In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
Peck was there to looks for hazardous chemicals, of which there were none and there was zero evidence of any on the premises. And the only thing that made the containment unit hazardous was by doing the exact thing Peck was forcing the power guy to do because Venkman wounded his precious little ego.
Nobody that's responsible would storm into an operation they know nothing about about, insist on a catastrophic shutdown, and than run right over the top of the people who built the thing and are saying "don't fucking do that, it will be catastrophic" simply because the first owner they talked to didn't suck his official lack of a dick when he showed up trying to swing around its non-existence. Anybody with any brains would've at least asked "how catastrophic?" and then "okay, how do we safely shut it off?", not gone "fuck you, I'm in charge now!" At a minimum, anyone with more brains than ego would've slowed down marginally at the phrase "high-energy containment grid".
Plus, all the stuff was brand-new techno-shit for ghosts that they built custom, so there couldn't have actually been EPA regulations against it yet.
Peck is the very image of the shithead ignorant bureaucrat who actually knows nothing about his job and he gets a kick out of shoving people around with no way for them to push back.
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
Peck was there to looks for hazardous chemicals, of which there were none and there was zero evidence of any on the premises. And the only thing that made the containment unit hazardous was by doing the exact thing Peck was forcing the power guy to do because Venkman wounded his precious little ego.
Nobody that's responsible would storm into an operation they know nothing about about, insist on a catastrophic shutdown, and than run right over the top of the people who built the thing and are saying "don't fucking do that, it will be catastrophic" simply because the first owner they talked to didn't suck his official lack of a dick when he showed up trying to swing around its non-existence. Anybody with any brains would've at least asked "how catastrophic?" and then "okay, how do we safely shut it off?", not gone "fuck you, I'm in charge now!" At a minimum, anyone with more brains than ego would've slowed down marginally at the phrase "high-energy containment grid".
Plus, all the stuff was brand-new techno-shit for ghosts that they built custom, so there couldn't have actually been EPA regulations against it yet.
Peck is the very image of the shithead ignorant bureaucrat who actually knows nothing about his job and he gets a kick out of shoving people around with no way for them to push back.
But peck isn’t a real person. He is a character written to be that way. He only fails because he was set up to and he is only irresponsible because he is written that way.
But we can examine the movie in the way in the story it chooses to tell and the basis upon which that story rests.
Peck is right on the basis. The ghostbusters have unlicensed nuclear reactors on their backs… in downtown nyc… 5 years after three mile island. Like hooooly shit is peck right.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
Except for being categorically wrong about everything, sure. The Ghostbusters aren't scam artists. They don't use nerve gas and a light show to trick anybody. The ghosts are real. There are no hazardous chemicals, which is expressly what he was digging for with zero evidence. He never even mentions something like the packs because he knows fuck-all about anything the Ghostbusters do or have because his entire premise is 100% assumption.
Peck isn't there to prove the Ghostbusters are a hazard, just to shit on them for not cooperating with him. He gets the building blown up despite dire and direct warnings and what's the first thing he does in front of the mayor? Not talk about the risk the the Ghostbusters posed, but he's dying to whine about them scamming people and even tries to to blame them for the explosion he caused when the accusations of being fakes doesn't sell the mayor. He never even mentions any actual threat to people, largely because he doesn't give a shit.
So he's wrong about what he's actually looking for, wrong about what he should be looking for, wrong about the Ghostbusters, wrong for ignoring their warnings, wrong for ignoring the warning from the power company guy, and wrong for harassing the Ghostbusters simply because he gets a hard-on for pushing around average citizens.
And all because he had to throw a fit because Venkman verbally flicked his nose.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited July 2021
Sure Peck is a GIANT asshole, but overall he still isn't wrong. The guys built a dangerous piece of unlicensed equipment in their basement (not even considering the nuclear accelerators on their backs). What if the power had went out on their block? Just because it is cutting edge technology doesn't mean you can just go doing whatever you want.
The movie frames Peck and the guys the way it does because it's a movie set in the 80s, where capitalism will save the day.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
Peck isn't there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous, he's there because he's being the equivalent of a standard cop and throwing accusations at them until something sticks because they had the wild audacity to not cower in front of him.
