Afterlife “hands Ghostbusters back to the fans” by writing them into the movie
Ghostbusters: Afterlife chases a distressing blockbuster trend: using fan surrogates to sell a lackluster story
Film Features Ghostbusters
Note: This article discusses the plot of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
In early 2019, just after Jason Reitman signed on to reanimate the corpse of his father’s most beloved project, Ghostbusters, the director appeared on Bill Burr’s podcast to declare what, presumably, every Ghostbusters fan wanted to hear: “We are, in every way, trying to go back to the original technique and hand the movie back to the fans.”
In light of the sexist campaign against Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot, many read his comments as a dog-whistle to court incensed fans back to the franchise. Reitman later retracted the statement, but he still accomplished the goal implied by his remarks and then some. He hasn’t just handed Ghostbusters back to these fans. He’s put fans in the movie.
Fan surrogates, or “fanalogues” if you want to be cute about it, are now commonplace in our nostalgia-burdened blockbuster landscape. Traditional audience surrogates speak to the viewer’s logic and put their point of view on screen. A fan surrogate focuses on a specific viewer who knows everything about the cinematic universe unfolding before them. This allows a movie like Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife to speak the language of the fan community, verbalizing all its desires, interests, and moods.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens welcomes fans aboard the Millennium Falcon
In 2015, when the decades-late-sequel industrial complex cranked into high gear, Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens made sure fans weren’t just heard but also seen. Characters like Rey (Daisy Ridley) from Star Wars and Jake Johnson’s Lowery from Jurassic World acted as fans of the very property they existed within, giving the diehards a seat at the table.
This was very much by design. In Bob Iger’s memoir, The Ride Of A Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As C.E.O. Of The Walt Disney Company, the former C.E.O. discusses George Lucas’ disappointment with J.J. Abrams’ film, citing a lack of “visual or technical leaps forward.” Iger agreed with his assessment but thought fan reactions were, ultimately, more critical.
We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earliest films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected […] Lucas fans needed to be reassured that we, too, were fans first, respectful of the creator and looking to expand on his legacy, not usurp it.
Rey’s role in the film is one of a Star Wars fan. She knows about Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and the Millennium Falcon, and treats Solo with the reverence of a ComicCon attendee getting an autographed 8×10. She’s essentially the first guest at Disney’s “Star Wars: Galactic Cruiser” immersive hotel.
Moreover, her desire to be in a Star Wars movie allows her to do just that. By now, it’s widely accepted that The Force Awakens essentially retreads the plot of A New Hope. It does that through the lens of Rey. In Abrams’ film, she’s not fulfilling her destiny, she’s fulfilling the wishes of Star Wars fans, fighting her own Darth Vader and blowing up her own Death Star.
Unfortunately, this bit of character setup makes for a wobbly, unstable universe—something that will become a big problem by The Rise Of Skywalker’s release. Rey’s desire to be a Star Wars character sometimes feels like her defining trait. Moreover, her fan-as-character background raises questions about the nuts and bolts of this universe. How, exactly, does she know about Luke and Han and the Millennium Falcon? The galaxy far, far away is a big place, and Rey didn’t have a Ben Kenobi feeding her info about her past. Are there libraries with Rebellion history books on Jakku? Did Finn have access to the Wookiepedia while in the Storm Trooper army? They all must share a Disney+ account.
Jurassic World: Fallen fandom
Jurassic World took a different approach to the fan surrogate, using Jake Johnson’s character, Lowery, to express fan hesitancy regarding a potentially disappointing sequel. Like many fans, he must’ve hated The Lost World and Jurassic Park III and worries that he’s being taken for another $15 ride.
Lowery wears a vintage Jurassic Park T-shirt and comments on how “legit” the first park was. “I have respect for it. They didn’t need these genetic hybrids,” Lowery says. He then lets loose a very “Worst. Sequel. Ever.” groan as Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) announces their new dinosaur: “Verizon Wireless presents the Indominous Rex.”
Lowery’s criticisms are a thinly veiled metaphor for the skepticism fans might express about the sequel, parodying concerns about corporate integration and new dinosaurs, likely ones created by CGI instead of the animatronics that made the original a classic. Again, this is all very intentional. As Jake Johnson explained in a 2015 red carpet interview, “We wanted a character who felt like one of us, somebody who could comment on the new Jurassic World and somebody who would miss Jurassic Park, the original park, the way we would if it was something that actually existed.”
Lowery is less a Greek chorus and more a Greek message board commenter, laying out complaints before the plot gets underway. The film’s director and co-screenwriter Colin Trevorrow uses the character as a means of absolution by self-awareness. The only problem is that Lowery’s right: Jurassic World is a poor imitation of the original. Admitting this doesn’t deflect those criticisms but instead plants them in our heads.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is for the fans
With Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason Reitman “hands the franchise back to the fans” by writing all kinds of them into his script. There’s the original Ghostbusters fanatic Gary Gooberson (Paul Rudd)—a frankly rude name for a fan surrogate—who is introduced as someone who recognizes items from the first film. We also have the new young fans who discover the suddenly Amblin-esque wonder of Ghostbusters, and the lapsed fan, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), daughter of original Ghostbuster Egon (Harold Ramis), who abandoned his family after the events of Ghostbusters II.
Gary, summer school teacher to Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Podcast (Logan Kim), feels connected to the Ghostbusters, waxing nostalgic about the ghost-filthy New York of the 1980s. He sees the ghost trap the kids are playing with and immediately assumes it’s a replica. He’s not just familiar with the Ghostbusters. He loves them.
The problem is, Reitman’s script uses fandom as an excuse for all kinds of sweaty setups, like the return of the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man. In his excitement, Gary helps the kids open the trap and awaken the Sumerian God Gozer. Later, undisturbed by the fact that he’s had the first supernatural encounter in 30 years, Gary goes to buy some ice cream and comes across a bag of Stay Pufts at Walmart. Seemingly, thanks to the force of Gozer’s resurrection, mini Stay Pufts burst from the package and begin wreaking havoc. Except Stay Puft wasn’t a ghost; it was a manifestation from the memories of Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd). So unless Gozer is as nostalgic as Gooberson, the mini marshmallows have no business in Walmart.
The mini Stay Pufts are the punchline to a joke that was never set up. The monster’s reveal in 1984 was both a technical marvel and a character quirk: Ray always screws something up at the last second. (“When someone asks you if you are a god, you say yes!”) Here it’s supposedly funny because Gary is delighted by their appearance, looking at the miniature marshmallows with a reverence he just showed for proton packs. Unfortunately, the fan surrogate’s recognition of Stay Puft is all the setup the movie thinks it needs.
But not everyone is a fan of Ghostbusters, if you can believe it. The first sequel and Paul Fieg’s 2016 reboot created lapsed fans, like Carrie Coon’s Callie. Callie doesn’t like talking about the Ghostbusters because her father, Egon, abandoned her family. The timeline of the three films also indicates that Egon spent more time bustin’ than he did parentin’. She doesn’t want her kids getting into Ghostbusters.
Callie’s journey in the film is to stop worrying and love the Ghostbusters again. In the film’s climax, she learns something she would have no context for (in a rather ghoulish display of fan service) and decides to forgive her father—mostly, it appears, because she likes seeing the old gang back together. Her forgiveness makes abandoning your child to hunt ghosts an acceptable excuse. What’s important is that she forgives the Ghostbusters for all their past sins, like releasing two entries that some fans loudly rejected.
Ecto Cool-it with the fan service
Even the camera seems to prefer old Ghostbusters stuff. Lingering shots of Crunch Bars and Twinkies, among other Ghostbusters memes and ephemera (like a P.K.E. meter), signal to viewers that the filmmaker “gets it.”
And that’s what these fan surrogates hope to achieve, too. It’s the “how do you do, fellow teens” of fan service, a filmmaker or corporation popping in to tell the hardcore contingent “we’re just like you.” But while Rey might accrue some dramatic power in Star Wars, cynically deploying this fan-courting screenwriting strategy results in a character named “Gary Gooberson,” who clashes with the film’s logic around him. The meme adage “liking something isn’t a personality” applies to characters, too.
