You're Gonna Call THESE Ghostbusters

Last Friday, I saw Ghostbusters for the third time, and even though my coworkers all laughed when I told them and my mom said it wasn't good enough to see more than once, I'm not ashamed of that fact. The only other movie I've seen three times in theaters is The Force Awakens, and I think it's easy to see the common thread.

Before The Force Awakens came out, the advertising often featured Finn wielding Luke's lightsaber. That was cool in its own right because Mace Windu is the only black Jedi I can think of off the top of my head and he wasn't a main character. However, I still found myself passing signs and going, "When will girls get to be Jedis?" (Ahsoka is great, but I'm tlking about strictly the movie universe here.) So when I sat in my seat on December 18th and watched the force awaken in Rey, I got goosebumps.

That feeling was the same one I got in Ghostbusters (all three times!) when Erin popped the Stay Puft Marshmallow balloon with her Swiss Army knife, when Abby stood up to everyone who wanted to tear them down, when Patty came through with her knowledge of the city's history after all her non-fiction reading, and when Holtzmann took down a dozen ghosts in style and in slow-mo. Each one brought something wonderful and weird to the table. I grew up wanting to have adventures. I still want to have adventures. It's why I love to read and write and travel. So getting to see four women having adventures and saving the city was not only fun but special. "Be the protagonist of your own story" is a lot easier when you've got some kick-butt examples!

Plus, although I get overly worried about the world, I realized that when my nephew gets a few years older, I could introduce him to this movie and he won't think it's odd that it's about four women, and that's pretty darn awesome.