One of the early posts on my blog was some brief commentary on the trailer for the all female Ghostbusters reboot from 2016. I’ve still not seen the film but by most accounts, it was as bad as I expected it to be and perhaps worse. The film wasn’t a total financial disaster but it still likely lost money when advertising expenses are factored in. It wasn’t so disastrous that the franchise was abandoned though and Ghostbusters: Afterlife followed in in 2021. This was directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman who directed the original. He was clearly well aware of the fan response to the female reboot and so held more consciously to the series roots — at least superficially. The film was received well and I actually watched it — though I didn’t like it! Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was released earlier this year and was a direct sequel to Afterlife with the cast all returning with the original setting of New York also being brought back. In my previous post, I mentioned how belated sequels to old films tend to be bad or pointless and these two films are good examples.
While I never bothered to watch the 2016 reboot, something I could gather just from watching the trailer was that it at least understood that the original Ghostbusters films were comedies. With all the call-backs and cameos, this is something clearly lacking from Afterlife and Frozen Empire. While there are comedic elements in both, they are far more dramatic films that seem to have a superficial understanding of what the original was really about.
Part of the reason for this is that many people remember the film from their childhood though the films weren’t really written for children. When I was a child, I was fascinated by the proton packs, the ghosts and other comic book elements and didn’t think of it so much as a comedy. It was only when I was older that I got many of jokes in the film that I completely missed as a child. The parts that appeal to children were monetised in the form of toys, video games and an animated series. The two most recent films seem to be written from the perspective of people who never watched the films again after they grew up and so the comedy takes a back seat to the drama and fan service.
The films also don’t seem to remember that the Ghostbusters themselves weren’t really heroic figures. It is easy to demonstrate this by focusing on the main character Peter Venkman played by Bill Murray. Though it was an ensemble cast, Murray was the main star of the film at the time of its release and remains the most recognisable actor today; only really rivalled by Sigourney Weaver.
At the beginning of the film, it is quickly established that Venkmen is a scoundrel and a fraud. He isn’t a good man or in any sense heroic and this remains so into the sequel. He is first introduced ostensibly testing for psychic abilities with two people, one of whom is a beautiful young woman. He holds up cards and both candidates take turns guessing what is on them; getting it wrong will result in an electric shock. This study is being funded by the University he is working at. He is shown telling the young woman she gets everything right and the young man is shocked even in the one instance he actually guesses correctly. Afterwards, it is made clear in their final exchange with the female participant that he is using this research to hit on her.
In one of the following scenes, Venkman, Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) are fired by the dean of the school. The dean directs most of his venom at Venkman and everything he says about him is true if only based on what the audience has just witnessed earlier. Ray and Egon in contrast, may be kooky but they are serious about what they do and far more ethical with how they pursue it.
After being kicked out of the University, they go on to found the titular Ghostbusters with Ray putting up the collateral and Venkman in particular, being totally unaccountable. The business flounders initially and it is Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), who becomes their first customer after having a genuine paranormal experience in the kitchen of her apartment. The thing about the film is that though the group are certainly kooky, they happen to start their business at a time when there is increasing supernatural activity occurring in New York centred around the building where Dana lives.
Venkman doesn’t actually believe in the supernatural but he does find Dana attractive and goes to “investigate” her apartment with the real intention to seduce her. This is made quite explicit in the dialogue by a Freudian slip. He finds no evidence of what she claims at her apartment and is rebuffed in his unprofessional and unsubtle advances.
They finally find success with a call out to a hotel where a ghost is haunting one of the floors. While there they cause massive amounts of damage to the hotel, including destroying an entire chandelier in the ballroom but they do catch the ghost. Venkman then gives the hotel manager an arbitrary and outrageous list of expenses and threatens to release the ghost if the manager doesn’t comply. They also bear none of the costs for the damage they caused to the hotel.
Following after this is a montage showing their success, one perverse ghost fantasy and the public recognition they receive. Shortly after they recruit Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) to cope with the increased demand from the spike in paranormal activity around the city. As I mentioned in the linked post, Zeddemore is the most normal of the four and the most relatable to the audience.
The first hint of difficulty the Ghostbusters encounter after being saved from bankruptcy by the hotel call is the arrival of Walter Peck from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He is famously played by William Atherton who also played the irritating meddling journalist in Die Hard a few years later. Peck quite naturally had issue with the containment system the Ghostbusters were using. Venkman himself described the proton pack as “an unlicensed nuclear accelerator” during their hotel call. Whatever your thoughts on the EPA, they had a right to be curious. Venkman is characteristically unprofessional and only inflames what might have been an otherwise routine visit.
Following all this, the tone of the film gets a little darker and more serious but it should be clear just through Venkman that he is not a heroic character. I am unfortunately having to explain the jokes but it should be clear that he is a scoundrel and this is what makes much of the film so amusing. That despite all this, they manage to become New York City’s saviours is part of the overarching comedy of the film. And this is really the sort of thing that is missing from the two new films.
“Woke” may be overused and under-understood but it is also odd to me that these films aren’t considered “woke” in the same way the all-female reboot was. The main character is the granddaughter of Egon and the cast is consciously diverse. The three still-living Ghostbusters return but just in supporting roles. Hudson and Aykroyd are sincere enough in their performances but Murray clearly only showed up for the money. And I don’t blame him given he is in his seventies and the original film released forty years ago.
But the “wokeness” is not really the problem as much as the total misunderstanding of what made the source material work. That it was a comedy with a quirky premise that even the direct sequel struggled to replicate. It was never meant to be a big film franchise and all three films made in the last eight years only serve to demonstrate this all the more.