These fan surrogates have multiple functions. They can ingratiate and welcome fans, like Gary. They can inspire new ones, like Phoebe. Or they can apologize, like Callie. What they rarely do is serve the story. However, they’re more than happy to point out an easter egg, reiterate some exposition from another, better movie, or simply remind fans how much more fun they used to have with these properties. They’re having fun, so you should too, right?
But sticking fans in the movie, Last Action Hero-style, doesn’t give the filmmakers any space to “leap forward,” as Lucas put it. It’s an approach that encourages fandoms and the franchises they cherish to stagnate. Don’t let the past die. Luxuriate in the good old days that never really were.
While the intentions of giving Ghostbusters back to the fans may be pure, fan service shouldn’t become a be-all end-all. Having an in-film cheerleader reminding us how awesome the old thing was doesn’t make the new thing awesome. It just makes you want to watch the old thing.
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And don’t worry everyone, we kept the sexual assault by ghosts on the people they’re possessing. We even make it part of their romance. And if you want to see Paul Rudd’s character meet the Ghostbusters he loves so much, he doesn’t really. And if you liked it in the 80s when you had characters like Data who don’t really have names like in The Goonies, you’re going to love Podcast (who Mom hits on). And speaking of the 80s (which is all this movie does) Stay Puft is now Gremlins.
Jesus fucking CHrist, the fact that there’s a kid named Podcast is all you need to know about this piece of shit. Holy crap.
Writer 1: “How about we call one kid Podcast?”Writer 2: “…let’s try to build on that.”Narrator: “They never did.”
Afterlife definitely contains a lot of fan service, but I’d strongly disagree that Gary is a fan surrogate — he’s the only sane person in the entire town. Everyone else somehow forgot that ghosts turned out to be real. It’s like if you lived through 9/11 or the JFK assassination, wouldn’t you remember that?What Gary purchases at Wal-Mart is clearly fan service for Ant-Man, however.
I haven’t seen Afterlife yet, but… Yeah, that mass-amnesia strikes me as odd. I could maybe see people being skeptical of ghosts in a sequel to the Feigboot (relatively recent, the Mayor said it was a hoax, etc), but it doesn’t seem to fit with the original series, New York has been attacked by ghosts at least twice. Not believing in ghosts would be the equivalent of thinking that the Earth is flat. Okay, Todd, maybe YOU haven’t seen a specter personally, but they pretty clearly exist! Maybe Gozer did an overall mind-wipe or something (his powers seem pretty undefined), but, again, I haven’t seen Afterlife, so I don’t know if that’s the case.
Is Baskin Robbins the source of Paul Rudd’s immortality?And everyone forgetting is at least consistent, Ghostbusters 2 had people forget in the city where it happened only 5 years later, so some middle of nowhere town 30 years later shouldn’t care either.
In Afterlife’s defense (and I’ll never, ever say that again), it wouldn’t be the first sequel to have the entire public suffer mass amnesia about the earth-shaking events of the previous films in order to force the story down a certain direction.Fuck it, they even did that in Ghostbusters 2.
I mean, we do live in a world where some people believe the moon landing was faked, and that 9/11 was an inside job, and that COVID-19, a disease that has killed millions, is some kind of hoax. I can buy people deciding the crossrip was fake.
Everyone else somehow forgot that ghosts turned out to be real.This is something that I just cannot get over. Confirmation of an afterlife would radically alter society and world religion as we know it. I could buy the forgetfuls if this were set hundreds of years after the events of the original, but 30 years?
So there’s no issue with cash-grabbing studios beating nostalgia properties to death for profit, but if they do, they shouldn’t have fan surrogates in them, and if they do have fan surrogates in them, they shouldn’t be given “rude” names, because that’s just disrespectful to the fans. Lol.
If you thought the author’s biggest beef was giving the fan surrogate a silly name you didn’t read the article very carefully.
You’re absolutely right, I didn’t, because it’s meaningless bloviating about a non-issue. But I’m sure he’s very grateful for your valiant defense.
He agrees with you, dude.
Maybe you didn’t read my comment very carefully? Because at this point I can’t even tell what we’re talking about.
The entire premise of the article is that “cash-grabbing studios beating nostalgia properties to death for profit” is very much the issue, of which the “fan surrogate” trend is a mere symptom.
The article literally ends with the caveat “While the intentions of giving Ghostbusters back to the fans may be pure”. Assigning “pure intentions” to the studios doesn’t seem like a critique of cynical, profit-motivated IP exploiting in the slightest. So I’m reading this article much differently than you are, it seems.
Yes, for one thing I understand the vast semantic difference between “may be” and “are.” As in: even if we accept the premise that the studios are doing all this for the fans, blatant fan service is still makes for lazy and crummy art. Like, basic reading comprehension. But as long as we’re cherry picking passages, these seem pretty important:“Lowery’s criticisms are a thinly veiled metaphor for the skepticism fans might express about the sequel, parodying concerns about corporate integration and new dinosaurs, likely ones created by CGI instead of the animatronics that made the original a classic. Again, this is all very intentional.”“Lowery is less a Greek chorus and more a Greek message board commenter, laying out complaints before the plot gets underway. The film’s director and co-screenwriter Colin Trevorrow uses the character as a means of absolution by self-awareness. The only problem is that Lowery’s right: Jurassic World is a poor imitation of the original. Admitting this doesn’t deflect those criticisms but instead plants them in our heads.”“And that’s what these fan surrogates hope to achieve, too. It’s the ‘how do you do, fellow teens’ of fan service, a filmmaker or corporation popping in to tell the hardcore contingent ‘we’re just like you.’ But while Rey might accrue some dramatic power in Star Wars, cynically deploying this fan-courting screenwriting strategy results in a character named ‘Gary Gooberson,’ who clashes with the film’s logic around him. The meme adage “liking something isn’t a personality” applies to characters, too.”
You can quote and bold and condescend to me about my reading ability all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re reading this differently. You said “The entire premise of the article is that ‘cash-grabbing studios beating nostalgia properties to death for profit’ is very much the issue, of which the ‘fan surrogate’ trend is a mere symptom.” I disagree with your fundamental claim. The headline and subhead of this piece are “Afterlife “hands Ghostbusters back to the fans” by writing them into the movie” and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife chases a distressing blockbuster trend: using fan surrogates to sell a lackluster story,” respectively. These are both focused on advancing an argument about fan surrogates. The author is essentially constructing a Rogerian argument centered on identifying a shared concern and trying to account for benefits of “cooling it” with the fan service. The essay primarily employs exemplification as its mode of arrangement, examining fan surrogates in three different franchises in order to establish the trend and its varying constructions. (By now you may have noted fancy terms like “Rogerian argument” and “exemplification”—I’ll assume that, because you are such a very good reader, you are already familiar with these fundamentals of argument. Feel free to look them up if you need to. Unlike you, I won’t make you feel bad about it or act condescending about it.) As such, I argue that the central premise is that fan surrogates are lazy efforts that don’t “give the filmmakers any space to ‘leap forward,’” as the author quotes—and, in turn, implies that the exploitation of IP is just fine as long as it’s somehow progressive, which I believe is contrary to the premise you are claiming the essay is advancing.And, with that, I’m done here. We’re going in circles, we disagree on the central claim, have a very nice day and holiday.
Blah blah blah. You, by your own admission, didn’t read the article and farted out a hot take. I called you out. Suck it up.
Cool. Play aggressively dumb in the most standard way first and then snarl about the very fitting response to your game-playing with the equivalent of “He’s not gonna do sex to you, brum”? I’m sure you give just the warmest feeling to anyone who has to share physical space with you.
I literally have no idea what anything you just said means. (What’s a brum??) But you do seem very friendly and stable.
We’re here to talk about films though, not shit that actually matters.
Us greys don’t read. We only react.
“So there’s no issue with cash-grabbing studios beating nostalgia properties to death for profit”There is?
Great article!
Ghostbusters: Afterlife chases a distressing blockbuster trend: using fan surrogates to sell a lackluster storyI mean, does it really matter though? This film is only getting made because that nostalgia audience exists and will pay money to see it. The people who really want to see a sequel decades later tend to be the ones who’ll pay to watch anything.It’s clearly not dominating the cinema unless all you watch are franchise revivals given the wide range of films that get released.
