#chessmatch

These are chessboards at Lara's and Yulia's homes. Let's play

Round 1

Frozen Empire has some neat ideas (Ancient ghostbusters, Phoebe & Melody, the Possessor, everything Dan Akroyd, Paul Rudd, James Acaster & Ernie Hudson do) but it’s bogged down by far too many characters and slavish fanservice. Afterlife was meant to pass the torch, but Frozen Empire is stuck replaying the greatest hits.

OPENING AND CHANGED VILLAIN

Instead of firefighters, we open on a 1900s team of ghost-hunters locking the villain Garraka away, led by Nadeem’s great-grandmother

Sealing Garraka away causes a huge explosion, and as we pull out of the burning building, we see a new ghost fly away. This is Melody, the ghost-girl, paralleling Egon’s ghost leaving his farmhouse in Afterlife's opening

Melody’s family were cultists who tried to summon big-bad Garraka. She’s the one who called the ghost-hunters to stop them, but was killed in the confrontation

Garraka tells Melody that her ‘unfinished business’ is summoning him to this dimension—the ritual she stopped her family completing. The only way she can be free is freeing him.

This establishes Melody’s distrust of ghost hunters, because they killed her

CUT CHARACTERS

Venkman and Janine don’t need to be here at all, they’re gone

Cut Podcast. Ray wistfully watches the opening car-chase  alone, out-of-the-loop. He seizes on the arrival of the Orb as his chance to get back in on the action. Podcast's absence also heightens Phoebe’s isolation

Cut Lucky. Her only real moment is defending Phoebe from Garraka, which itself was cut down from the trailers

THE AQUARIUM & COMMUNING WITH GHOSTS

‘Garraka wants to free the ghosts in the Firehouse’ is yet another reused plotpoint in a film full of them.

Instead the (much bigger) property damage in the opening chase loses the team the Firehouse completely, increasing Phoebe’s guilt and isolation

They’ve already been moving ghosts into Winston’s Aquarium lab, so go straight there

They’re testing new technology- think Ghostbusters (2016)’s ghost-chipper, proton-gloves, proton-grenades etc. Callie tests this stuff (bc she has nothing to do otherwise), bonding with Winston as the table uncle-figure she never had.

James Acaster's Dr. Lars is trying to communicate with the caged ghosts, to learn about the other side- he tries to interrogate one to no avail

The idea of someone volunteering to go on 'expeditions' as a ghost via the Spirit Extractor, like an abassador to the Afterlife, is brought up- both Phoebe and Ray are tempted

This makes Phoebe talking to Melody an incredible discovery- a sentient, talking ghost who apparently fully retains her humanity.

MELODY’S FAMILY

When Phoebe finds Melody in the diner, it’s because that's is where she was killed- where her family tried to summon Garraka.

Now the Orb is uncontained her family’s ghosts have become active again, and descend from the upper floors of the building to attack the diner.

Melody’s family are a Cluster Ghost- an amorphous blob of limbs and heads bonded by the sane traumatic cause of death, tripping over itself to get to her. This physical manifestation of her family trying to drag her down parallels Phoebe’s conflict about hers.

Phoebe now takes Melody on a tour of the Aquarium and they bond there, rather than the Firehouse

TREVOR

Finn Wolfhard's Trevor had fuck-all to do in this movie lmao

Replace his pointless sublpot with Slimer with him bonding with the Possessor ghost, which communicates through switching TV stations/radio channels.

The Possessor would probably need some kind of cute visual manifestation to sell this. Think Mogwai, Lilo and Stitch etc Slapstick antagonism turned genuine fun, games of catch etc

With Podcast gone, Trevor accompanies Phoebe and Ray to the library. When the Possessor tries to steal the chant recording he tries to reason with it- c'mon, man, I thought we were bonding, this isn’t you, Garraka’s controlling you, only to get absolutely dunked on

Ray’s research reveals that Garraka’s horns- the 'object' that allows its apparition to manifest- were hidden away separately from the orb

NADEEM'S GRANDMOTHER

To build on the theme of communicating with and humanizing ghosts, instead of pyrokenesis (which felt a little out of place) Kumail Nanjiani's Nadeem is literally possessed by his estranged grandmother.

The idea Nadeem was 'haunted' is already suggested, but by making it explicit we get the slapstick of her puppeteering his body and chewing him out for neglecting his family legacy- arguing with the same mouth etc

Swap Venkman questioning Nadeem with Callie, holding a comedic seance. This gives her a much-needed emotional beat bonding with him over their baggage with their ghost-hunting relatives (Egon vs Grandma). Callie expresses how it feels to reconnect with her dad's legacy, which Frozen Empire never gave us.

She then replaces Podcast helping Nadeem try to hone his powers- in this case, help him and his grandmother work together

GARRAKA THE GHOST-EMPEROR

Garraka can't manifest as a full apparition without its horns.

It's more like the Mind Flayer from Stranger Things, a hive-mind that works through other ghosts. When the ancient ghost-hunters banished Garraka to the Other Side it took over, and has ruled there ever since. This is the 'frozen empire' he's looking to expand

In this way ghosts are shifted from no longer strictly antagonistic, but victims of a cruel tyrant

 When Melody tricks Phoebe into freeing Garraka, it tries to take Phoebe's ghost as a vassal, but Melody volunteers herself to save her. Phoebe returns to her body just in time to see Melody be possessed.

Now Melody is more directly involved in the climax, giving the antagonist a complex, sympathetic face

Dr. Lars replaces Lucky trying to stop Garraka. It kills him to up the stakes

FINALE

Garraka takes Melody to the Diner, where she joins with her family’s Cluster, spreading its supernatural winter as it goes

Change the Death Chill so everyone Garraka chills has their spriti pulled out of them, to join it army of spectral drones. Everywhere it goes it's recruiting, getting stronger. If it finds its second horn it will be able to 'recruit' all of New York

Expand on the Possessor using the Ghostbusters’ own gear to fight them. It steals the Ecto-1 and all the old Proton packs

The new generation of Ghostbusters have to use the new tech they’ve been developing to defeat the old stuff.

Nadeem and his Grandmother finally call a truce and work together to play defence bending the proton streams. She grumbles about how bad this generation of ghost-hunters is

Trevor's bond with the Possessor causes it conflict when it tries to kill him- it fights itself, the equipment it's possessing self-destructing

From here it’s a race to stop Garraka collecting its horns. Garraka successfully finds the first, increasing the scale and power of the big freeze

In the final confrontation Phoebe lets Garraka pull her spirit from her body to loosen its hold on Melody. Melody lights her match: Her unfinished business wasn't to summon Garraka, it was to finish destroying him as she tried to when she died. Nadeem and his Grandmother incinerate the thing.

Again taking a good idea from Ghostbusters (2016), Phoebe is given the choice go to the Other Side with Melody, to finally discover and understand what happens next. Her family ask her to come back, hold on. Melody says that Phoebe should accept their love and support, as she was never loved or supported by her own family

Melody kisses Phoebe goodbye, because not following through on that (when we’ve seen ghosts make similar physical contact with people before) is taking the coward’s way out. They should've cast a minor!!

Nadeem's Grandmother gives her blessing to the ghost-hunters who inherited her family's responsibilities. Then she leaves his body and offers to guide Melody to the Other Side, apologizing for her death on her mother's behalf

We end with Podcast and Lucky finally arriving in New York for a summer internship with the Ghostbusters.

Dr. Lars has returned as a ghost to be an 'ambassador' to the Other Side (playing a ghost would really unleash James Acaster's weird and whacky side), and the Possessor is even working with them as a new team mascot.

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