#ghostbusters 5

Okay, so this might not be the neatest post in the world. Whatever im yapping here. Figure it out yourself.

Let me start off by saying Ghostbusters is one of my favorite franchises in the whole world, if not my favorite. I love all of the movies, yes even the third one everyone hates, which I have a million other points to make on, but that’s another post. I personally adored Afterlife, I thought it was a great continuation that didn’t rely too heavily on nostalgia but was very much a respectful sort of love-letter to the originals, as well as a good beginning to a new era. Other than it lacking in the comedy department a little, (especially for a comedy movie fanchise) I thought it did most everything right, or at least well. I was in love with Pheobe and Podcast as well as Gary, and the story with Egon was a really lovely homage to the old ghostbusters and of course, the late great Harold Ramis. I was beyond excited for Frozen Empire. So don’t think this is coming from a place of bias, because I really hate to say it but I didn’t like Frozen Empire much at all. I’m going to try to break down my reasoning as organized as possible.

- It was not funny. I touched on this earlier, but one of the biggest issue with this new era is that they are severely lacking in the comedy department. Ghostbusters has always been a comedy movie, more than a horror and much more than a drama. These movies are trying too hard to be a serious action movie, and Frozen Empire was not really funny at all. It had that whole intro with the firefighters in 1904 that had not one comedic moment, and the rest of the offhanded jokes they tried to make felt forced and more akin to the writing of an old disney channel sitcom. This is especially troubling because they hired amazing comedians like Patton Oswald, Kumail Nanjiani, and James Acaster, as well as the old amazing Paul Rudd, Bill Murray, and honestly all of the og ghostbusters, yet all of them barely had a funny line through the whole thing. Really baffling and the attempts at seriousness and angst really did a disservice to the enjoyability of the movie IMO.

- It was insanely rushed and there was too much going on. This is probably the main, over-arcing problem that really ruined the movie. There’s so much build up to a main conflict that lasts five minutes and solved immediately. I was baffled, convinced it was a joke and there was still half a movie we had yet to see. They tried to hard to make so many (already not well writtwn) plots fit without having a good way to conclude them. This, as well as the story being far too overbloated with characters. They tried so hard to keep the original Ghostbusters and make like 47 main characters work, that our real main characters were shoved to the side. Pheobe was barely in it, and when she was, we never really got to see her being Pheobe. Callie should’ve been a much smaller character, and while in my heart Pheobe, Podcast, Lucky, and Trevor should have been the new Ghostbusters, I think this movie should have focused more on Pheobe, Gary, and Ray. I have a vague plot in my head but that’s not the point. The movie was just trying to do too much and managed to do absolutely nothing.

- Callie. This might be a hot take, but I don’t care about Callie at all. She should not have been a Ghostbuster in this movie. It doesn’t make any sense. In Afterlife, Callie showed no signs of being interested in ghostbusting or that world at all, she just loved her dad. She’s not a scientist whatsoever. Pheobe was right, she absolutely should have just been the receptionist. On top of it not making sense, Callie just isn’t interesting enough to be a main Ghostbuster. She’s already not a scientist, but she offers no special skills or anything unique to herself, she doesn’t have an interesting personality and her arc is so boring. She was not needed in this movie. Again, Trevor, Pheobe, Lucky, and Podcast should be the main Ghostbusters. I don’t give a fuck about this family business thing and it was a bad choice IMO. In all honesty Trevor doesn’t need to be super major either.

- Jumping off of that…. Trevor. Oh my god. They murdered him in this movie. Trevor was never my favorite, but I liked his character a lot in Afterlife. I thought he could have been more interesting, but compared to Empire Trevor, in Afterlife he’s like Tarantino-level entertaining. Trevor sucked in this movie. The words “I’m 18 now” should have never left his mouth. It’s such a tired, overdone bit, and they didn’t put any spin on it at all. And it was literally. His entire personality. It was so obnoxious. Give him something, especially since Finn Wolfhard is a funny actor. The idea of him having a running gag with Slimer wasn’t bad, and payoff was one of the funniest moments in the whole movie. (A three second scene of Finn Wolfhard seeing Slimer and going “Hey! I know him!” being the funniest bit in a Ghostbusters movie. Yikes.) Jesus fuck was he annoying in this movie, and him and Pheobe barely had any scenes together.

- Okay. Melody. Big fucking yikes. Pheobe being fruity? We been knew but I adored it. Exploring the ideas of inter-dimensional plane romance and relationships? Super interesting and a fun risk to take. Execution? Oh. my god. I loved Melody when we first met her at the park, I was super excited, but she just became.. nothing. We barely learned anything about her past or her life or her at all, and they totally missed the chance to make her from an old era, make her wear funny clothes and talk funny, and be an interesting character. She was just kind of this mysterious dead girl. Not learning about her past at all in turn made it hard to care about her story, if we don’t know her family or her life, why should we care that she wants to get back to them? Why is it justified that she would betray Pheobe to get to heaven or whatever? It doesn’t make sense. We see her at the diner, and the diner is called Melody and it’s never brought up again? If she were like a ‘50s themed ghost this would have been a fun little piece, but in the movie it doesn’t make sense, because we already know her place of death was her house that she burnt down. What does the diner have to do with anything? And the scene where she just stands in the road and has the goofiest corniest conversation with idk the voices in her head or whatever. God, pack it the fuck up. Then at the end, it’s so obvious she’s going to come back to save them, so the scene really holds no impact, even though it doesn’t make any sense for her to come back. She made her choice, she betrayed Pheobe to see her family (for whatever fucking reason), and she went through the barrier. We never see that the barrier didn’t work, or that something changed and made her change her decision. If her family is so fucking important, why on earth would she just go back to save people she hardly, or didn’t know? It doesn’t make any sense. Plus, if they wanted to give Pheobe a ghost girl romance (which I’m a fan of) they should have given her and Melody any semblance of chemistry. The actors didn’t have any chemistry and their dialogue was just sort of lame. Seeing Pheobe discover crushes and see how she would behave under those circumstances could have been very interesting, but it was just overall boring. Melody did not matter and nothing she ever did made sense. She wasn’t a character, she was a plot device to move the story along.

