basically that, now that I think about it. A bunch of people who can't make it in the big leagues, but they still want to compete so they think outside the box and join a different league altogether. Such is the times we live in...
The point is that they are making these changes arbitrarily. Yes there could have been a funny female ghostbusters, BUT they were more concerned with the gender swap than than the movie being good. THEY chose to focus and highlight the fact that it was an all female cast remake for no reason other than virtue signalling, and the internet reacted to this.
@Tiwill44: Exactly. Pokemon hasn't had a serious rival in a very long time, and it shows. They got fat and lazy and then comes this little upstart that totally ate their lunch in just a few short days. They need to get on the treadmill and put in the effort to reclaim their glory, or end up getting left in the dust by superior alternatives.
@m4a5: I'd say it's more of an evolution than a parody. There are some funny moments, like grabbing a fire type and shoving them in a sling to use it as a flame thrower, but it's a serious mechanic in the game and it makes a lot of sense from a real world perspective of how Pokemon would be used (and abused).
@Tiwill44: Yes and no. There are certainly some distinct DBZ style elements separating the two, but the overall designs for many of the monsters is extremely similar in ways that cannot deny at least an inspirational relationship.
I agree that Palworld designed their stuff to look like Pokemon intentionally, but that's not saying much. Pokemon characters are extremely simplistic in design, often having simple tubes for hands and feet with one or two distinct elements so you can "name that pokemon" in silhouette. That is kind of the problem that Pokemon used a lot of simple designs and concepts to start with, which makes them rather hard to secure from a copyright/trademark perspective from copycats.
Heck they even kind of destroy their own arguments themselves by creating multiple variant pokemon on a theme. For example, there are multiple electric rat monsters that are barely visually distinct from one another, but they treat them as entirely new and distinct pokemon (Minun, Plusse, Pichu). So if Palworld creates a yellow electric rat with a socket for a tail, it's pretty much fair game to say it's not pikachu by their own design logic.
This article: The people who were against Ghost Busters remake were wrong and totally sexist in how they thought the movie would fail.
Also this article: Proceeds to excoriate the movie for the exact same reasons the supposedly sexist people were critical of the movie.
Their ENTIRE tag line was the fact that it was an all female cast and nothing more. Imagine if the same was done for something like a remake of A League of their Own, with an all male cast, and you'll understand why that it's not a selling point.
@Tiwill44: Doubtful. As much as Nintendo would love to bring a lawsuit for copyright infringement, they'd be absolute destroyed if they did. Turns out that Pokemon has been cribbing their designs from other games like Dragon Quest for decades at this point, so if Palworld is guilty of design theft, then so is Pokemon. SquareEnix is sitting in the dark goading them on like Palpatine saying "do it", hoping they'll pull the trigger on a lawsuit.
@m4a5: I'd argue it's not even technically parody. There are plenty of monster collection games out there with similar themes to Pokemon. I mean the formula for creating pokemon is pretty simple, take real life or mythical animal and add an element to it. That's about it.
Also, there are plenty of memes floating around of how Pokemon copied their designs from Dragon Quest in much the same way as what we see with Palworld, so they don't have much of a legal leg to stand on, without opening themselves up to potential massive lawsuits as well.
@Pierce_Sparrow: Also, you have to look at real world actions of people who claim ACAB. What happens when their homes get broken into or they have a stalker and so on? They CALL THE COPS.
If ACAB was real, then they would never actually call the cops because that would be just throwing gasoline on the fire, but each and every time a prominent anti-cop person is attacked or threatened, they invariably call the cops.
There are places in the world where people will NEVER call the cops, because they are truly corrupt to the core, but that is not true in the US. There are certainly bad cops, as there are bad people in all walks of life, but they are not the majority, nor even a plurality of cops. Most cops are just trying to do their job and have an honest desire to help people.
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