So he's not even right on that score because he isn't even there to prove them as dangerous, he's just trying to shit on them. If he thought they were actually dangerous, he might've bothered to gather something resembling evidence and figure out how to not blow up the building while shutting them down. Instead, he did the standard cop routine and provoked the situation into disaster, then went in front of the mayor and tried to say the Ghostbusters did it while feigning innocence for himself.
Whether or not you like how the role was written doesn't change the fact that Peck was 100% a self-serving asshole with a grudge and willing to say whatever he needed to teach Venkman a lesson. Peck had no interest in the Ghostbusters as a theoretical hazard, or in protecting anybody.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Peck isn't there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous, he's there because he's being the equivalent of a standard cop and throwing accusations at them until something sticks because they had the wild audacity to not cower in front of him.
So he's not even right on that score because he isn't even there to prove them as dangerous, he's just trying to shit on them. If he thought they were actually dangerous, he might've bothered to gather something resembling evidence and figure out how to not blow up the building while shutting them down. Instead, he did the standard cop routine and provoked the situation into disaster, then went in front of the mayor and tried to say the Ghostbusters did it while feigning innocence for himself.
Whether or not you like how the role was written doesn't change the fact that Peck was 100% a self-serving asshole with a grudge and willing to say whatever he needed to teach Venkman a lesson. Peck had no interest in the Ghostbusters as a theoretical hazard, or in protecting anybody.
I think he did at first, at least in the fact of doing his job, before Venkman pushes all his buttons. "Hey these guys are on the news saying they catch ghosts, have a whole bunch of weird equipment that puts on a show, and there are no permits or anything on file for the work they are doing, lets go check in on this". The movie shows the guys and their equipment on the news, on national magazines and all kinds of stuff. They are at least some kind of big deal. Peck would have never showed up if the guys had gotten a permit or two. That cuts against the underdog businessmen theme though.
Peck isn't there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous, he's there because he's being the equivalent of a standard cop and throwing accusations at them until something sticks because they had the wild audacity to not cower in front of him
Yes Peck isn’t there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous he is there because he is a standing for government meddling in the glory of the free market.
But he does claim they’re dangerous.
And he is right. They are, regardless of the issues he causes he is right that they are dangerous.
And his scamming claims are reasonable. The only reason you know ghosts exist are because you have seen them in a way that you can claim they exist framed by a reliable narrator telling you ghosts exist. But when people claim that ghosts exist now you call them frauds… because they are. When people do magic tricks you think “how was that done” not “oh this guy must be a literal sorcerer”
(On top of that, they are running a completely new business with gadgets no one ever seen before, and we know it's unlicensed nuclear accelerators.
Ofcourse Peck wants to see how it operates.)
Wanna try my Mario Maker levels?
Shoot m to BITS (hold Y) [hard] C109-0000-014D-4E09 P-POWER Switch Palace 3838-0000-0122-9359 Raiding the Serpents Tomb 1A04-0000-0098-C11E I like to move it, move it FCE2-0000-00D7-9048
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Reservation Dogs looks like it would be better as a movie and not a TV show. Or at least a movie first then if you have more do a show. I just get a sense it's going to have a bunch of filler.
King Richard, oh that can oscar bait opened up early in July might stink come December. And as a lifelong tennis player/watcher it's weird watching Richard Williams be lionized now, for a good chunk of time they always brought up how the two were talented but their dad went into possessive amounts of controlling them. I guess I'm waiting for them to make Martina Hingis and Lindsey Davenport racists just to have an antagonist.
New Dexter season promo, feels off in a way that makes me go "can you at least address you have a son, bro?"
Peck isn't there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous, he's there because he's being the equivalent of a standard cop and throwing accusations at them until something sticks because they had the wild audacity to not cower in front of him.
So he's not even right on that score because he isn't even there to prove them as dangerous, he's just trying to shit on them. If he thought they were actually dangerous, he might've bothered to gather something resembling evidence and figure out how to not blow up the building while shutting them down. Instead, he did the standard cop routine and provoked the situation into disaster, then went in front of the mayor and tried to say the Ghostbusters did it while feigning innocence for himself.
