Nuke the Proton Accelerators?

Folks, I present you with a potentially "lose/lose" situation. I ask that you pick your poison:

In this corner, the wave of terrible reviews for Harold Ramis' Year One, which has the exact same writing team as (wait for it) Ghostbusters 3.

In this corner, the one-two punch of news from Shia LeBouf and Gary Marshall that Spielberg and Lucas are working on Indiana Jones 5.

You are not allowed to cross the streams, so which of the potentially disturbing developments worries you more about your "childhood" favorites? You are also not allowed to use the stupid "raped my childhood" metaphor, as it's cheap and wholly untrue. If you don't believe me, I'll hire Doc Brown to take me back in time and show you what that phrase REALLY implies.

See what you did? You made the Cap'n resort to a really heinous joke in order to put that overused phrase in context. As they say in The Princess Bride, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

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Okay, to be serious for a moment, I think I'm a little more worried about Ghostbusters 3 for two reasons:

1) Year One looked bad from the first trailer, but I haven't found a kind review today. This sounds like a Golden Raspberry contender, and that I was not expecting from the director of Groundhog Day and the criminally underrated The Ice Harvest.

2) On the other hand, the folks I know who have been playing the Ghosbusters game love it so much that it can only set up a new film to fail, and fail miserably. Maybe a third film doesn't need to happen, and it's weird for me to say that since I've been championing a third Ghostbusters almost as hard as Tron 2.

Is it a possible apples-to-oranges question? Hard to say. The reason that the two Office writers got the Ghostbusters gig was in part because of the experience Ramis had on Year One. I get the distinct impression Year One is a well intentioned misfire that turned out to be an elevator fart disguised as History of the World Part Two. If the writing and directing are sloppy in Year One, then who's to say Ghostbusters was just what they were really working on?

I'm genuinely curious what you think about this.

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As one of the five people in the world who liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (along with Vern, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Shia LeBouf), I'm not necessarily saying "no thanks" to more Indiana Jones. If it could maybe possibly be a little less stupid or at least not have the phrase "The treasure was knowledge!", I could even welcome another fridge nuking.

I will not, however, watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Didn't see the first one, not going to watch the second one. I was once told I was "less of a man" for being more interested in Ratatouille than Transformers, but I'm sticking to my guns here. My semi-nostalgia for a toy based cartoon isn't strong enough to blindly trick me into believe Michael Bay has done anything worth watching since Don Simpson died*.

For those not keeping track at home, I made that leap because a) Shia LeBouf is in both films, and b) Steven Spielberg produced both Transformers movies. Michael Bay is not a frequent punching bag in the blogorium, partially because I don't usually feel like wasting my time bringing his movies up. I do still enjoy The Rock and I'll give him that.

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"Cap'n, are you feeling grouchy because of this seemingly impossible housing situation?"

Maybe so.

"Don't you think you should go watch Dr. Strangelove and feel better for a while?"

Perhaps I should.

"We think you should."

Thanks for your considerate advice.



* and yeah, I watched Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, and The Island. I know what I'm talking about here.