Wish you guys had discussed the actual ending, which is a lot more controversial and I’d argue ethically dubious than anything else in the movie
Galaxy Quest was a successful way to do it.I think it worked for a few reasons. One is that it showed up in a fairly low saturation period for that kind of meta — today it might have come off as too much self awareness.Another is that it was pretty good about capturing the grind of servicing the fans, and showing up at convention after convention doing the same old thing.And it was also still pretty affectionate towards the right kinds of fans — it would have been weirder if it had been 38 year old nostalgia-ridden neckbeards who pitched in, instead of the enthusiastic high schoolers in Galaxy Quest.It also helped that it was just a much better thought through movie than, say, the Star Wars sequels, and also free to acknowledge the pure trope-iness of the genre. It was both smarter and freely dumber than a lot of other movies engaging in fan service.
“Galaxy Quest” also works well because it takes place in a world where “Galaxy Quest” is an actual TV show, and there are literally fans of the show in the story. It feels much sillier to have in-story fans of things that actually happened, which as an audience we’re aware are just movies, adding a layer of removal even as it’s supposed to bring us into the story. This creates a kind of dull distance for something that isn’t a satire, because we’re hyper-aware of the new movie’s role in a franchise. Some people want this, because they’re obsessed with the franchise itself, but it makes for a worse, more forgettable movie for everyone else.
Now I want see the Eltingville Club as Nesmith’s Earth based ground crew.
Interesting perspective I hadn’t thought about before! Marvel does this too – Ant-Man and Spider-Man are both introduced as fans of the Avengers IIRC. Even Bond had this a bit and at least flipped it, with the bad CIA agent introduced as a fan of Bond (which is silly since he’s a fucking spy and his exploits shouldn’t be out there even in CIA circles). You’ve always had “audience surrogates” like Hurley from Lost, but this does seem to take it a step further, especially when our main characters, not the plucky comic relief as they say in Galaxy Quest, are filling that role. Also, what in the fuck does giving back to the fans even mean, especially with Ghostbusters? It was a a strange and silly horror-comedy that already had a sequel WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST no one liked, and then you approach it like you’re adapting the fucking Holy Bible. Reverence is killing these movies, and irreverence is the only thing that would’ve allowed for a good sequel.
“Also, what in the fuck does giving back to the fans even mean, especially with Ghostbusters? It was a a strange and silly horror-comedy that already had a sequel WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST no one liked, and then you approach it like you’re adapting the fucking Holy Bible.” God, this times a zillion. Ghostbusters of all things is holy writ?
Any time I hear “this is for the fans” I hear “this is insultingly lazy dogshit made for the people who were going to watch this anyways”. I have yet to be wrong.
“Also, what in the fuck does giving back to the fans even mean, especially with Ghostbusters? It was a a strange and silly horror-comedy that already had a sequel WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST no one liked….”
Hot Take: 99.9% of GB reverence / nostalgia comes solely from the cartoon. (And not the “XTREME!” version, which also no one liked.)
All GB fandom is weird as hell, and I’ve been there from the beginning, maaaaaannnnn.
TBH that makes a lot of sense – Ghostbusters itself was too early for a lot of this type of intense nostalgia, but the show going from 86-91 is right in the sweet spot. Plus as much as people love Ghostbusters, that’s usually not a movie you see/appreciate till you’re an older kid, which means the nostalgia shouldn’t be quite as intense. But a cartoon would definitely imprint. I think that’s a good call.
What does “too early for a lot of this type of intense nostalgia” mean? Makes it sound like nostalgia was invented by people born in, say, 1981. Let me point you to this classic from 1997: https://www.theonion.com/u-s-dept-of-retro-warns-we-may-be-running-out-of-pas-1819564513
Modern weaponized nostalgia is a distinct thing from old-school nostalgia. The constant reinforcement, the brand targeting (the 80s FCC regulations I believe got way more lax so they could market directly to children, which is where you get the start of those types of kids commercials), the imprinting at a young age. My dad loves the Lone Ranger but he didn’t get bombarded with his love after he had grown out of it. I’m saying that Ghostbusters, while a huge hit, was loved by already-older kids and adults, but it makes sense that the combo of that with the cartoon would’ve been a bridge to the current generation. Not that many other similar 80s franchises have engendered the type of weird reaction Ghostbusters has, so I was thinking that could be a key.
You didn’t just watch the same dynamic play out with He Man? Or Star Wars?This conversation has turned to nonsense. I promise you that deeply held feelings of nostalgia attached to properties prior to, say, 1994’s Gargoyles or wherever it is you’re trying to draw this line.
Yikes! Glad I engaged lol. I didn’t even say anything particularly crazy. Have a fun day!
Plus Ecto-cooler. I loved that stuff.
My reverence for Ghostbusters comes solely from Ray Parker Jr’s song.
Would you say it makes you feel good?
Ghostbusters!And yes.
I remember finally watching Ghostbusters and wondering why Slimer was a bad guy and barely in it.
Only in the extreme forms of fandom. There are still millions of fans who have never watched nor give one single shit about the cartoon.
Hey, I …somewhat… liked Ghostbusters II! It had Peter MacNicol doing an accent!
Helllllllll no. I was 7 years old in 1984. The movie came out and just dominated our summer, and the next few years. It was the one that my dad liked just as much as I did — I didn’t get all the jokes but I still laughed at them.The cartoon was pitched directly at me, and I watched it every Saturday morning. I bet I’m top 10 worldwide in hours spent on the Ghostbusters Atari 800 game.But I’ve never had any desire to go back to the cartoon, whereas the movie kept getting funnier and funnier for me for at least half a decade as I got more of the jokes. Given that all my college friends loved the movie as much as I did, I really doubt we’re the 0.1% of your rendering.
(Wasn’t until about 30 years after it came out that I realized I didn’t love how they made the EPA the bad guys, and made Venkman the kind of pushy romantic creep who was often rewarded for his pushiness in 80s movies. And that ghost sex “dream”, wtf. Still great though — the crowd at Tavern on the Green just going back to their meals as Moranis slumps down the flag outside to be devoured (?) by the demon dog is just perfection.)
You and I are the same age. I recall 3 mega-hit films that everyone wanted to see that summer: Temple of Doom, Gremlins, and Ghostbusters. I’m actually surprised Ghostbusters has enjoyed the largest cultural footprint over the years, since it seemed to take third place (albeit a very popular 3rd place) behind the other two that summer. Rewatches on VHS, then the cartoon, video games and toys probably pulled Ghostbusters ahead over time.
I think this is dead on in this case; yet I would posit that it was a lack of reverence for Luke, Han and Leia that is what really ruined the sequel trilogy and tarnished the franchise irreparably.Never having them share a scene together, making them miserable after the “happy” ending of Jedi. Giving them forced, meaningless deaths that were nothing but a bummer all around.If KK and the Lucasfilm Story group watched any DBZ or Naruto/Boruto, they’d realize how unnecessary and destructive their choices were; and see how legacy characters should be handled.But in this case of Ghostbusters? You’re %100.
I think the movies were just badly written. There was much reverence towards the characters, the writers just didn’t know what to do with them – and why would they? A bunch of old people whose stories had wrapped up already – they only served to hamstring the development of the new characters. Movies should’ve been set a few hundred years after Jedi. You could prob even still being back Hamill using some Force Aging crap. The reverence problem there was more just feeling the need to include them at all.
Ah yes, the lucasfilm story group DEFINITELY needs to follow the lead of DBZ, a show notorious for its tight, clean story-telling.Do understand that you’re stupid, or is this a dunning-krueger thing?
…a lack of reverence for Luke, Han and Leia …Never having them share a scene together, making them miserable after the “happy” ending of Jedi.See, I appreciated this most about it because they weren’t afraid to kill their darlings. Think about your friend group; do you spend all your time together, go on trips together, share every major life event together in person? Or does life have an ebb and flow where sometimes you’re close and other times you haven’t seen each other for along time? I think there’s something sad yet human about them drifting apart. It happens.
Ghostbusters was irreverent to its core. It was sloppy, crude, anti-establisment, silly, obnoxious and anarchic. Treating it like some maudlin, sappy, sub-Amblin cozy family melodrama couldn’t possibly be a worse choice for a sequel. Jesus fucking Christ.