Whether or not you like how the role was written doesn't change the fact that Peck was 100% a self-serving asshole with a grudge and willing to say whatever he needed to teach Venkman a lesson. Peck had no interest in the Ghostbusters as a theoretical hazard, or in protecting anybody.
I think he did at first, at least in the fact of doing his job, before Venkman pushes all his buttons. "Hey these guys are on the news saying they catch ghosts, have a whole bunch of weird equipment that puts on a show, and there are no permits or anything on file for the work they are doing, lets go check in on this". The movie shows the guys and their equipment on the news, on national magazines and all kinds of stuff. They are at least some kind of big deal. Peck would have never showed up if the guys had gotten a permit or two. That cuts against the underdog businessmen theme though.
Peck never says anything about permits. If that was his issue, he could have rolled up with a warrant regarding them at any time, especially when magazines like popular science are giving breakdowns on the Ghostbusters equipment, which you'd think would be a red flag, but apparently no one has an issue with the unlicensed nuclear accelerators. Peck later admits that he doesn't even think the proton packs are real, that it's a "fake electronic light show"
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Peck isn't there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous, he's there because he's being the equivalent of a standard cop and throwing accusations at them until something sticks because they had the wild audacity to not cower in front of him.
So he's not even right on that score because he isn't even there to prove them as dangerous, he's just trying to shit on them. If he thought they were actually dangerous, he might've bothered to gather something resembling evidence and figure out how to not blow up the building while shutting them down. Instead, he did the standard cop routine and provoked the situation into disaster, then went in front of the mayor and tried to say the Ghostbusters did it while feigning innocence for himself.
Whether or not you like how the role was written doesn't change the fact that Peck was 100% a self-serving asshole with a grudge and willing to say whatever he needed to teach Venkman a lesson. Peck had no interest in the Ghostbusters as a theoretical hazard, or in protecting anybody.
I think he did at first, at least in the fact of doing his job, before Venkman pushes all his buttons. "Hey these guys are on the news saying they catch ghosts, have a whole bunch of weird equipment that puts on a show, and there are no permits or anything on file for the work they are doing, lets go check in on this". The movie shows the guys and their equipment on the news, on national magazines and all kinds of stuff. They are at least some kind of big deal. Peck would have never showed up if the guys had gotten a permit or two. That cuts against the underdog businessmen theme though.
Peck never says anything about permits. If that was his issue, he could have rolled up with a warrant regarding them at any time, especially when magazines like popular science are giving breakdowns on the Ghostbusters equipment, which you'd think would be a red flag, but apparently no one has an issue with the unlicensed nuclear accelerators. Peck later admits that he doesn't even think the proton packs are real, that it's a "fake electronic light show"
I know I'm applying too much real world stuff to this, but the permit stuff, especially for small first time operators you do like he did, and go check them out, and if they are fucking up you square it away and get everything sorted, and maybe you do shut them down if they are REALLY fucking up and doing something dangerous. All I'm saying is if the Ghostbusters had worked inside the Bureaucracy then Peck most likely would have never shown up. The movie time and time again reinforces that any large agencies are bad though, from the College, to the EPA to the City, and only private enterprise can save the day.
I'm not saying Peck isn't a giant asshole, or that inspectors can certainly have an axe to grind, but Egon even says if the Grid gets turned off it will be like setting off a bomb in the city. If you've build equipment like that willy nilly inside a major metropolitan area then its also on their heads that they got shut down.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
A water heater is a bomb and there are millions of those inside any given city.
But they're only a bomb if you ignore the experts and their advice in working with water heater, such as when Peck is way to far up his own ass on a power trip to bother noticing Egon physically interposing himself to stop the grid from being shut down in an unsafe way. Peck even goes so far as to "advise" the cop with him to shoot the Ghostbusters if they interfere; what possible fucking operation could the storage grid have been performing that Peck needed to shut it down that instant without knowing what would happen or giving the Ghostbusters a chance of a safe shutdown? That's right, the containment grid was doing fuck-all to be an imminent hazard, Peck just wanted to provoke the situation into a disaster so he could pin it on the Ghostbusters.
There's no amount of "within the bureaucracy" that would have saved the Ghostbusters from the likes of Peck, that's the point of the character. He's a power-drunk piece of shit that was going to use all his resources to destroy the Ghostbusters the moment Venkman pissed him off. No amount of nonexistent theoretical public concern on Peck's part is present because the character doesn't give a shit about the public, he wants to fuck over the Ghostbusters.
