Ghostbusters Meta critic user score 2.3

[Azuren]

Oh, wow, there seems to be a lot of people confused about, despite being a reboot of a franchise based on fictional events, a gender swap of the whole cast should be "explained".

Regardless of what progressive-minded people would like to think, we automatically [subconsciously] relate to the characters of movies. More often than not, white males will identify with white males, Black females with black females, etc.

So when you take a franchise that was about three white guys and a black guy getting into ghostly shenanigans and gender swap them, you inherently change who the movie is targeted at. If the original movies had some female leads, it wouldn't have been an issue because they would be swapped to male leads. But there wasn't.

You can't just decide "Hey, lets gender swap a 1980's movie into a reboot", because you can easily end up with alienate many of the people who are original fans by no longer giving them a character to relate to. All the boys who grew up living GB1&2 now have to decide if they're willing to invest themselves in a movie that they will likely be unable to find a relatable character in. Yes, it's great that girls can find one now, but simply diversifying the cast would have allowed everyone an identifiable character. Instead, they gender swapped an all male cast into "Ghostbusters: Bridesmaids".