- This brings me to my next point.. none of the writing really made all that much sense? I mean they put all this work into the lore of the monster, even though really Ghostbusters shouldn’t be about lore, it should be about cool ghost designs and funny likeable characters, and then none of the lore mattered. I mean I barely remember anything about the big villain because it was all intensely boring and I just did not gaf at all. On top of this, the way the characters behave.. makes no sense. Pheobe’s family was so insensitive to her after she had to stop doing the thing she loved, despite it quite literally being her thing. In my opinion, if Pheobe wasn’t a ghostbuster, the whole thing would shut down. Trevor and Callie would be clueless, even with a little help with Gary, it just wouldn’t work. On top of this, when Pheobe destroyed the lion, and all the ghostbusters were mad at her??? What on earth was that about. The lion was quite literally going to kill Ray, and they’re ghostbusters. It is quite literally in the job description that you’re gonna destroy some shit and cause some problems. She had to, and Winston was all up her ass about it? It just didn’t make sense. He would’ve been on her side completely, and really all of the ghotsbusters involved shouldve been fighting for Pheobe. They’re supposed to be a team?? And I mean after everyone spend the movie getting mad at Pheobe literally anytime she breathed, the only time she actually messed up, almost killing herself and causing the end of the world for a cute girl, everyone’s all “Oh we’re just glad you’re okay!! everybody makes mistakes!!!” It’s so clownish actually. There are a million other things that just don’t make sense, but I’d have to rewatch it to make any real coherent analysis of them.

- The villain was so fucking goofy?? It was just this big cartoonish stereotype villain that wasn’t ironic at all. It was so unserious and not scary at all. That design sucked shit and there was nothing interesting about him. What’s the point of Ghostbusters if the big villain doesn’t talk and doesn’t have any funny scenes? Plus, like, oh wow big evil world ending dead god. I’ve never seen anything like this before. My mind is blown, Ghostbusters, you’ve done it again. (sarcasm 😊)

- Podcast and Pheobe were barely in the movie. They carried the last movie and they’re my favorite, so this is slightly biased, but them not being in it at all was insane. Especially, since, you know, pheobe is the main character. Even on the poster, it’s way too filled with characters, and Pheobe is no where near the focal point of the poster. It’s fucking Paul Rudd for some reason. Besides this, Podcast was no where near as funny as he should’ve been. Both Pheobe and Podcast lost that young awkward charm that made them so loveable, and you cannot convince me Podcast stopped being so dorky so easily. I also believe he would be super interesting in working in Ray’s shop, but I don’t believe he would let everyone be ghostbusting without him?? Pheobe ghostbusting without podcast? Absolutely not on his watch. Their characters were a little butchered.

- Ah. The ending. This fuckass ending. You saw it from a million miles away and so did I, and so did everyone fucking else. It was the most expected ending I’ve ever seen. No twists, nothing goes wrong, and when it does, it does not matter. None of it matters. Oh they all get suited up and team up? Doesn’t matter. you’re all frozen and will do nothing for the ending. Oh no, they all got frozen and can’t stop the bad guy? Doesn’t matter. Unrelated side character comes out of nowhere and saves the day in five seconds with no problem. No one lift a finger. Not even to mention how ridiculous the ice spikes were. They did all this set up with Kumail Nanjiani, jist for the payoff to be that. None of the conflicts they ran into in the movie had really any impact on the story later. They were just things that happened.

Overall, I thought the movie was a mess that was trying too hard at everything and succeeding very little. Now I’ll talk about some things I did like! Keeping the old ghostbusters, especially Ray, I thought was a good choice. The idea of Winston being the rich one who’s really running ghostbusters behind the scenes is perfect, especially considering Ernie Husdson really being the one to keep Ghostbusters alive, and having ghostbusters tech where he works with ghosts and makes containment units and new traps and what not was great. Pheobe and Gary trying go navigate their new relationship was an interesting and heartwarming idea, even if I thought it wasn’t executed amazingly. Pheobe tinkering with her proton pack and coating it with copper to blast the monster was a really fun, great idea. I love when they do little things like that, putting little spins on things, and I wish we could’ve seen more of that. Venkman had some of the best scenes in the movie. Him throwing the pens at Kumail Nanjiana was a very fun scene, and did keep the spirit of Peter Venkman very much. More than that, the scene where he shows up at the firehouse and immediately goes to wear he has a hidden thing of Whisky was gold. A perfect Venkman scene, a perfect “i lived here for years” moment, and very funny.