Peck was simply the bureaucratic equivalent of a cop trying to force somebody into doing something rash he could send them to prison for, full stop. When they wouldn't act rashly, he made a problem up and tried to pin it on them.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
A water heater is a bomb and there are millions of those inside any given city.
But they're only a bomb if you ignore the experts and their advice in working with water heater, such as when Peck is way to far up his own ass on a power trip to bother noticing Egon physically interposing himself to stop the grid from being shut down in an unsafe way. Peck even goes so far as to "advise" the cop with him to shoot the Ghostbusters if they interfere; what possible fucking operation could the storage grid have been performing that Peck needed to shut it down that instant without knowing what would happen or giving the Ghostbusters a chance of a safe shutdown? That's right, the containment grid was doing fuck-all to be an imminent hazard, Peck just wanted to provoke the situation into a disaster so he could pin it on the Ghostbusters.
There's no amount of "within the bureaucracy" that would have saved the Ghostbusters from the likes of Peck, that's the point of the character. He's a power-drunk piece of shit that was going to use all his resources to destroy the Ghostbusters the moment Venkman pissed him off. No amount of nonexistent theoretical public concern on Peck's part is present because the character doesn't give a shit about the public, he wants to fuck over the Ghostbusters.
Peck was simply the bureaucratic equivalent of a cop trying to force somebody into doing something rash he could send them to prison for, full stop. When they wouldn't act rashly, he made a problem up and tried to pin it on them.
A massively, heavily engineered and regulated piece of equipment, for the exact reason so they don't catastrophically fail without obvious tampering and bypassing the myriad safety systems. I agree with you on Peck, he is the stand in for Government Bureaucracy and meddling. Egon and crew still built a massively dangerous piece of equipment with no safety failovers right in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world. All the Edison guy did was shut it off from the mains. God help the city the first time a heat wave hits and the building suffers a brownout. There were no safety systems in place to have the grid shut down safely on its own when disconnected. There's a reason modern nuclear reactors default to a passive safe mode in case of system failure.
We root for the guys because they are likable and its kind of the point of the movie, but the movie also paints a picture that only the free market can save us, we just have to trust them.
I'm not even sure what we're going on about anymore, the right for the EPA to step in? I'm pretty sure they should have, just Peck was the worst person to do it.
Does the EPA even have authority over ghosts and ghost containment systems? Because up until that point, as far as the EPA was concerned, ghosts and ghost containment systems didn't even exist. Wouldn't Congress have had to expand the scope of the EPA's regulatory authority first?
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Does the EPA even have authority over ghosts and ghost containment systems? Because up until that point, as far as the EPA was concerned, ghosts and ghost containment systems didn't even exist. Wouldn't Congress have had to expand the scope of the EPA's regulatory authority first?
It doesn't matter what the industry does. If they are producing potentially hazardous waste then the EPA has authority over them. It's up to the ghostbusters to prove they aren't producing such waste. I imagine if they were producing by-products that were previously unknown to modern science they would have to get them tested before disposing. Good luck ever getting a franchise set up in California. I bet Ectoplasm is a cancer causing agent.
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
I can sympathize with the pro-Peck stance until he pulls the switch on the unlicensed nuclear whatsit that he doesn't understand
Sure these guys built some kind of high-energy-bullshit-machine and it's probably illegal, but Peck isn't an engineer, he has no idea what the fuck he's doing by touching it
The correct thing would be to launch a formal investigation and make the ghostbusters explain exactly what that thing is, what it does, and the figure out how it works to safely turn whatever it is off
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
I can sympathize with the pro-Peck stance until he pulls the switch on the unlicensed nuclear whatsit that he doesn't understand
Sure these guys built some kind of high-energy-bullshit-machine and it's probably illegal, but Peck isn't an engineer, he has no idea what the fuck he's doing by touching it
The correct thing would be to launch a formal investigation and make the ghostbusters explain exactly what that thing is, what it does, and the figure out how it works to safely turn whatever it is off
I don't think the grid is actually nuclear, which small blessings right? The real danger is the packs where if you slip on some slime while you're firing it and cross the streams you can end reality as we know it. Blowing up a building is really small potatoes compared to that.