“It was a a strange and silly horror-comedy that already had a sequel WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST no one like“Quite a few fans liked Ghostbusters 2 (I always enjoyed it). Sure, it wasn’t as good as the first film, but it was still solid fun (if unoriginal).Plus, there was the animated series, with the ghostbusters battling all manner of demons and mythological creatures on a weekly basis, as well as the 2009 video game which had the original cast returning for voiceover duties, and the subsequent IDW comics which followed on from it.The point is, there’s an appetite for more ghostbusters related material. I’m not sure why that baffles people (that Ghostbusters has a fan base).I’ve seen people bring that up before and question why Ghostbusters of all things has ardent followers. Why shouldn’t it?I mean, there was a point where Star Trek was just a silly, brightly coloured sci-fi show from the 60’s (alongside other silly sci-fi shows like The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space etc), before it got revived as a movie series, and then had a sequel series and various spin offs and reboots. I imagine there were probably cynics who thought that Star Trek was just some campy nonsense involving pointy eared aliens, and wondered why it was being revived in the 70’s/80’s.Likewise, Star Wars was George Lucas riffing on Flash Gordon, and there are probably cynics who are baffled why a movie involving tin robots and space wizards is the mega franchise it is today.As Lex Luther said “Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
“already had a sequel WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST no one liked”That’s a common misconception: Lots of people liked the sequel.
This just in, hyperbolic statement has literal counterpoint 🙂
See – Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Complete irreverence made what could have been a forgettable sequel into a work that possibly surpasses the original.
It actually is super interesting to think about what a Gremlins remake would be (I guess we’ll find out when the TV series comes out). I can’t imagine them even coming close to the absolutely bonkers spirit of those movies.
What bothered me about Lowery in Jurassic World is that in-universe his love of the original makes no sense. It was a theme park that fell apart on the first test run that resulted in the deaths of several people. There is nothing “legit” about it.
It’s always kinda stuck out to me as well.“Yeah! I love this park! It was so awesome how it was abandoned before it opened and people died and it never even actually got finished!”But hey, fan service is fan service. If you retcon the park history to allow for fans you can put the fan service right on the screen. Never mind that most people’s exposure to the park would likely be “Class action suit by the families of the 36 workers who died…”
Maybe he’s the JW version of Madison Cawthorn and seeing a place of mass murder was on his bucket list?
Exactly. Jurassic World’s relationship to its predecessor (both the film and the in-universe park) makes exactly zero sense. . There’s no reason he’d be a “fan” of what would only be known as a catastrophic disaster and resulted in numerous human deaths.It’s a small moment, but during the train ride to the park, narration on the train touts that they salvaged parts of the original park to use in the new one, referring to the classic JP gates that the train drives through.But, again, the park was never open. No one actually ever went there and it would only be remembered as a terrible calamity, so why the fuck would they bother repurposing old materials and brag about it?It’s not as if Disney World was destroyed by a tornado and built 20 years later. It would be if Disney World never opened because a fire killed a dozen workers and destroyed the architecture. You wouldn’t want to remind anyone of that in your new park.
And at least in the book (the movie is unclear on this), nobody really learned about the park’s existence or the deaths of the people! As far as the public would know the “new” park was the first one!
Considering in the canon of the movies, that makes exactly zero sense. dinosaurs were literally loose on the streets of San Francisco, that take makes no sense. And JP3 and JW3 both feature people on the news and whatnot talking about the very, very famous park and the real dinosaurs that were created. In JP3, Alan Grant is dogged at his lectures by people who only want to know about the park.The events of the original movies are widely known to the public in-universe.
San Diego. But that had nothing to do with a park – it escaped from a ship. As far the populace knew, that was the first time a (non-avian) dinosaur had ever been seen in modern times. Maybe in JP3 (that was the shitty one with William H Macy, right?) they retconned it so that people knew about the park, but not in JP1 or JP2.
Whoops. I knew it was SD, but my brain typed Frisco instead. Yes, in JP1, the public basically knows nothing about the island. It’s a closely-guarded corporate secret (but not so closely guarded that InGen’s rivals haven’t heard about it somehow, hence the Denis Nedry subplot.)JP2 begins with Malcolm being a well-know crackpot for having talked extensively about the events of the first film on TV, though he was discredited and disbelieved.However, it ends with John Hammond on actual CN-friggin’-N making a plea to let the animals exist in peace after the events of San Diego brought everything out into the open. So, yeah, at that point, basically everything has become public knowledge.
And JP3 is in no way a “retcon” to suggest that, a little later, the entire world has digested this knowledge. That’s not a retcon, that’s time moving forward and the status quo changing naturally.
Lowery also thought Fyre Festival was “legit”.
It even makes less sense to create a highly intelligent genetic hybrid ultra-intelligent T-Rex with cloaking abilities, like people are going to stop going to the park if they don’t come up with new dinosaurs? But hey, can’t make a franchise about a dinosaur park NOT fucking up and killing half its customers/investors/staff every time.
Watch the Action Park documentary on HBO Max if you want to see just how possible it is for people to have great nostalgia for a death trap of a theme park that claimed several lives just because it was “legit.”
I’m still baffled as to how Ghostbusters even has a “fandom” to begin with. It was a moderately successful comedy with a catchy theme song that spawned a moderately successful cartoon/toy line and a far less successful sequel. I know we’re well into the cannibalistic phase of late stage capitalist mass media, but as far as cultural touchstones go Ghostbusters barely makes the list.
I think it was bigger and more of a cultural touchstone in 80s than you are giving credit for. It was everywhere. I also agree with your take. It’s never been a “massive franchise.” It was a hit spooky comedy with an insanely good cast. It spawned a fairly long running cartoon and lots of toys, but it was never as huge a merch mover as say, he-man or transformers. It had an “okay” sequel. In the 90s it largely went dormant. Akroyd shows up in CASPER for a Ghostbusters gag. The same fandoms for star wars, trek, etc have all the same issues with being too precious, but they… Sort of make sense? With how vast and huge the universes were. Busters is a weird one to “put behind glass.”
Ghostbusters was popular at the time, but so were Gremlins, Temple of Doom, Karate Kid, The Natural and Purple Rain… all released the summer of ‘84. I saw it opening weekend and – for a SNL-SCTV hybrid – I didn’t think it was as funny as Stripes. No one else I knew thought it was fish or fowl, either. But you could not escape the theme on the radio. What I’m saying is that it took a while for Ghostbusters to attain its cultural signifier status. And, like Liebkartoffel, I’m still not sure why this movie is so embraced or fought over.
Oh, oh, I like that. That makes so much sense. Ghostbusters absolutely feels like “of the era” of spooky/supernatural shit that was also somehow sort of kid friendly. It fits right in with Gremlins, Temple. Goonies whenever that came out. Etc. Ultimately, I agree with your last line so hard. Ghostbusters was great, but it didn’t feel any more special than any of the other 84-86 stuff in a similar vein. It was all part of the canvas.
Indiana Jones and Karate Kid also seem to keep coming back into pop culture. I’m surprised Gremlins never has had a big revival, unless I’m forgetting one in the last few decades.
They’re working on an animated prequel series for HBO Max right now.
One is on the way!
But none of those mother fuckers had a Saturday morning cartoon!
And now I’m bummed there wasn’t a Purple Rain cartoon.
It was actually hugely successful and a major pop cultural force in the mid-80s. Did it have a huge long tail and become a generational mainstay like Star Wars. No. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a phenomenon at the time that is still cherished by fans today. I’m guessing you weren’t actually alive then because your take is inaccurate.
The real world is full of mythology, ghost stories, and urban legends, and the animated series had the ghostbusters encountering everything from vampires, trolls, demons, the boogieman, Cthulhu etc.Theres’s a rich universe for Ghostbusters to explore as there’s plenty of folklore around to draw from for inspiration, so yes of course there are fans who want to see more ghostbusters related material.I don’t understand the line of thinking that Ghostbusters is somehow limited to being a one shot deal.It had an animated series that ran for 7 seasons, another animated spin off that ran for 1 season, the 1989 sequel, the 2009 videogame (which reunited the original cast), the subsequent IDW comics, a reboot movie (2016), another mainline sequel (Afterlife)…Yes there are ghostbusters fans who like the characters and the concept and want to see more. I don’t know why people find that difficult to fathom.
