Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire | March 22, 2024

[ChipDerby]

The 2016 version remains the best one. Suck it

[JustLurking]

6 hours ago, titanic2187 said:

Can Sony ever make a critically acclaimed movie outside of spiderman? Its continuous misfire with critics is beyond belief. Even their BO success like uncharted and ABY weren’t a critical success. 

Sony's spiderman films should not have been critically acclaimed either.

[Arlborn]

1 hour ago, ChipDerby said:

The 2016 version remains the best one. Suck it

It's certainly a bit better than Afterlife, but they're both quite forgettable.

[Porthos]

2 hours ago, Hatebox said:

Reading the meltdowns on the ghostbusters subreddit and it’s striking how much they act like superhero fanboys. Because, I suppose, that’s essentially what sony has turned the franchise into: an earnest action film rather than a silly comedy 

 

 

 

You know it's funny.  I don't have it on hand, but a long time ago I read a BtS/Making of book about the Original Ghostbusters film and one of the central tensions behind the scenes was a battle between Dan Ackroyd and others (I'd name them but I don't recall who was in the "other" camp) over making GB a "serious" horror/SciFi film with comedic elements versus a comedy with SciFi/horror elements.  Ackroyd was pushing relentlessly for the harder, more mythological, serious take.  I think Bill Murray was more on the make it comedic end.  That tension probably helped catch lightning in a bottle back in the 80s for the first film, but leaning on more than one side or the other upsets the delicate balance that the first found.

 

My read of the situation is that one of the reasons why GB3 was never made was that central tension between a "serious" take on the GB universe and the more free-wheeling Regular Joes/Schmoes vibes of the original.

 

And I personally think the Ordinary Schmoes/Everyman angle is somewhat overlooked in the success of GB.  In a lot of ways it's a very blue collar film, with blue collar sensibilities (even if the leads are all college professors, or at that level of education) with a strong slobs vs snobs undertone that was a hallmark of the late 70s to mid 80s.  The Ghostbusters have sometimes been analogized as garbage collectors and that's not that far off.

 

Anyway, just something I wanted to throw out there as someone who doesn't have that much of a rooting interest either way or over the interminable fights over GB2016. 

Edited March 20 by Porthos

[JimmyB]

1984 Ghostbusters was a lightning in a bottle movie. The sequel tried to capture the magic of the original but couldn't. 2016 movie is a remake of the original that isnt funny.  2021 movie tried going the Stranger Things vibe with nostalgic bait. The newest movie feels tried and played out as they already played the nostalgia card in 2021.  What you are left with is a franchise that wasnt able to gain a newer younger fanbase and all it's original cast are senior citizens....its a dying franchise that needs to be put to bed.

[dudalb]

2 hours ago, ChipDerby said:

The 2016 version remains the best one. Suck it

And what are the reasons it is better then the 1984 original?

[AJG]

Both the 2016 and 1984 films were just okay and any hoopla created by either was unwarranted.

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, dudalb said:

And frankly, a lot of people defend the 2016 film just because of the feminist angle regardless of the quality of the film.. Of course they deny it, but it's still true.

And I hate that.

Or they just have different tastes than you.  Imagine that.

 

Anyway, not the GB2016 thread.  Thankfully.

[efialtes76]

31 minutes ago, AJG said:

Both the 2016 and 1984 films were just okay and any hoopla created by either was unwarranted.

Ghostbusters(1984) is amazing.

[Krissykins]

Yeh the 2016 one is easily my favourite too. I’m a tad too young for the first film to have any nostalgia (even though I’m 36, it wasn’t as big here in the UK - to me anyway I was watching the early 90s films on a loop instead). I thought the 2nd was boring as a kid and I skipped Afterlife.

 

I agree though, the first started off as a comedy by SNL actors and then because it was popular they tried to make it a blockbuster franchise and they’re still going that route, which doesn’t seem to be paying off. 

[AJG]

Less than $40m OW prediction just hit. It might be over.

 

 

 

[SaltyPistola]

The people behind this franchise are morons. It should have stayed an iconic 80s comedy that was left alone. The movies just get worse and less funny as they go on, it's beyond pathetic. No one is asking for this. It's done. Let it die in peace. The world/plot of these movies are paper thin and yet somehow we've got some bullshit "saga" with 4 movies and a reboot. Why??? There is nothing franchisable about this. It's the equivalent of us getting fucking Zoolander legacy sequels 10 years from now. 