Edit: I wonder if the containment failure was inspired by 3 mile island. The ghosts escaping really do model an out of control nuclear reaction when the active control systems failed.
Yes but again; the only reason Peck isn’t an expert and an engineer is because the writers deemed him so. Because they needed a “dumb bureaucrat” in order to have the heroic free market ghostbusters save the day.
It’s like arguing that the black people in Birth of a Nation deserved what they got because of all the terrible things they did.
Yes but again; the only reason Peck isn’t an expert and an engineer is because the writers deemed him so. Because they needed a “dumb bureaucrat” in order to have the heroic free market ghostbusters save the day.
It’s like arguing that the black people in Birth of a Nation deserved what they got because of all the terrible things they did.
No. The film is wrong.
I mean, I think that comparison goes a little far but, I agree, the movie is wrong
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited July 2021
Back to actual trailers. I hope the new movie has those little moments, like in the elevator, or Egon going "Boom" silently. I worry that with the kids its just going to be a bigger brighter Stranger Things, that trades on nostalgia. I did enjoy the trailer, but it does have me worried.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
crossposting this.
OH SHIT!!!!
So... there's this amazing game out there that everyone should play, called The Outer Wilds. Most importantly, people should go into it blind, without knowing anything about it other than it's a charming exploration game.
A few months ago, I heard they were doing DLC for it. And I had no fucking clue how. I mean... to put it succinctly, Outer Wilds is a very "Complete" game. It tells a story. On its terms. So how would you fit in DLC?
Well, this trailer doesn't spoil anything other than sights and locales and set pieces and such... just echoes of what the expansion will be.
But the DLC... the game's ONLY DLC. Has me hyped as hell to learn what the Echoes of the Eye involve.
In the first movie, Peck is trying to discount everything as a scam created by using hallucinogens and lights and the city totally backs his push. .
Not really, He wants to inspect the containment device Because he feels it contains nasty chemicals or some such. Venkman antagonizes him to the point of Peck threatening to get a court order unless he gets a look. He clearly does not believe the ghost stuff but he is not accusing them of fraud, his stated goal is check for environmental damage which makes sense as he is from the EPA.
Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
I can sympathize with the pro-Peck stance until he pulls the switch on the unlicensed nuclear whatsit that he doesn't understand
Sure these guys built some kind of high-energy-bullshit-machine and it's probably illegal, but Peck isn't an engineer, he has no idea what the fuck he's doing by touching it
The correct thing would be to launch a formal investigation and make the ghostbusters explain exactly what that thing is, what it does, and the figure out how it works to safely turn whatever it is off
I don't think the grid is actually nuclear, which small blessings right? The real danger is the packs where if you slip on some slime while you're firing it and cross the streams you can end reality as we know it. Blowing up a building is really small potatoes compared to that.
Edit: I wonder if the containment failure was inspired by 3 mile island. The ghosts escaping really do model an out of control nuclear reaction when the active control systems failed.
I mean, that's certainly part of the joke. Peck is so far behind the curve on the Ghostbusters that he wants to look at their basement, but in the meantime they walk around with man-portable particle cannons running off nuclear fuel. He's worried about noxious chemicals and they're joking around about exploding at the speed of light from a minor accident.
Which is itself another joke as the Ghostbusters want to be the Next Big Thing with ghosts while sitting on paradigm-changing nuclear technology; despite the claims of pro-capitalism because it's the 80s, the Ghostbusters are a joke as a business and absolutely suck as business-oriented people.
But at a minimum, any official with a speck of brains would've just made sure the Ghostbusters were staying in sight and their safe, preferred shutdown process was being witnessed, rather than forcing an unsafe shutdown against their extremely strong advice. If I went into just a completely normal building with a worker from the power company and he said shutting off a given panel seemed hazardous, you can bet your ass I would not push the issue.
Except this is a fucking comedy and not an ugly propaganda hitpiece which means that, fortunately, your opinion has no bearing on the fact that the movie can't be "wrong" for making a joke, particularly about a power-mad official way more interested in his own ego than protecting the people because we've spent the last several years witnessing the realism of that situation up and down the government spectrum. Just because Peck is from the EPA wouldn't make him a saint.
