Obi-Wanma

The name of the 2016 film is "Ghostbusters".

It's in every review

Answer the Call is a change made for the video release, and no one should ever use it.

IBJoel

OK definitely I agree on the first bullet, I just didn't want to acknowledge the sexist CHUDs.

This may be why I'm feeling so alienated lately from properties I should be loving. You and I were pretty much on the same page about the Star Wars Sequels, if I recall correctly, but the direction of that franchise seems like it's going all in on what you mentioned.

Toddarino

I hated the 2016 movie and am eagerly awaiting this.
I fall into #3 & #4 of Jay’s bullet points.

devilshalo

I had no problem with the cast, more that comedy shouldn't be explained to me and the wink wink misuse of the original cast. I still think the best part of the 2016 film was Leslie Jones.

Jay G.

Actually, "Answer the Call" was a tagline added to trailers and posters months before the film was released theatrically.

Like the trailer in May 2016:
https://ew.com/article/2016/05/18/gh...kate-mckinnon/

Or the poster in June:

https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/...usters-reboot/

So it's a bit like "Hold On" from Cliffhanger or "Live. Die. Repeat" from Edge of Tomorrow, where some latched hold of the tagline. And the way the trailer and poster present it, it does seem like a subtitle.

Jay G.

I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring the lore of a franchise instead of rebooting it, if done well. Possible issues may be the deification of what came before though, and a franchise growing too insular, just revisiting the past and doing fan service callbacks, instead of expanding the lore and exploring other aspects. The works can become derivative and stale. The appeal of "memberberries" can be hard to deny though. With Star Wars, at least the TV show The Mandalorian seems to have a good balance of building on what came before and making some callbacks, while also exploring some new corners and aspects of the Star Wars universe. The upcoming Star Wars: Visions series looks like Lucasfilm is willing to let people use Star Wars in interesting new ways, at least in the shot film format.

As for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, it remains to be seen what type of film it is. The trailers are certainly leaning into the nostalgia, likely to get butts in seats. Maybe the movie itself will be more than that though,.

Josh-da-man

There's really not a lot of actual Ghostbusters "lore" is there?

One great movie in 1984, one mediocre sequel that was mostly a retread in 1989.

I just rewatched GB and GB2 back-to-back, and just about everything about GB2 is half-assed. A few good ideas here and there (haunted painting, river of slime running through the sewers) and a few good visual gags (the Titanic, the ghost train), but almost everything else is just kind of lazy and cash-the-paycheck. And the last thing the movie needed was another giant lumbering through the streets of NYC.

milo bloom

I’m consistently surprised at this counter argument. There’s lots of fans who were kids like me (10 years old in 1984) who weren’t overtly aware that this was a Murray/Ackroyd/Reitman picture. I may have been vaguely aware of some of them from Saturday Night Live but for me it was never about seeing these specific actors in their latest feature- instead it was a new type of horror/adventure that used science to take down the things that went bump in the night. The cast was very funny and had lots of chemistry but for many of us it was the concept and not the cast. That’s probably why so many of us latched onto The Real Ghostbusters animated series so strongly, it didn’t have those original actors but it had the archetypes of them and even better it expanded their adventures to new places. New York City? To a kid living in Oklahoma and Kentucky during the franchise’s heyday, it was basically just another imaginary place that the movies showed us, like Hoth or Endor or Vulcan.

So for those of us that are so excited for this, it’s about taking the concept (as absurd as it is) as seriously as the characters within the films and show did. ATC only half-heartedly believed in what it was doing and that’s why it failed.

GoldenJCJ

Ghostbusters (2016) wasn’t great but it also wasn’t worth all the vitriol spewed at it. It was mostly just a harmless misfire. I will disagree with you though. Kate McKinnon was far and away the best part of the movie.

Josh-da-man

It was a horribly forgettable movie, but I think most of the venom came from either "culture warriors" or people who thought the remake somehow prevented a third movie with the old crew. (Though in fact the blame for no more Ghostbusters movies after the sequel seems to fall on Bill Murray and his grudge against Harold Ramis over Groundhog Day.)

Dan

The 2016 movie was fine. Better than GB2 (which I used to absolutely adore, but realized in later years that Peter MacNicol basically carries the film with his performance alone. Everyone else is just cashing that check.), but couldn't ever come near the legacy of the original.

I think Afterlife will be over-hyped by those who hated the 2016 film, but I think it will be a different kind of "fine" overall. Reitman says it's wall-to-wall easter eggs, which sounds boring to me, but a big chunk of OG fans will eat that up. Reitman has done some downright brilliant films (Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking) but also some that didn't quite hit the mark (Young Adult, Labor Day).

Josh-da-man

Yeah, all of the Marshmallow Men in the trailer are kind of off-putting.

I think that if we were able to get more (and better) sequels after the original movie that a nostalgia fest like Afterlife would go down better. But if they're just going to be bringing back a bunch of stuff like Gozer and Stay-Puft and the dogs and Slimer, it just turns into a "'memberberry" salad.

If we had gotten some movies that really expanded the franchise like Ghostbusters in Hell and Ghostbusters in London in the 1990s all of this retread/Easter Egg stuff in Afterlife would seem more palatable.