The comics, too, are EXCELLENT.You’re right, it’s fine for people to want more. buuuuuuut do they have to be so precious/”put Ghostbusters 84 in a class case to be worshipped” about it?
Ghostbusters was, at the time of its release, the most successful comedy in the history of motion pictures. If you adjust for inflation, it’s *still* the most successful comedy of all time. Weird take, dude.
Why does anything get a fandom? Star Trek was just a moderately successful fairly cheap ‘60s sci-fi series that existed on the verge of cancellation for most of its original run, and look what happened there. Sherlock Holmes was just a bunch of short stories in a Victorian magazine about a clever guy when you get down to it, and it basically invented modern fandom. There’s a slightly sniffy “why Ghostbusters?!” attitude that seems to have arisen in recent years which I don’t really get TBH. It’s an entertaining movie which plays around with genre in quite fun ways, is set in an interesting world that at least hints at some potentially fun mythos, was pretty successful and has been pretty well-regarded over the years, and spawned a well-loved children’s cartoon. Sure, it’s not holy writ from the mouth of God carved on marble from Sinai and people take it way too seriously, but it’s also not the huge inexplicable mystery that’s often made out why people might latch onto it either.
People my age (~43) grew up with the animated show and THAT is actually what hooked us. It’s honestly VERY good.
In Bob Iger’s memoir, The Ride Of A Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years As C.E.O. Of The Walt Disney Company, the former C.E.O. discusses George Lucas’ disappointment with J.J. Abrams’ film, citing a lack of “visual or technical leaps forward.” Iger agreed with his assessment but thought fan reactions were, ultimately, more critical.And this is a big problem with Hollywood and catering to the audiences. The great pieces of art, or even the pieces that historically stand out, is that they do something that is unique or of a certain quality. Imagine if Grapes of Wrath or Hamlet had been written to get a more favorable fan reaction than to aspire to something truly special, or if Kubrick had softened the edges or dumbed down 2001: A Space Odyssey or Dr. Strangelove.
I’m not saying Ghostbusters is high art, because it’s not. But it stood out because it was a fun concept with funny actors and acted as a nice vehicle for Bill Murray. But when they’re catering down to fan reactions and going in to create fan service, it keeps you from making something truly special. You could strive for something more revolutionary or that took a chance, but no, you’re relying on nostalgia and the familiar beats to make something safe. I’ll pass.
But more than that, I still feel like there are better movies flat out not being made, and if they are not getting much attention, because they can make a never-ending number of Star Wars or Marvel sequels and spin-offs they know will sell, but something ambitious or that takes a chance is much less likely to be made or given much of a budget. And even within the Star Wars or Marvel universe, where there’s certainly room for great stories to be told, when you know they’re just going to cater to fans by telling them safe stories, rather than by wowing us with something truly special, what’s the point? If you care about great stories or great art, that’s boring, or at best unsatisfying. I think that mentality kills off a lot of great movies and music and leaves us with a lot of flashy-but-milquetoast art that tends to be inoffensive, while all looking and sounding an awful lot like each other.
That’s why, love him or hate him, I love that Christopher Nolan is out there making ridiculous hundred-million dollar movies not based on previous IPs. They’re uneven and flawed but I have rewatched Tenet more times than any of the MCU movies.
Good thing Chris Nolan didn’t graduate from small-budgeted thrillers into original megabudget movies via making IP-based blockbusters first.
Oh, wait….
I have no idea what your point is. He finished the Dark Knight trilogy (which most people cite as a refreshing take on the mythos that doesn’t rely on “Remember this???” filmmaking) almost a decade ago, and has been making movies that aren’t based on nostalgia or existing IPs since. Most indie filmmakers who graduate to IP-based mega blockbusters continue making IP-based mega blockbusters.
My point is just you said, “I love that Chris Nolan makes original mega-budget movies that aren’t based on IP.” And my point was merely that he only got to that point in his career BECAUSE he made IP-based films that were wildly successful.
So, yes, I get your point and I agree with it. It’s definitely good that there are at least a few people like Nolan who able to spend big bucks on movies that aren’t just the latest MCU installment or some moldy franchise reboot. But, even Nolan had to pass through the IP gauntlet to get there.
But I have no problem with the IP gauntlet, especially when that gauntlet was cleared ten years ago now. The difference between him and his contemporaries is that he didn’t keep pumping out IP-based hits (and part of that is because of luck and being a straight, white man in Hollywood, no doubt).I guess I should give props to Roland Emmerich too. He still makes huge, dumb movies that – other than Godzilla and ID42 – aren’t based on existing IP either.
I agree, there are some directors that seem to have very little interest in moving beyond the cozy confines of endless IP. JJ Abrams has literally never made a single “original” movie except for Super 8, which was only barely original, since it was a very deliberate (and tonally catastrophic) Spielberg pastiche. Everything else he’s done has been MI This, Star Trek That and then Star Wars. He clearly doesn’t have a lot to really say as a filmmaker (and is much better as a TV creator and/or producer, though most of his shows belong to a simpler, less sophisticated era in longform storytelling.)Favreau has settled comfortably into his role as reliable Disney company man. His last “original” movie was also a very thinly veiled commentary on his unhappy experience making Iron Man 2. But, since then, he’s embraced his corporate masters and gladly done their bidding in soulless crap like “Lion King”, arguably to help get him into position to make his SW passion projects. Which, of course, are part of the biggest IP around.Nolan used his wild success in Batman to making his own passion projects. Good for him! And it’s not like he was just phoning it in on Batman, anyway. He actually had something to say about the character and wasn’t just chasing cozy fan service like Abrams and Favreau.We aren’t in disagreement about anything here.
That’s not the vibe I got from your first reply but I guess we’re not.
Although Batman movies (at least in the Nolan and earlier Burton eras) were a lot different than modern “universe” superhero movies. Batman is guy who becomes a vigilante after his parents were killed. And is super rich, which kinda makes it better (to quote Lego Batman). And he has a nemesis who is an insane clown named The Joker. Other than that, Burton and Nolan had pretty much free reign with the character and story. They were far more interesting to watch than modern stuff from the official DC or Marvel universes, and I imagine far more intellectually stimulating to create.
It’s kind of funny that you cite ‘Hamlet’ there, since Bill Shakespeare was pretty well-known for writing for the cheap seats throughout his career. He wrote plays on commission and made sure they were crowd pleasers. Which is not to say that ‘Hamlet’ isn’t a great piece of theatre, but it was pretty much the blockbuster entertainment of its day.
As full of vulgar humour!
I stand at least sort of corrected. I still think he took chances, and didn’t seem to dumb things down in his writing. Maybe his poetry is a better example, but from what I read (the plays and the analysis), he made things to be approachable for the masses, but also for the more higher-class and well-educated folks. I can’t say the same about something that’s written to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I don’t know if Ghostbusters: Afterlife qualifies as doing that, but it doesn’t seem to strive for anything lofty. I would still say “Hamlet” does that, while Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Star Wars: The Force Awakens felt very derivative. There is, I think, a difference between writing to be a crowd pleaser and catering to the audience.
Lmfao why DO you think Shakespeare wrote Hamlet?Fuck it, why do you think Shakespeare wrote ANY play???
Like anything else, fan service and reverence to the property can be an asset or a liability. If you ignore it, then you usually end up with what feels like a mercenary tie-in, an unrelated property someone slapped a few names on to get more people to buy tickets. If you crank it up too far, then you’re going to hit diminishing returns too, as what made the originals great was rarely how invested they were in themselves as a mythology.But beyond that, I think it simply doesn’t matter? The Star Wars sequel trilogy movies were all retreads to varying degrees—as much as people focus on The Last Jedi as doing something “new”, a ton of it is just hammering the scrappy rebels versus evil empire button (hey it’s salt, not snow!), because Johnson apparently didn’t think Abrams went far enough at trying to erase 30 years of history in the name of playing the hits. But the films still made boatloads and boatloads of money! Hell, the prequels might have been the good idea/bad execution inversion of the sequels, but they still made boatloads of money! There’s absolutely no incentive for filmmakers to not try this, because as much as this corner of the internet might hate Ready Player One, it clearly appealed to a huge audience.In summation: that Onion article about us being dangerously low on past to get nostalgic about has never felt more relevant, and I don’t see us escaping our current orbit.
