I’ll just say my 8 year old and his best friend loved Afterlife. They’re oblivious to studio motivations and nostalgia, they watched it, loved it, and want to see it again.
They didn't destroy or trap Gozer at the end of the first film. They simply shut the door to keep Gozer on the other side. Egon being who he was, he'd do whatever he could to try to find a way to figure out how Ivo Shandor created "Spook Central," and then once he found out how the materials were created and where, and went to visit the town and mine and saw the Temple there, it's totally within character for him to immediately go there to stop the next coming of Gozer. His mission this time was to trap Gozer to keep it from ever coming back.
I think you've mentioned before than you don't really care for "The Goonies," so it makes sense that part of this film, how this film actually has more thematically in common with "The Goonies" as opposed to the first two films, that makes your disappointment make sense to me.
I loved the movie, however. That I also love, without reservation, "The Goonies," probably has everything to do with that.
The moment where it broke my heart was the finale when the 3 show up...I felt...nothing...the magic was gone, sucked in by a vortex of easter eggs that amount to nothing. This was truly the most depressing experience in a movie theater I've seen this year. I'm legit worried about the matrix. I'm praying to the movie Gods for it not to suck.
I'm gonna quote film critic Katie Walsh from the Tribune who was on the Breakfast All Day podcast recently which perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this disturbing trend: "the corporate idealization of intellectual property which erases original storytelling."
I think you're dead wrong about Afterlife, though I am getting annoyed by people that won't let the 2016 reboot go, I honestly liked it more then the original movie, there I said it. It's probably my favorite entry in the franchise. Personally I don't give a rat's ass what a films motivation for being made is as long as it's compelling and I feel Afterlife accomplishes that and I didn't find the CGI decision "gross" in the least, I thought that was about the best way they could've handled it, the film does overdo it on the Easter eggs a bit, but as a gamer who is used to seeking out this sort of thing in games I didn't mind too much.
Though I have to say this article does give me a "darn kids get off my lawn!" and "old man yells at cloud" vibe LOL no offense.
I thought Halloween Kills was good too but I get people's frustration with it.
Extreme Ghostbusters was my favorite part of the franchise honestly as it was ahead of it's time with its characters(particularly it's disabled character).
I long ago made peace with the idea that Ghostbusters: Afterlife was going to be a movie that wasn't so much for fans of the original movie who have seen it dozens of times as children and adults, as much as it's for kids who saw/see it and want to strap on a proton pack.
And, as I said in my review, those parts work the best. Like you, I think McKenna Grace is fantastic. Paul Rudd has the right tone as a comedian to fit into the world of the first or help shepherd the kids into the shenanigans of that universe. There are moments that work, including the Muncher sequence.
But when I was a kid, I could do anything I wanted when I had a pretend proton pack on my back. There are centuries of religious mythology and folklore to explore and weave into this universe. Hell, there's even 100-plus episodes of a cartoon series that played around with the supernatural concepts. It's so deflating to hear Reitman talk about how this can go in any direction and then the last hour is just a cover tune of the 1984 movie. And that CGI Ramis is just awful. It's not just ghoulish (but it is that, too). It's so against the spirit of the first movie.
I was with this for about an hour, and even okay with every Easter egg it pelted me with. But that last hour is a slog and those final 20 minutes are interminable.
Wish I could have read your Ghostbusters book, though!
That's a shame you didn't care for it. I agree that the fetishization of intellectual property these days has become gross, but I won't hold that against a movie if I like a good deal of it. Maybe thats just my personal temperament. It's fine to hearken back to the previous movies, the temptation to nostalgia bait is inescapable, but Easter eggs or bringing back dead actors shouldn't be any sort of mark of quality. You should prioritize the story and characters first, and the connections to the previous movies should fall into place naturally from there. That's the big difference between a COBRA KAI and a RISE OF SKYWALKER.
I'm particularly uncomfortable with the kind of "real world" retcon of private personal relationships these moments offer. It brings to mind the NWA biopic, which shows us a scene where Dre and Eazy make up, whereas my understanding for all of these years was that Dre did, in fact, visit Eazy on his deathbed, but that Eazy wasn't conscious and they didn't speak. (And don't get me started on the scene where Eazy sees a billlboard celebrating the huge success of The Chronic and CRIES.) When two creative partners fall out like that (and so hard and publicly in the case of NWA) it's a bit gross for the surviving person to put the final word into a movie after the other one dies. The Rise of Skywalker is a disaster for many reasons, but the morbid inclusion of the Carrie Fisher stuff (including a funeral scene!) ranks high on the list.
An episode of The Movies That Made Us goes into the chaos behind-the-scenes of Ghostbusters. Insane to think of the sprint to meet that release date, especially when they hadn’t cleared the name and had to shoot multiple scenes with different takes.
More importantly, Ramis’ family talks about the late reconciliation between him and Murray right before he passes. THAT is the catharsis and natural stopping point of the series, not this crass at best continuation. Let it go.
I enjoyed the movie overall, but agree that the “300 Easter eggs” approach is so tacky. I overall dug the characters and story they were telling, but it would have been a helluva lot better had it been centered around a new supernatural entity, no Gozer/Zuul/Keymaster/Ivo Shandor stuff. It also seemed very obvious that a couple of subplots were hatcheted out of this.
I’ll just say my 8 year old and his best friend loved Afterlife. They’re oblivious to studio motivations and nostalgia, they watched it, loved it, and want to see it again.
To me, the plot of the film makes total sense.