The 1990s weren't a very good time for older franchises... they were either absent (Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Terminator -- aside from Judgment Day in 91) or they floundered (Aliens, Batman, all of the classic "slasher" movies).

Jay G.

Well, that somewhat depends on whether you consider the animated series part of the lore. Ghostbusters 2 certainly took the animated series into account with the Slimer cameo.

However, there doesn't have to be a lot of lore for a sequel to build off of it. Tron Legacy built off the original film instead of rebooting.

Well, in the 90s, the phrase "franchise" to describe a film series wasn't really in use yet. Studios were still largely focused on making one movie at a time. If a movie did good, they may greenlight a sequel, and then if that did good another sequel, etc. There wasn't a focus on continuity or setting up future movies. Also, so many movie sequels back then were developed with the philosophy "the same, but more," instead of developing past what's already been seen. So issues started popping up the longer in tooth the film series was. About the only film series being treated like a franchise were the James Bond films, and those still had only limited continuity between them. Contrast that with the Daniel Craig Bond films, where the 2nd picks up immediately after the first.

I think a big change was prompted by LOTR and the Harry Potter films, where the idea that you could have a long continuous story, and you could expect almost all the movie goers to have seen all previous films, started to really develop. The sequels didn't need to stand on their own; at the least they could assume you already know the characters and premise instead of re-introducing them. The studios also started having actors sign multi-film contracts, where they're committed to at least 3 films, even though the studio's only committed to making the first one so far. You can even see this shift within the Mission Impossible films, where the first three pretty much stand apart from each other, while the fourth film on build on what was established in the third.

rocket1312

You bite your tongue!

This is the most outrageous thing I have ever read in any Ghostbusters thread on this site! Mods, can we get a lock? I think it'd be for the best. Don't want things to get out of hand.

IBJoel

I was young in the Midwest when I saw the movie too, but cartoon-wise I grew up with Extreme Ghostbusters, which I liked fined (it taught me the Sphinx's riddle!), but I never liked as much as the movie.

Ironically, I couldn't get into other NYC-based media. I found Hey Arnold too different from my childhood to connect with it. Everyone else my age loved it.

Giantrobo

Essentially Nostalgia and we got Dudes back where they belong. Yeah, that's how i see it as well.

I've said before, I've always felt the original GB was ok but still a highly overrated over hyped 80's film; and thankfully, it never attached itself to my childhood like it has for some apparently. All that has allowed me to be open to new directions for the franchise. I'll check this new film with an open mind and out just like i checked out GB 2016.

devilshalo

I felt Kate was a little over the top. She looked like the Real Ghostbusters Egon, but had this creepy vibe to her. Leslie Jones felt the closest in terms of character and personality to Winston. I didn't feel any of that for the other women to their OG counterparts. Maybe Melissa McCarty channeled just a smidge of Ray.

milo bloom

Kate's character was the best thing about ATC, she stole the show. Yes, she was a bit "out there", but a male character of the same behavior wouldn't even register to most viewers.
I've never felt you could make a reasonable argument against ATC because it was an "all-female" cast, only the fact that it was those females. Aside from Kate, the rest didn't have much chemistry and the script needed a lot more work.

E Unit

Nothing about that movie made any sense. It was a poor copy of the original. She was Egon, but less interesting. More interesting then the rest of the cast, but that bar was pretty much on the ground.

TGM

Had nothing against an all female Ghostbusters. Problem is the movie just sucked despite some really good comedic talent attached to it.

It's OK to say a movie just fucking sucked.

stvn1974

Ghostbusters (2016) is still better than Ghostbusters II. It will be better than this new one, too.

Goonies85

I completely agree that Kate stole the show (and aside from Hemsworth, was the only one that made me laugh during certain scenes, even though I like most of the rest of the cast). She was funny and seemed to know what type of movie she was in...I still think this new movie is going to suck, and I have a feeling like a lot of "sequels", the rest of the original cast will have very, very "small-ish" cameos (aside from Ackroyd, who's been pushing for another sequel for who knows how long)...Ernie Hudson will probably have a few decent scenes...but Murray? I'd be surprised if he's in this for longer than like 5-10 minutes...This, I feel, is trying to launch a whole "new franchise", so it's setting up these characters up to do more movies while getting rid of the old cast members...

EDIT: Also, I think a lot of people that were too young to see Ghostbusters II when it came out either denigrate because they hear that's what the critics said, or else they just never bothered to watch it. It's a good movie. In my mind, it's actually a great movie, but I know inferior to the original, but it's far from a bad movie. So keep saying that...It's a damn good movie, and I know, even the cast constantly complained about being unhappy with it...Whatever...Look at other movie sequels...In my mind, it rivals stuff like Beverly Hills Cop II and Die Hard 2: Die Harder, which were both decent movies in their own right, albeit nothing close to the originals but that's pretty much always the case...but Ghostbusters II was not THAT bad...it was a GOOD MOVIE...and I know people like Bill Murray disagree...Just sick and tired of hearing about how "awful" the sequel was...No it wasn't...

OldBoy

yeah, ok.

Hazel Motes

it’s not, and it won’t be.

Draven

Sure it is. But anyone who takes 5 seconds to look can see the level of vitriol projected at ATC was so far beyond "the movie sucked" that there was obviously something else at play. And considering the way the discussion went on this forum (girls can't carry backpacks), it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to crack the case on the reason why.