“If you ignore it, then you usually end up with what feels like a mercenary tie-in, an unrelated property someone slapped a few names on to get more people to buy tickets” Great point. As a transformers fan, the bay movies felt like this. Outside of names those movies seem absolutely *embarrassed* by their source material and past. They were also, like, really bad so I just stopped.
What I didn’t do was get angry at how the new transformers movies were not what I wanted. Disappointed? Sure. Lot of money and time spent on meh. But none of it erased the parts about transformers I like.
It’s not a great flick, but I appreciate ‘Bumblebee’ for making its eponymous hero a Beetle again. Apparently that wasn’t a cool enough car for Bay, hence the Camero-fication of the original movies’ Bumblebee.
This gets to an idea I was thinking while reading this article. The new Star Wars trilogy and the 2016 Ghostbusters both got heavy marketing and praise on the “This is for fans who aren’t like those OTHER fans” mindset, based on the idea that pandering to female fans or fans of color with what turned out to be extremely hollow, threadbare representation was a savvy way to rake in cash not previously available. Is that really much better? All it does it raise false hopes and leave many disappointed fans (and in the case of the new Star Wars cast, actors).I think Russell T Davies probably had one of the more honest representations of being too involved in fandom, when he rebooted Doctor Who in 2005 and had the fan who finally learned the Doctor was real get killed immediately afterward. When the dream becomes too much of a reality, it kills you. Given how toxic that fandom has been for generations, I guess he had a lot to get off his chest.
And the thing about fan service is, it does the opposite in the long run. It’s just catering to existing fans, but not creating new ones. I doubt any younger people who didn’t grow up with the Ghostbusters will see this film and think, “Yes, this is the franchise for me!” It will just seem weird and inscrutable, full of in-jokes and references you won’t get without seeing the previous films.If you are really a fan of something, you should want to make more fans. For example, Daria was one of the seminal shows of my upbringing. It got me through a lot of rough years with its characters and messages. And when I heard it was being rebooted, but with Jodie at its center, at first I felt a twinge of fanboy, thinking “No! It’s Daria’s show!” But this would be wrong. The original series fulfilled its purpose for me. Now, I want this news series to do the same for someone else going through what I went through as a teen, and that demands speaking to younger people, not to this nearly 40 year old. It’s what will ensure the whole series will live on.All fans should feel this way, and stop being so protective of these things like they are holy relics behind glass. We’ll always have the originals to treasure. Let there be something new, so that new devotees may be made. THAT is real fanservice.
This post warmed my heart, human. I love it. Everything you said. I regret very few fans have this level of self-awareness.
I felt like Rey did that for a lot of star wars fans, in a way. Because I can’t remember A New Hope beat for beat but watching TFA, I felt like I was on another adventure. But this time, it was a young woman on screen, uninterested in romantic entanglements, lonely, and a little lost. That’s powerful stuff. I would’ve loved to have Rey as a little girl, and I loved that other girls did (same with Ghostbusters 2016, to be frank). And when TLJ was released it felt like a real turn toward something new. “ok, I get it. they made the familiar, and now they’re going with the unfamiliar.” I feel like the real fanservice came in with Rise of Skywalker. Virtually everything meanginful from TLJ was retconned or obliterated in some way to create an underwhelming “conclusion”, I guess, that felt like it was trying to be everything to everyfan. (except, not the queer fans or POC fans, you know.. the REAL* fans.) Rey kisses Ben on the mouth, satisfying those shippers, but oh wait, “it wasn’t romantic,” said JJ, and also he’s dead so that storyline is fizzled out anyway? So don’t worry, Poe/Rey shippers!(?)It all smacks of fear of online mobs, fear of toxic fans. But Disney is more powerful than any fan group ever will be. SW will always sell, for the next hundred years at least. I’m baffled as to where their fears laid.
*white straight guys, mostly
Rey was/is a terrific character. What frustrated me about TFA was it felt so similar to ANH in terms of story and structure. Rebels are still rebelling, and some vague new empire has replaced the old. I felt like there was a real opportunity to flip the script in a big way. If I could’ve written the script, I would’ve made the Rebel Alliance the now dominant power, and the younger generations like Rey and Kylo Ren being the ersatz millenials raised in the wake of the hagiography and legend spun by their ersatz baby boomer parents. Rey is politically neutral, but Kylo wonders if the Empire was so bad, seeing the disorder that followed as the Rebel alliance sought to consolidate. And perhaps the Jedi could’ve represented the allure of a group promising a return to greatness. I think it could/should have been a film about intergenerational dialogue and values, and how new generations question the values of the old. I felt like the material was there for something really rich, but instead the story, while full of great characters, was ultimately ANH dressed up a bit, and this to me felt like fan service.
It always confused me that the New Republic was both in control AND supporting the “rebels.” Technically, wouldn’t the First Order be the rebels and the Resistance led by Leia just plain old government troops? It seem very “have your cake and eat in too” in the sense that they both wanted the rebels from the OG trilogy to be both the legitimate government and plucky freedom fighters.
One of the TFA’s big failings is explaining literally nothing more about the New Republic than its very existence. Sure, it follows ANH beat for beat, but that’s also by starting the movie in media res but without any actual thought as to what’s come before. It just does it because ANH did it but it’s pretty obvious that Abrams barely spent any thought to what larger story they were picking up in the middle of.(The ‘read the novels and comics’ answer to your question, incidentally, is that until the events of the movie, the New Republic is only vaguely aware of the First Order and doesn’t take them seriously as a threat. To them it’s just some little dissident movement, like a bunch of redneck military cosplayers taking over a wildlife refuge. Leia recognizes that the First Order is something bigger and more dangerous with some real power backing them and more than a few sympathizers in the New Republic government, and she’s technically gone rogue. The Resistance, at the start of TFA, is an unauthorized paramilitary operation trying to fight the First Order while also proving what a threat they are to the rest of the galaxy.)
Thanks for giving me that back story, it makes more sense.
Not a problem! On a related note, if you’re looking for something to read and feel like delving into some of this, I highly recommend Star Wars: Bloodline by Claudia Gray. It takes place a few years before TFA and is partially about Leia discovering the existence of the First Order, and in the process fills in a lot of stuff about the New Republic. I wouldn’t say it covers all of the context TFA skipped over, but it does cover most of it and it’s an extremely good read on its own merits.
I’ve added it to my reading list!
Sounds like a great movie. Maybe write it anyway. Or if you’re not a script writer, get someone else to write it and consult. Just for fun. You never know where something ends up
Yeah, while as I said I’m not sure we really needed new Star Wars movies, if we were, reestablishing the Empire/Rebel dynamic was lazy. I agree the Rebels (as the New Republic) should have been in charge, and besides Ben/Kylo wondering if the Empire was so bad, maybe have the New Republic experiencing the difficulties of ruling — maybe they have to put down some insurgents and end up killing some civilians and people begin to question how benign they are.
Yeah that’s what my hypothetical rewrite would be, start off with a desperate chase for the macguffin where you root for the panicked chasee vs the dominant power toying with them…until you realize that power is the Republic itself, and the “heroes” are evil fascists desperate to find meaning in an Empire again. I’d also have a twist where the superweapon plans are actually a Republic project to stamp out the last of the Imperial holdouts, which is why Luke and Leia resigned in disgust and are doing their own thing (otherwise a Resistance makes absolutely no sense when it’s just the Republic. And no the books don’t help.)
100% spot on. These fan-service retreads are completely cannibalistic. It’s the snake eating its own tail. They are courting the die hard fans to the exclusion of others. Ugh. The last thing middle-aged fans need anymore is to be pandered too. Grow the fuck up, already.
I don’t know. I think trying to “get new fans” of a franchise is misguided. And to a lesser degree new installments of older franchises are as well. Franchises are very much of a time and place — that’s why Millennials weren’ t as much into Star Wars as GenX was — they had their Harry Potter instead. And GenZ had, what, The Hunger Games, maybe? There will of course always be people who like things not of their generation, but even then, they don’t necessarily want to have new installments — the outdatedness itself is part of the attraction.