[WittyUsername]

Let’s be real, Ghostbusters has been treated as a franchise ever since the cartoon. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon. It’s just had trouble staying relevant. 

[NoobSaibot]

I think one of the other big problems Ghostbusters has is that it went almost 30 years without another movie (1989-2016).

 

The longer a span between sequels, the more question marks there are about its viability. This is a franchise that's seen its fair share of content outside of movie theaters, but this will be its fifth movie over a span of 40 years. Not a lot of film franchises maintain mass appeal with so few films in-between a significant gap in time.

 

I'd like to think that's pretty hard to pull off for ANY cinematic franchise unless it's universally loved.

Edited March 21 by NoobSaibot
Corrected dates.

[filmlover]

7 hours ago, Hatebox said:

Reading the meltdowns on the ghostbusters subreddit and it’s striking how much they act like superhero fanboys. Because, I suppose, that’s essentially what sony has turned the franchise into: an earnest action film rather than a silly comedy 

 

 

The whole notion that a portion of the Internet has been trying to sell everyone else on for the past 8 years that a comedy in which Dan Aykroyd receives a BJ from a ghost is some epic on par with a Star Wars is truly the embodiment of:

 

 

Would it shock anyone if it could be proven that most (if not all?) of those clowns who felt they were accomplishing something harassing those behind the 2016 reboot and felt validated in their awful behavior when it fizzled, and made no such noise about the '21 film other than "well, at least it's not the 2016 movie!" ended up not even bothering to see Afterlife in theaters (and will, naturally, be skipping this movie too)? I'm gonna go with a resounding "no" on that one.

 

(likewise, all the ruckus surrounding the female reboot probably gave the studio a false impression that there was more general interest in this IP than what seems to be evident in numbers, given that both the '16 film and Afterlife ended up having virtually identical box office runs down to the dollar amount - openings: $46M/$44M, totals: $128M/$129M)

[AniNate]

I just don't know what else you can do with this IP. The concept was novel enough the first go-around, I guess, and it had an A-list comic cast, but there's not a whole lot to keep it interesting beyond one movie. Whatever "lore" the fanboys try to make out of this I can only assume is desperately strained.

[Belakor]

The all female reboot killed the IP (it was already dead), the Paul Rudd film was ok but it didn't deserve a sequel.

I think this franchise is too goofy for adults and too old-school for the new generations. The oldsters don't care abut this either.

The best they can do is move the IP to the small screen and change the tone to something similar to stranger things.

Edited March 21 by Belakor

[PlatnumRoyce]

1 hour ago, AniNate said:

I just don't know what else you can do with this IP. The concept was novel enough the first go-around, I guess, and it had an A-list comic cast, but there's not a whole lot to keep it interesting beyond one movie. Whatever "lore" the fanboys try to make out of this I can only assume is desperately strained.

 

Yeah, this has always confused me. Near as I can tell, there's a very narrow age range (people who were ~10 years old in the mid/late 1980s) who conceive of this as a genuine franchise after having bounced from a hit film to an animated kids tv show. It apparently ran ~140 episodes which is enough to give kids watching it buy in for lore beyond "here's the villain of the film." It just feels like that age is a common key to explaining some people's reactions (at least above and beyond [insert one's favorite way to explain political-cultural nexuses]). I think this age point sort of gets lost in sexier discussions but I think it's a very conceptually strong one. 
 

2 hours ago, filmlover said:

likewise, all the ruckus surrounding the female reboot probably gave the studio a false impression that there was more general interest in this IP than what seems to be evident in numbers

I think the Sony Hack contradicts that in a couple of ways. One simply way is that we can see emails saying "we've commissioned a brand study of Ghostbusters" but the actual study either never was leaked or was removed years ago. It would have been interesting to see what it said. Either way we know what one of those looks like so it really wasn't just them poll. However, more importantly, Ghostbusters is always listed as one of the few "franchises" Sony has control over and Sony really can't stress enough at the time how much they financially want/need more such properties to compete.

 

They cut the budget in half for the very different reboot. That's not showing a massive amount of confidence. 

[YM!]

14 hours ago, AJG said:

Both the 2016 and 1984 films were just okay and any hoopla created by either was unwarranted.

This is true. Men in Black does the action comedy far better.

Edited March 21 by YM!

[YM!]

Honestly think the future for the franchise is animation. If you want to refit it as a family franchise - mainstream animation is not only is it a good place to start but odds are you could make it the funniest installment given the right team since the first or maybe even funnier since the first.