I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’ll say it again: Every time they make a Ghostbusters sequel, it’s like Lucy holding a football, and I’m Charlie Brown.
Way back when I was a 10-year-old tyke, I made my mom take my siblings and I to the Oakland Mall theater for the opening day of Ghostbusters II. As a kid, I enjoyed it; in recent years, I’ve seen how flawed a sequel it truly is. But that didn’t stop me from waiting with baited breath through rumors of a potential Ghostbusters 3 for what was nearly 30 years.
I don’t hate Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters, and the things I dislike about it have nothing to do with its stellar cast but rather with how beholden it was to the mythology and iconography of the original film. Having Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones don the proton packs? It’s a great idea, and they’re a lot of fun. But the constant Easter eggs to Ivan Reitman’s original keep it from becoming its own thing, to the point where it’s no wonder why the finale has its heroes fighting not just a toxic male fanboy but also the property’s logo, battling the very intellectual property Sony wanted it to prop up.
Smarting from the box office disappointment of Feig’s film, in 2021, the property was rebooted again with Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a legacy sequel centered on Egon Spengler’s granddaughter and her friends. It wasn’t a bad idea – what kid hasn’t dreamt of strapping on a proton pack? – and it had some things I liked, including a winning cast of kids and adults, most notably Paul Rudd. But it was a weird tonal mix of gentle comedy and a nearly hushed reverence for the property that seemed at odds with the spirit of the original. And it went from bad to worse in its final half, as it became a loose remake of the original movie, and trotted out Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson for a wheezy final 10 minutes, tipping over into ghastliness with a CGI ghost of Harold Ramis.
But the movie was a hit, bringing in more than $200 million worldwide – not too shabby in the post-pandemic years. And so, this March, we’re getting Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which returns the series to New York to face a new villain intent on bringing in a new ice age. The second trailer was released this week.
I’ll admit that this trailer does a lot of the things I disliked about Afterlife, mostly in terms of constant callbacks to the first film. I’m relieved no one told director Gil Kenan to bring back Viggo from Ghostbusters II, but it appears they’ve once again raided the first film’s iconography instead of thinking up new supernatural baddies for the Ghostbusters to battle. I don’t need to see the Librarian Ghost again; I get that the stone lions outside the New York Public Library are a callback to the first scene of the original film. We don’t need anymore Stay-Puft marshmallow men or Slimers. And while I appreciate bringing back William Atherton’s Walter Peck and letting Annie Potts suit up and spit out “Ghostbusters, whaddya want,” again, I really hoped this new take would move on from its constant reverence of the 1984 film. And I’m worried we’re once again in for a film filled with so many Easter eggs that you could make an omelet.
But like I said…this is Lucy with a football, and I’m Charlie Brown.
I owe my writing career to being a Ghostbusters-obsessed kid writing up short stories in the back of my fifth grade classroom. The sound of Ecto-1 or the look of a proton stream is woven into my DNA. One of the highlights of my writing career was getting to briefly talk with Ernie Hudson about the first Ghostbusters. I love the original film and I can’t deny that while the callbacks irk me, they also have a Pavolovian reaction. Hearing Bill Murray go full Venkman as he refers to the film’s villain as “tall, dark and horny,” made me smile.
And there’s enough here where I’m cautiously optimistic. Yes, it looks more serious than I want from my Ghostbusters movie, but hopefully they’ve abandoned the heartstring-pulling from its predecessor. And it’s encouraging to realize that this one seems to remember this is supposed to be a comedy. Rudd is funny as ever, and I’m hoping the film leans into Finn Wolfhard’s knack for humor (which, so far, only It: Chapter One capitalized on). If you’re going to start prepping a cast of next-generation comedic heroes for this crew, you could do worse than bringing in Patton Oswalt and Kumail Nanjiani. And it looks like Ayrkroyd, Hudson and Murray might have more to do this time than stand around looking sad.
I also have a lot of hope for Kenan, who’s a better fit for this material than Jason Reitman was, who it seems was pulled in just for his family name (I like – even love – many of Reitman’s movies, but he’s not a great fit for big-budget studio fare). Kenan was behind 2006’s Monster House, an animated comedy that matched laughs and scares very successfully. True, his directorial output has been hit or miss since — City of Ember has its defenders, but no one liked his Poltergeist remake. But I’m hopeful he can bring the mix of humor and thrills that made the first film so memorable. I have no illusions about this movie being on par with Ivan Reitman’s classic, but I’d be very happy just to have one really good Ghostbusters sequel.
We’ll find out if Kenan and company delivered on March 22.