While I completely agree that studios should be trying to make original experiences that welcome new fans, I think in practice it looks a little bit different. In my experience, new/young fans of old properties often enter into pop culture communities with an air of assimilation, of wanting to be part of the “in” crowd that knows all of the backstory, all of the characters, and which stories are commonly considered the best and worst within that fandom. Remember what it was liking being young? Fitting in was pretty much the number one priority. Studios have already picked up on this which often disinentivises them from originality. A recent example happened with Marvel; while Wandavision aired you could see newer MCU fans desperately reading up on the lore of Scarlet Witch, Mephisto, Agatha Harkness etc, gobbling it up and joining in on the fun speculation. It’s pretty much built-in to the core structure of fandom.So while I again want to believe your sentiment, I just don’t think the studios will be convinced otherwise, at least not until all of these gigantic pop-culture bubbles finally burst.
I didn’t read the post or the comment, but I’ll star anything with lots of stars because in that end, that’s what fan service is all about. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to vomit out a gallon of red wine. Thank-you for your service and God Bless America. #freedom
I’m part of the seemingly small minority who enjoyed ‘Ghostbusters’ 2016, but the thing that disappointed me the most was the post-credits bit that mentions Zuul. I didn’t want them going backwards, I really thought they should push ahead without needing to relive all the old hits.
FWIW, last night I saw a bunch of 10 year olds talk up a storm about all the cool stuff they’d just seen in Afterlife while leaving the cinema. Maybe kids doesn’t have much of a discerning taste, and mainly latch on to the stuff adults like and champion in the pop culture landscape?
I like your take.The problem is Gatekeeper’s are very loud and until very recently their voices would drown out all the others. hey don’t want new fan’s in whatever franchise they support. For Millennials and Gen X fandom wasn’t something that was as friendly and socially acceptable as it is today. To some of those old fans new people enjoying their beloved franchise are crowding them out of the place they would retreat to. When they didn’t have any friends being a fan of something made them feel not quite alone. When the great cultural shift of the early 21st century happened and speculative fiction became mainstream acceptable these old fans suddenly felt left out. Suddenly the thing they were outsiders for was being consumed by everyone, they started to become outsiders again so in an attempt to regain some agency and/or claim some authority they began the gatekeeping, they were fans before these new fans weren’t as dedicated as they were so they would show them up or drive them out and leave the fandoming to them, the true fans. Depending on which particular corporate overlord is in charge of said franchise will determine how well these gatekeepers are heard. Their nostalgia for the media they consumed years ago often can’t be sated by anything new and thus will deride anything that doesn’t fit their preconceived notion of how things should be (ie: Their fanfiction). As a long time fan of Star Trek the war within the fandom has always been there. Thankfully the show runners don’t give too much credence to the volume of the voices of the detractors because they aren’t bringing in the fans. Now I haven’t seen Ghostbuster’s Afterlife yet but the fact my kids see other kids on screen in the movie automatically gets their attention. Far more than anything else. This is what we are looking at going to see this Thanksgiving weekend as a family precisely because my kids seem interested in it. The real question is who do they want the new fans to be?
And here’s the thing: most fans don’t even know what they really want!No one in 1975 was asking for a shark to terrorize a sleepy beach town. Audiences weren’t foaming at the mouth for a story about a farm boy and a laser sword in 1977. And I can guarantee that if you’d told 1984 moviegoers that some SNL guys made a gross-out horror comedy about ghosts, they’d shrug and say “we’ll see.”
Well put. Even the film’s creators couldn’t have guessed what they’d be spawning. Ghostbusters was conceived as a bit of fluff originally intended to get John Belushi out of his personal and career spirals (which obviously didn’t work), and few today realize that Ivan Reitman wasn’t at the time some brilliant auteur…he was an agreeable hired gun who’d produced a few comedies like Animal House, and was one that could work with actors like Murray who were known to be prickly.
Distressing? Oh FFS. Buy some stepladders and get over yourselves.
What idiot invented the term “fan-service”? I’d like to go back and slap them with a bucket of fish.
I am a fan. I have a fanhood. I have a raging, throbbing, pulsating fanhood. I want it serviced. I pay for that service with my time and money. It is purely transactional and no one is under any illusions.
Go be distressed on your own time. Or better yet, go sniff each other’s farts and leave the rest of us normals alone.
GROOBERSON!!!!!!!!!Come on, guys, if you’re going to base that much of your article making fun of a name, at least learn to fucking spell it.
This must be your first time at AV Club Weekend Edition. There is no copy editor.
fans are the worst people in the world
I have this sinking feeling this is the future of big Hollywood films. Its not something like Dune, it’s fan pandering. You can see origins of it in the Disney Live Action Remakes but the Force Awakens is when it became big money. Producers don’t care if this empowers bad behavior, money is money. All this makes me feel bad for being hard on the Last Jedi. I still don’t love the film… but its something at least.
I was willing to forgive a lot of the fan service in Ghostbusters: Afterlife because of the Reitman connection. Yes, I know there are people who disliked the idea of the father giving the franchise to his son, but at least Ghostbusters has been a factor in most of his life. When he pays tribute to Harold Ramis, he actually knew Harold Ramis. When JJ just decides he can basically remake Star Wars because he’s a fan, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as earned.
This is a more gracious take than I have. And I mean that sincerely and not as a diss. My cynical side felt that Reitman was grabbing at this because he still wants a directing career, which is all about big IP franchises now, so he grabbed the one that he could and is trying to demonstrate he’s still a worthy hire even though there’s no “theatrical” market for the types of movies he makes anymore.But that’s because I always found the younger Reitman to come off way more pretentious in interviews and PR than his Dad. I like your take better.
IDK, it still feels kinda weird, in an unhealthy father worship kind of way.
A strong message that it’s okay if your Dad doesn’t pay any attention to you as long as they were doing something cool and important. Like busting ghosts or directing movies.
“Directin’ makes me feel good!” – Ivan Reitman
I wish I could be as forgiving. If Jason Reitman needs to work through his father/son feelings, they should go have a catch instead of producing a 2+ hour nostalgic circle jerk.I hope to god if I’m ever put in a position to digitally resurrect a dead acquaintance for profit that someone pulls me aside and says “absolutely fucking not.”
Hot take: all these “properties” that keep getting revived and extended and mercilessly flogged to death for cash should be allowed to die once their natural lifespan has passed. After the original creative talents are all largely no longer involved, all the new ones considering lashing themselves to the mast of these unwieldy watercrafts should instead just make something new.This is actually an interesting piece, about another endemic flaw in these late sequels and deathless commercial franchises. But the larger issue we need to acknowledge is that maybe there is no particularly good way to make a walking corpse seem vivacious and exciting like it was when it was alive. Star Wars was decades past its prime and had years of crap prequels when the fan generation (and Disney) took the reins. Ghostbusters was ONE good movie, basically. Marvel’s entire MCU is already undergoing a long, slow death, which I fully expect to take a decade or two and at least twenty more movies before they give up—and then five years after that we’ll get our first MCU reboot.We fans our our own worst enemy. Stop buying tickets for stuff you know is going to be just an inferior, tired, annoyingly self-aware retread.
“But the larger issue we need to acknowledge is that maybe there is no particularly good way to make a walking corpse seem vivacious and exciting like it was when it was alive.”Tell that to my screenplay for ‘Weekend at Bernadette’s’, where the propped up corpse is now a sexy lady.
Take your star, you bastard.
Counterpoint: Ryan Coogler’s Creed
This kind of characters also breaks the fourth wall in a way that breaks the film’s universe. Watching a horror comedy where ghosts exist is fun; ghosts existing in your actual life is a lot less fun, and if Stay Puft had attacked New York the way he did at the end of the first film, a lot of people would be traumatized by it. Those “fan characters” don’t show how the fans would react in a similar situation, they show what would happen if the person next to you giving his commentary would have the whole theater as an audience.
I’m a little more optimistic about the future of movies. There are some things that are always the same–people liking what’s safe and familiar, of course. But something always changes, and something new always comes along.
This movie sounds like it was written to impress Ernest Kline.