Just like your opinion, comedies can indeed be wrong about things.
Do we have to go back and say Revenge of the Nerds was OK? I don’t think so. Because being a comedy does not prevent a film from being wrong about things. And I don’t think that this comedy is right just because it’s taking aim at government.
It doesn’t make you a bad person for laughing at it but its still wrong
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Peck literally and directly accuses them of conning people with sensory gasses and sound effects, then ripping them off to get rid of the "ghosts" he says are fake. Peck isn't some responsible government agent, he's a bureaucratic asshole trying to push Venkman around because he suspects something is up but has absolutely zero evidence. And he's able to get a warrant to search their premises, so there's definitely city officials backing his point of view. It couldn't be more explicit that Peck thinks they're scamming people than if they held up a scene that said in big letters "Peck thinks the Ghostbusters are scamming people".
You can really believe it when Will Smith says "I got my kids whole future planned out!"
I think he starts somewhere near here at least, then Venkman antagonizes him, then the building explodes later. Which really Peck was right, there was dangerous unlicensed/un-permitted shit in their basement.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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Peck was there to looks for hazardous chemicals, of which there were none and there was zero evidence of any on the premises. And the only thing that made the containment unit hazardous was by doing the exact thing Peck was forcing the power guy to do because Venkman wounded his precious little ego.
Nobody that's responsible would storm into an operation they know nothing about about, insist on a catastrophic shutdown, and than run right over the top of the people who built the thing and are saying "don't fucking do that, it will be catastrophic" simply because the first owner they talked to didn't suck his official lack of a dick when he showed up trying to swing around its non-existence. Anybody with any brains would've at least asked "how catastrophic?" and then "okay, how do we safely shut it off?", not gone "fuck you, I'm in charge now!" At a minimum, anyone with more brains than ego would've slowed down marginally at the phrase "high-energy containment grid".
Plus, all the stuff was brand-new techno-shit for ghosts that they built custom, so there couldn't have actually been EPA regulations against it yet.
Peck is the very image of the shithead ignorant bureaucrat who actually knows nothing about his job and he gets a kick out of shoving people around with no way for them to push back.
Only men can tell a life story.
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But peck isn’t a real person. He is a character written to be that way. He only fails because he was set up to and he is only irresponsible because he is written that way.
But we can examine the movie in the way in the story it chooses to tell and the basis upon which that story rests.
Peck is right on the basis. The ghostbusters have unlicensed nuclear reactors on their backs… in downtown nyc… 5 years after three mile island. Like hooooly shit is peck right.
Peck isn't there to prove the Ghostbusters are a hazard, just to shit on them for not cooperating with him. He gets the building blown up despite dire and direct warnings and what's the first thing he does in front of the mayor? Not talk about the risk the the Ghostbusters posed, but he's dying to whine about them scamming people and even tries to to blame them for the explosion he caused when the accusations of being fakes doesn't sell the mayor. He never even mentions any actual threat to people, largely because he doesn't give a shit.
So he's wrong about what he's actually looking for, wrong about what he should be looking for, wrong about the Ghostbusters, wrong for ignoring their warnings, wrong for ignoring the warning from the power company guy, and wrong for harassing the Ghostbusters simply because he gets a hard-on for pushing around average citizens.
And all because he had to throw a fit because Venkman verbally flicked his nose.
The movie frames Peck and the guys the way it does because it's a movie set in the 80s, where capitalism will save the day.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
So he's not even right on that score because he isn't even there to prove them as dangerous, he's just trying to shit on them. If he thought they were actually dangerous, he might've bothered to gather something resembling evidence and figure out how to not blow up the building while shutting them down. Instead, he did the standard cop routine and provoked the situation into disaster, then went in front of the mayor and tried to say the Ghostbusters did it while feigning innocence for himself.
Whether or not you like how the role was written doesn't change the fact that Peck was 100% a self-serving asshole with a grudge and willing to say whatever he needed to teach Venkman a lesson. Peck had no interest in the Ghostbusters as a theoretical hazard, or in protecting anybody.
