On March 3rd, 2016, I sat at my computer with an expression on my face that falls somewhere between cringe and grimace. I was watching the immediately viral trailer for Paul Feig's remake of Ghostbusters. Thoroughly revolted by what I saw, I promptly pressed the dislike button and moved on with my life.

Little did I know, with one click of a button, I had taken a stand against the rights of women everywhere. Or, at least, that's what Sony told me.

Now, I wasn't happy with the concept of the new Ghostbusters from the start. Here's the thing: remakes are terrible. They are lazy attempts to siphon profit out of the corpses of previously successful films. They are sloppy, inherently unoriginal Frankensteins produced by the worst people in Hollywood. Countless classic films received the remake treatment and are rarely done any justice. When I heard Ghostbusters was the next movie on the chopping block, I felt the same way: another one bites the dust.

The announcement of its all-female cast, however, did not strike me as some major problem as it did others. If anything, the new Ghostbuster's female focus is the best thing about it, since it shows that the creators of the film wanted to actually make something new as opposed to reproducing what's safe. But this small glimmer of hope within me was promptly crushed upon hearing that the film would be directed by Paul Feig, famous for his previous comedy Bridesmaids, in which women get diarrhea and it's funny because they're ladies but they're pooping. Killer stuff, Paul; keep pushing the limits of comedy, my dude.

And then came the trailer. Boy, was I wrong: it looked far worse than I expected. It was hard to get through, watching respectable female comedians trapped within a flaming trainwreck of a major motion picture.

Days after its release, the trailer garnered a hilarious amount of backlash on YouTube, clocking in as the 10th most disliked video in the website's history, and the most disliked movie trailer of all time. The internet was exploding, and to me it felt like justice: people were striking back against an industry that had taken advantage of their audiences for too long.

So I guess I was a little perplexed when the backlash against Ghostbusters became such a major news story. It looked horrible, but horrible movies come out every year, so why did the news view this as such a tantalizing scoop?

Well, they didn't, actually. But Sony did.

The remake of Ghostbusters was a massive financial risk for Sony Pictures to undertake. The production and marketing of the film reached an estimated cost of around $300 million, a shockingly lofty price tag for a silly summer comedy. In addition, the film's creation serves as a perfect example of what many would call "development hell." Costs aside, the original script, which centered the story around "ghost aliens" from outer space (what in the fuck is wrong with Paul Feig?), was completely repudiated by many involved in the production, particularly Melissa McCarthy, who refused to continue work on the film if the script was not changed. Then, in an attempt to placate fans of the original, Sony attempted to fill the remake with awkward, shoehorned cameos by members of the original cast. However, some of the original cast were not so keen, like Bill Murray, who refused to be a part of the film for so long that the studio threatened "aggressive litigation" against him if we would not comply. Eventually, Murray caved and appeared in the film for about five minutes before he is killed by the new cast. How's that for a metaphor?

But the figurative shit didn't hit the fan until the trailer dropped. The backlash was bad, really bad, worse than any other movie of its kind. Not only had Sony continued their tradition of pushing out painfully unfunny comedies to stuff with product placement, but they had simultaneously defiled the name of a fan favorite in the process. $300 million in the hole and facing intense public criticism, Sony had to find a way to market their unmarketable piece of trash cinema to an outraged audience. They decided to fall back on a previous tactic that had worked beautifully.

You remember that comedy by James Franco and Seth Rogen, The Interview, that dominated the news because of threats from North Korea? Well, Sony was behind that fiasco too. In fear of a flop, Sony crafted the threats from North Korea into a form of free marketing. Watching a Franco-Rogen comedy became an act of patriotic defiance. It was bewildering. From the way people talked about it, you'd think it was the next Citizen Kaine: the film Kim Jon-un doesn't want you to see. In reality, this narrative funded by Sony was just a pathetic attempt to save the movie from flopping, an attempt that ultimately failed, since the picture ended up with approximately a $30 million box office loss.

In regard to Ghostbusters, Sony was backed into a similar corner: facing public displeasure and a massive financial loss, Sony had to find a new way to market their comedy.

It's unsurprising that the angle they chose was "feminism." From the start, Sony had carefully designed the film so it could be marketed to the feminist blogosphere. They had made deliberate decisions to make the film liberal enough to attract the attention of Tumblr without being anything too radical. For instance, originally, Kate McKinnon's character was supposed to be openly lesbian, but Sony shot this down since they viewed it as "going too far." The production of Ghostbusters was a calculated, focus group tested effort to make a film that was nothing new, nothing funny, nothing progressive, that had the appearance of something radical. Sony created the model that so many companies now scramble to perfect: for-profit feminism.

