SPOILERS: Apparently, This Is What The Main Villain Looks Like In The GHOSTBUSTERS Reboot
The New York Toy Fair is in full swing, which means - you guessed it - top secret character designs from big-ass summer tentpoles are being ruined via toy photos. And the one below, posted by Instagram user PixelDan, is a doozy.
That's...hoo, boy. That's, uh...that's something, alright.
And it turns out that something has a name: Rowan. No, seriously, that's its name. Perhaps because he sensed that no one would believe him upon sharing this information, Pixel Dan had the foresight to capture a Mattel representative confirming Rowan's name (and very existence!) on camera. It happens around the :50 mark here:
OK. Now that we have all the available information in front of us, let's discuss the fact that the main villain in Ghostbusters (2016) is apparently a gigantic version of the Ghostbusters logo. Wearing a bowtie. And his name is Rowan.
Here's the thing: while we're given a name and (thanks to Pixel Dan) a painfully long look at the character itself, we're seeing this design completely free of context. Take a moment to consider how stupid the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man would've seemed if you'd seen it before seeing the original Ghostbusters. You would've been dumbfounded! Context matters, and the bottom line is that we really have nothing else to go on yet. We have no idea how big Rowan is, whether he serves the same function that Stay Puft (or maybe even Slimer!) served in the original film, whether he speaks, what he's made of...we know almost nothing, so any judgments we might level against this design would be premature.
Then again: the Ghostbusters logo has been brought to life (presumably via extensive CGI), given a bowtie, and is named Rowan. Of course there'll be some snark over this. Totally understandable! Just keep all that stuff about context in mind before freaking out and launching a boycott.
Please provide level-headed feedback re: this development in the comments section below.