I think he did at first, at least in the fact of doing his job, before Venkman pushes all his buttons. "Hey these guys are on the news saying they catch ghosts, have a whole bunch of weird equipment that puts on a show, and there are no permits or anything on file for the work they are doing, lets go check in on this". The movie shows the guys and their equipment on the news, on national magazines and all kinds of stuff. They are at least some kind of big deal. Peck would have never showed up if the guys had gotten a permit or two. That cuts against the underdog businessmen theme though.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Adults make for better actors and more interesting character studies though.
Yes Peck isn’t there because he thinks the Ghostbusters are dangerous he is there because he is a standing for government meddling in the glory of the free market.
But he does claim they’re dangerous.
And he is right. They are, regardless of the issues he causes he is right that they are dangerous.
And his scamming claims are reasonable. The only reason you know ghosts exist are because you have seen them in a way that you can claim they exist framed by a reliable narrator telling you ghosts exist. But when people claim that ghosts exist now you call them frauds… because they are. When people do magic tricks you think “how was that done” not “oh this guy must be a literal sorcerer”
(On top of that, they are running a completely new business with gadgets no one ever seen before, and we know it's unlicensed nuclear accelerators.
Ofcourse Peck wants to see how it operates.)
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King Richard, oh that can oscar bait opened up early in July might stink come December. And as a lifelong tennis player/watcher it's weird watching Richard Williams be lionized now, for a good chunk of time they always brought up how the two were talented but their dad went into possessive amounts of controlling them. I guess I'm waiting for them to make Martina Hingis and Lindsey Davenport racists just to have an antagonist.
New Dexter season promo, feels off in a way that makes me go "can you at least address you have a son, bro?"
pleasepaypreacher.net
Peck never says anything about permits. If that was his issue, he could have rolled up with a warrant regarding them at any time, especially when magazines like popular science are giving breakdowns on the Ghostbusters equipment, which you'd think would be a red flag, but apparently no one has an issue with the unlicensed nuclear accelerators. Peck later admits that he doesn't even think the proton packs are real, that it's a "fake electronic light show"
To be fair, he is probably the one that sold his story.
I know I'm applying too much real world stuff to this, but the permit stuff, especially for small first time operators you do like he did, and go check them out, and if they are fucking up you square it away and get everything sorted, and maybe you do shut them down if they are REALLY fucking up and doing something dangerous. All I'm saying is if the Ghostbusters had worked inside the Bureaucracy then Peck most likely would have never shown up. The movie time and time again reinforces that any large agencies are bad though, from the College, to the EPA to the City, and only private enterprise can save the day.
I'm not saying Peck isn't a giant asshole, or that inspectors can certainly have an axe to grind, but Egon even says if the Grid gets turned off it will be like setting off a bomb in the city. If you've build equipment like that willy nilly inside a major metropolitan area then its also on their heads that they got shut down.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
But they're only a bomb if you ignore the experts and their advice in working with water heater, such as when Peck is way to far up his own ass on a power trip to bother noticing Egon physically interposing himself to stop the grid from being shut down in an unsafe way. Peck even goes so far as to "advise" the cop with him to shoot the Ghostbusters if they interfere; what possible fucking operation could the storage grid have been performing that Peck needed to shut it down that instant without knowing what would happen or giving the Ghostbusters a chance of a safe shutdown? That's right, the containment grid was doing fuck-all to be an imminent hazard, Peck just wanted to provoke the situation into a disaster so he could pin it on the Ghostbusters.
There's no amount of "within the bureaucracy" that would have saved the Ghostbusters from the likes of Peck, that's the point of the character. He's a power-drunk piece of shit that was going to use all his resources to destroy the Ghostbusters the moment Venkman pissed him off. No amount of nonexistent theoretical public concern on Peck's part is present because the character doesn't give a shit about the public, he wants to fuck over the Ghostbusters.
Peck was simply the bureaucratic equivalent of a cop trying to force somebody into doing something rash he could send them to prison for, full stop. When they wouldn't act rashly, he made a problem up and tried to pin it on them.