I have VERY little interest in GB: Afterlife, but I may see it at some point.But I can’t wrap my head around just what the fuck the timeline of the Spengler family is supposed to be. Carrie Coon is 40 years old. Did Egon get married and have her after the events of GB2? That would make her 30 years old at most (and way too young to have teenaged kids.)Was Egon supposed to have this hidden family all along? Even while he was crashing with a bunch of other bachelors in a repurposed firehouse? Or did he get the family (who remained conveniently never-mentioned) sometime between GB1 and GB2? (which, hey, would at least explain the otherwise unbelievably stupid decision to have Janine pivot from Egon to Louis in GB2, arguably one of the misbegotten sequel’s worst creative choices.)And was making Egon an absentee father who abandoned his family (even if it was in the service of, I dunno, fighting ghosts on his own) really the best way to honor the late Harold Ramis? Couldn’t he have just been, I dunno, the weird uncle who the rest of the family barely knew?
Again, I haven’t seen the movie, but I can’t imagine there is a satisfying answer to any of these questions.
Carrie Coon may be 40 years old but of course she doesn’t have to be playing a 40 year old in the same way Olivia Wilde is definitely younger than her character.
Don’t know who Olivia Wilde is playing, but the point is not how old Carrie Coon is. The point is there’s no math that works for Egon having a daughter who is old enough to have teenage kids unless he had this secret family all along during the events of the first two movies, which is obviously insane and stupid.
Stay Puft Marshmellow Man
“Marshmellow”?
The only reason why this sequel does not appeal to me is because it’s about teenage Ghostbusters in a Stranger Things kind of way, and nope… Why? I know three of the original gang are back but they only appear in… is it the post-credit scenes? Not sure. Still, the trailers are not showing why this is a must-see movie. Marshmallow Men? Do they even know why there was a Marshamallow Stay Puft in the original? It had to do with Dan Akroyd’s character. Is he in that scene? Obviously not. Why did the Ghostbusters go bust? Weren’t there supposed to be Ghostbusters franchises around the world? Did ghosts stop appearing? Is this the first of a trilogy?
Haven’t seen Afterlife yet, but it’s interesting that for all the hoopla regarding the all-women casting and the “this one’s for the fans” and whatever, 2016 isn’t exactly shy about the shameless fanservice pandering either. It perhaps doesn’t quite go to the extent of having an in-universe fan character (though the villain is kind of a borderline and rather unflattering example), but it does indulge in lengthy and pointless origin-filler for every single vaguely iconic thing the Ghostbusters have up to and including their boiler suits, and there’s lengthy and equally inexplicable cameos from Stay Puft and Slimer and the original actors. That said, if the Wikipedia summary I’ve just read is anything to go by, it’s not nearly as in-your-face about it plot-wise as Afterlife, but there’s still apparently something about Ghostbusters where fans either want or make everyone think they want a whole bunch of callbacks to the original film.
I think the main difference is the 2016 film is more or less a remake, with the new Ghostbusters figuring all this shit out on their own, whereas with this film it’s the relics of the original film that are in-fiction treated like these special things. For the new Star Wars movies this at least made some sort of sense since Star Wars has always had that myth/fairy tale quality, but with Ghostbusters it seems weird because the original material is so irreverent, like that’s part of the hook, that these guys are confronting cosmic terrors with clunky technology and ugly boiler suits and being jokey and cavalier about it.
the contempt this site shows for what was and probably still is its core audience is amazing.
This is nothing new. People said the same thing about ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh 2: Let’s Get Gilgamessy!’.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but is it a little telling that Reitman Junior made a movie about a child being mad at a parent for deserting their family for their career, only for the child to ultimately come around and forgive the parent once the child has entered the parent’s field of work (busting ghosts/filmmaking)? And doing it in a film that’s a sequel to his father’s film?
You spent two paragraphs talking about how insulting the name “Gooberson” is, and the character isn’t named Gooberson.That’s this article in a nutshell.
“She knows about Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and the Millennium Falcon, and treats Solo with the reverence of a ComicCon attendee getting an autographed 8×10″Wait, does she?
When my fan surrogate is played by the handsome, ageless, and incredibly likable Paul Rudd, I can look past the goofy name.
I loved Force Awakens and I’m really looking forward to Ghostbusters… maybe I’m the monster?
i’m just realizing… this new movie seems to honour the idea of Ghostbusters whereas the Paul Feig movie honoured the actual spirit of Ghostbusters.The idea of Ghostbusters is closer to the Ray Parker song – it’s fun but it’s also weirdly badass?But the original movie itself is dorky slapstick – and I feel like people choose to remember something different.
This movie is fine and if it gets more people to go see the original(s), then great. But as a huge fan of the original film (one of my top 5 favorite movies), this movie most certainly was not for me. What made the original great is that our heroes weren’t heroes. They were 4 idiots who happened to save the world and never once looked heroic doing it. This movie constantly has “hero shots”, and really has to beat you over the head with how badass these new characters are, especially McKenna Grace. McKenna Grace is a great child actor, and was very good in this, she (the actress and the character) didn’t need the movie to trick us into thinking she was awesome. Point is, this movie was not for me. Not mad at it though, it didn’t ruin my childhood. Happy for those who enjoyed it.
There’s an element of “forcing it” that applies to this franchise. Disney basically develops and acquires these IP money-fountains, where they are designed to milk our collective psyche for devotion and revenue. Ghostbusters was big, but as a franchise, it’s like in between Star Wars, and The A-Team. Yes, it had some adaptations and merchandising, but it wasn’t an enormous, decade-spanning cultural touchstone. I mean, it’s not even like the new Matrix movie—are people super excited to go back to this cinematic property the way others are about going back to The Matrix after all these years? It feels like Reitman probably felt excited to work on this because of the family connection, and studio assholes were just fanning the flames, desperately trying to goose the embers of Ghostbusters in the hope it will final combust into a fully lucrative franchise that can be mined in perpetuity.TL;DR – I look forward to caving and watching this when I find it streaming on a service I subscribe to, in a 3-6 months from now.
Stay Pufts are Minions now. Fan-fuckin-tastic.
What the article’s author fails to mention, however, is that Rey’s fan-girling over Han Solo and the Jedi is not unique, even within the Star Wars universe. In the very first movie, Episode IV, Luke Skywalker is, arguably, an even bigger fan-boy. To Obi-Wan: “You fought in the Clone Wars?”, “You’re a Jedi?”, “Those guys are awesome!”, etc. I’m paraphrasing, but Luke introduces the viewer to all this lore that George Lucas – arguably the biggest fan-boy of them all – had in his head, and lets us geek out over it, too. If anything, Rey’s geeking out over Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon is just another way TFA repeats Episode IV by finding in its main character someone just as passionate about Star Wars lore as Luke Skywalker himself.
Sequels are for fans. If you are going to make something for fans, including fan service does not seem illogical.It is possible for sequels to be challenge rather than extend (or worse, duplicate) the themes and characterisations of the hit progenitor. That’s how you get The Last Jedi, an ambitious mystery-thriller that antagonized certain elements of fan culture, leading to the desperate course correction of the series-ruining Rise of Skywalker.
That’s always a bad idea. Star Wars showed how hollow that can be.
Watched the original Ghostbusters for the first time since I was a teenager with my kids this Halloween, and the reverence and CORNERSTONE OF MY CHILDHOOD/PERSONALITY place this has for some people in their personal canon is insane to me. That movie? Why? It’s fun! It’s a pretty good comedy that never bites as much as I expect/hope it will, but it’s not bad. It doesn’t have much in the department of actual laugh-out-loud, but I smiled a lot. Why is that shit like church to these people?!
This is the same sort of trifling that makes Jason Segal’s Muppet film less likable on each viewing. He wrote a film about Jason Segal and Muppet Jason Segal “saving” the Muppets. It’s a shame that Muppets Most Wanted didn’t receive the same kind of hype, as it’s a much better film and let the characters have fun, rather than getting lost is sap. It’s an even bigger shame that Frank Oz’s potential Muppet film was dropped to make it.
What strikes me as odd, is that “fans” who couldn’t stomach a film fronted by ladies, were totally fine with the franchise being given to children. I get that it was also the lack of connective tissue, but that’s been interesting to watch. Is it that the cartoon had already done that anyway? The original was an anarchic comedy where one of the guys gets a ghost blowjob, but now it’s a family story with a live, laugh, love ending? What?
The backlash to the 2016 GB wasn’t sexist as much as mainstream media want it to be. The backlash was because the movie sucked regardless of the gender of the main characters.