They didn't destroy or trap Gozer at the end of the first film. They simply shut the door to keep Gozer on the other side. Egon being who he was, he'd do whatever he could to try to find a way to figure out how Ivo Shandor created "Spook Central," and then once he found out how the materials were created and where, and went to visit the town and mine and saw the Temple there, it's totally within character for him to immediately go there to stop the next coming of Gozer. His mission this time was to trap Gozer to keep it from ever coming back.
I think you've mentioned before than you don't really care for "The Goonies," so it makes sense that part of this film, how this film actually has more thematically in common with "The Goonies" as opposed to the first two films, that makes your disappointment make sense to me.
I loved the movie, however. That I also love, without reservation, "The Goonies," probably has everything to do with that.
The moment where it broke my heart was the finale when the 3 show up...I felt...nothing...the magic was gone, sucked in by a vortex of easter eggs that amount to nothing. This was truly the most depressing experience in a movie theater I've seen this year. I'm legit worried about the matrix. I'm praying to the movie Gods for it not to suck.
I'm gonna quote film critic Katie Walsh from the Tribune who was on the Breakfast All Day podcast recently which perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this disturbing trend: "the corporate idealization of intellectual property which erases original storytelling."
I think you're dead wrong about Afterlife, though I am getting annoyed by people that won't let the 2016 reboot go, I honestly liked it more then the original movie, there I said it. It's probably my favorite entry in the franchise. Personally I don't give a rat's ass what a films motivation for being made is as long as it's compelling and I feel Afterlife accomplishes that and I didn't find the CGI decision "gross" in the least, I thought that was about the best way they could've handled it, the film does overdo it on the Easter eggs a bit, but as a gamer who is used to seeking out this sort of thing in games I didn't mind too much.
Though this Escapist article did make a good point on how it's weird that people that claim to love the original film so much and "Hate" the reboot and the filmmakers seem to have missed the point completely with this film taking things seriously that the original would've mocked:https://www.escapistmagazine.com/ghostbusters-was-irreverent-so-why-is-afterlife-so-reverential/
Though I have to say this article does give me a "darn kids get off my lawn!" and "old man yells at cloud" vibe LOL no offense.
I thought Halloween Kills was good too but I get people's frustration with it.
Extreme Ghostbusters was my favorite part of the franchise honestly as it was ahead of it's time with its characters(particularly it's disabled character).
I long ago made peace with the idea that Ghostbusters: Afterlife was going to be a movie that wasn't so much for fans of the original movie who have seen it dozens of times as children and adults, as much as it's for kids who saw/see it and want to strap on a proton pack.
And, as I said in my review, those parts work the best. Like you, I think McKenna Grace is fantastic. Paul Rudd has the right tone as a comedian to fit into the world of the first or help shepherd the kids into the shenanigans of that universe. There are moments that work, including the Muncher sequence.
But when I was a kid, I could do anything I wanted when I had a pretend proton pack on my back. There are centuries of religious mythology and folklore to explore and weave into this universe. Hell, there's even 100-plus episodes of a cartoon series that played around with the supernatural concepts. It's so deflating to hear Reitman talk about how this can go in any direction and then the last hour is just a cover tune of the 1984 movie. And that CGI Ramis is just awful. It's not just ghoulish (but it is that, too). It's so against the spirit of the first movie.
I was with this for about an hour, and even okay with every Easter egg it pelted me with. But that last hour is a slog and those final 20 minutes are interminable.
Wish I could have read your Ghostbusters book, though!
Great edition of the newsletter. Not surprised by your reaction to Ghostbusters, but I'm dying to know why Gross yelled at you!
That's a shame you didn't care for it. I agree that the fetishization of intellectual property these days has become gross, but I won't hold that against a movie if I like a good deal of it. Maybe thats just my personal temperament. It's fine to hearken back to the previous movies, the temptation to nostalgia bait is inescapable, but Easter eggs or bringing back dead actors shouldn't be any sort of mark of quality. You should prioritize the story and characters first, and the connections to the previous movies should fall into place naturally from there. That's the big difference between a COBRA KAI and a RISE OF SKYWALKER.
I'm particularly uncomfortable with the kind of "real world" retcon of private personal relationships these moments offer. It brings to mind the NWA biopic, which shows us a scene where Dre and Eazy make up, whereas my understanding for all of these years was that Dre did, in fact, visit Eazy on his deathbed, but that Eazy wasn't conscious and they didn't speak. (And don't get me started on the scene where Eazy sees a billlboard celebrating the huge success of The Chronic and CRIES.) When two creative partners fall out like that (and so hard and publicly in the case of NWA) it's a bit gross for the surviving person to put the final word into a movie after the other one dies. The Rise of Skywalker is a disaster for many reasons, but the morbid inclusion of the Carrie Fisher stuff (including a funeral scene!) ranks high on the list.
An episode of The Movies That Made Us goes into the chaos behind-the-scenes of Ghostbusters. Insane to think of the sprint to meet that release date, especially when they hadn’t cleared the name and had to shoot multiple scenes with different takes.
More importantly, Ramis’ family talks about the late reconciliation between him and Murray right before he passes. THAT is the catharsis and natural stopping point of the series, not this crass at best continuation. Let it go.
Yeah I l thought the worst part of the movie was when the original Ghostbusters showed up, but I really really liked the rest of the movie.
I enjoyed the movie overall, but agree that the “300 Easter eggs” approach is so tacky. I overall dug the characters and story they were telling, but it would have been a helluva lot better had it been centered around a new supernatural entity, no Gozer/Zuul/Keymaster/Ivo Shandor stuff. It also seemed very obvious that a couple of subplots were hatcheted out of this.