A massively, heavily engineered and regulated piece of equipment, for the exact reason so they don't catastrophically fail without obvious tampering and bypassing the myriad safety systems. I agree with you on Peck, he is the stand in for Government Bureaucracy and meddling. Egon and crew still built a massively dangerous piece of equipment with no safety failovers right in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world. All the Edison guy did was shut it off from the mains. God help the city the first time a heat wave hits and the building suffers a brownout. There were no safety systems in place to have the grid shut down safely on its own when disconnected. There's a reason modern nuclear reactors default to a passive safe mode in case of system failure.
We root for the guys because they are likable and its kind of the point of the movie, but the movie also paints a picture that only the free market can save us, we just have to trust them.
I'm not even sure what we're going on about anymore, the right for the EPA to step in? I'm pretty sure they should have, just Peck was the worst person to do it.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It doesn't matter what the industry does. If they are producing potentially hazardous waste then the EPA has authority over them. It's up to the ghostbusters to prove they aren't producing such waste. I imagine if they were producing by-products that were previously unknown to modern science they would have to get them tested before disposing. Good luck ever getting a franchise set up in California. I bet Ectoplasm is a cancer causing agent.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I can sympathize with the pro-Peck stance until he pulls the switch on the unlicensed nuclear whatsit that he doesn't understand
Sure these guys built some kind of high-energy-bullshit-machine and it's probably illegal, but Peck isn't an engineer, he has no idea what the fuck he's doing by touching it
The correct thing would be to launch a formal investigation and make the ghostbusters explain exactly what that thing is, what it does, and the figure out how it works to safely turn whatever it is off
I don't think the grid is actually nuclear, which small blessings right? The real danger is the packs where if you slip on some slime while you're firing it and cross the streams you can end reality as we know it. Blowing up a building is really small potatoes compared to that.
Edit: I wonder if the containment failure was inspired by 3 mile island. The ghosts escaping really do model an out of control nuclear reaction when the active control systems failed.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
One of my favorite scenes is them stepping back in the elevator when they switch Ray on. It's such an amazing little bit of physical comedy.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It’s like arguing that the black people in Birth of a Nation deserved what they got because of all the terrible things they did.
No. The film is wrong.
I mean, I think that comparison goes a little far but, I agree, the movie is wrong
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
OH SHIT!!!!
So... there's this amazing game out there that everyone should play, called The Outer Wilds. Most importantly, people should go into it blind, without knowing anything about it other than it's a charming exploration game.
A few months ago, I heard they were doing DLC for it. And I had no fucking clue how. I mean... to put it succinctly, Outer Wilds is a very "Complete" game. It tells a story. On its terms. So how would you fit in DLC?
Well, this trailer doesn't spoil anything other than sights and locales and set pieces and such... just echoes of what the expansion will be.
But the DLC... the game's ONLY DLC. Has me hyped as hell to learn what the Echoes of the Eye involve.
I mean, that's certainly part of the joke. Peck is so far behind the curve on the Ghostbusters that he wants to look at their basement, but in the meantime they walk around with man-portable particle cannons running off nuclear fuel. He's worried about noxious chemicals and they're joking around about exploding at the speed of light from a minor accident.
Which is itself another joke as the Ghostbusters want to be the Next Big Thing with ghosts while sitting on paradigm-changing nuclear technology; despite the claims of pro-capitalism because it's the 80s, the Ghostbusters are a joke as a business and absolutely suck as business-oriented people.
But at a minimum, any official with a speck of brains would've just made sure the Ghostbusters were staying in sight and their safe, preferred shutdown process was being witnessed, rather than forcing an unsafe shutdown against their extremely strong advice. If I went into just a completely normal building with a worker from the power company and he said shutting off a given panel seemed hazardous, you can bet your ass I would not push the issue.
Except this is a fucking comedy and not an ugly propaganda hitpiece which means that, fortunately, your opinion has no bearing on the fact that the movie can't be "wrong" for making a joke, particularly about a power-mad official way more interested in his own ego than protecting the people because we've spent the last several years witnessing the realism of that situation up and down the government spectrum. Just because Peck is from the EPA wouldn't make him a saint.
Do we have to go back and say Revenge of the Nerds was OK? I don’t think so. Because being a comedy does not prevent a film from being wrong about things. And I don’t think that this comedy is right just because it’s taking aim at government.
It doesn’t make you a bad person for laughing at it but its still wrong
the answer to that question is omelette du fromage