The corporate corruption of social movements is nothing new. Look at Stonewall, a movie that aimed to cash in on the recent growing support for queer rights in America. The film intended to tell the story of the Stonewall riots while changing the main character to a white gay man, but in reality, the person who started the riots was a trans woman of color. When confronted by audiences for their blatant whitewashing of history, the studio responded that this white male character would be more "relatable." What the company is saying here is that white gay men are generally accepted in neoliberal spaces, while trans women of color are still seen as radical or otherworldly. As a company built on financial gains, the studio effectively rewrote history in order to maximize profits.

Ghostbusters isn't any different. They had their female cast and their single black character, which was all they needed to push the movie as the future of feminist Hollywood. So when the backlash hit hard, Sony hit back: the critics of Ghostbusters weren't people upset by the unoriginality and blatant pandering of the Hollywood elite, they were sexist "manbabies" outraged that their original film had been replaced with ladies. The internet swarmed with headlines defending the movie, claiming that 100% of the backlash was sexist or misogynist. Liberals were mobilized everywhere, taking to blogs and comment sections of Jezebel articles to defend Paul Feig, a feminist iconoclast whose work rivals that of Lucretia Mott.

While I do not deny that petty sexists exist who did feel as if the movie is terrible only because of the women involved, the narrative that these people make up the majority of the criticism is absurd and completely inaccurate. After crunching the numbers on the Ghostbusters trailer, roughly 12% of the comments criticize the movie because of its supposedly feminist angle. Compared to the amount of people who commented versus the total number of views for the trailer, only 0.8% of those who watched the trailer made some sort of a misogynistic comment on the video. Sony's claim that the dislike for the movie is wholly grounded in sexism is totally false and a laughably obvious corporate takeover of the feminist movement.

The saddest part of this whole affair is not what Sony attempted, it's that people totally bought it. Social media feminists everywhere declared that watching a $300 million dollar fart-joke comedy was an important step in the revolt against the patriarchy. While Sony continued to pay outlets for falsified, positive reviews, just barely earning the film a 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, I found myself horribly disappointed in publications I once viewed as respectable movie critics. Even the New York Times titled their review, "Girls Rule. Women Are Funny. Get Over It." And hey, women are funny, but whether or not women have the capability of being humorous isn't on trial here. Ghostbusters is the only thing on trial, and if you can't talk about the film without the backlash narrative fed to you by Hollywood fatcats, then you cease to actually review the movie. A massive percentage of the positive reviews you'll find barely touch on what makes the movie funny or clever, they just attack strawman woman-haters when they should be talking about a goddamned summer comedy.

In times like these, we must ask ourselves how we got here. Representation is incredibly important, but if a film that contains Sandler-level comedic bits is seen as some crux of the feminist movement, then we've made a wrong turn somewhere. How is a twelve dollar movie ticket a victory for feminism? How is "Lady Slimer" a victory for feminism? If the issue is how women are represented in film, do you really think Sony Pictures, the multibillion dollar company who produced such works as Jack & Jill, Pixels, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is going to be our hero? You want to see a major motion picture that's entertaining but comes packed with a feminist message? Go watch Mad Max: Fury Road, not this pile of rehashed waste.

Paul Feig's Ghostbusters is not what the future of female representation, or even women in comedy, looks like. If anything, Comedy Central's Broady City is what that future might look like: the show stars two female leads and each episode touches on various social issues, whether it's feminism, racism, queerness, polyamory, or more, and they do all of this while remaining clever, original, and hilarious. My argument here is not that women are not funny, or even that the women specifically involved with Ghostbusters aren't funny (I'm a huge fan of Wiig and Jones), my argument is that Ghostbusters, as a movie, is not good. It is, in fact, the least funny film I have seen in theaters for a long time. So why do we give it so much unprecedented meaning? Why do we allow Sony to control our minds so effectively in their battle to increase profits? Feminism, as a concept, cannot be distorted into a tool for financial gain, but if we praise movies like Ghostbusters because billionaire production companies tell us to do so, then that's exactly what will happen.

In conclusion: girls rule, women are funny, Ghostbusters is fucking horrendous, and Paul Feig is a degenerate hack fraud.

Get over it.