Earlier this week, Sony released . The sequel 🦋to Ghostbusters: Afterlife finds the 2021’s film new cast members Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace returning alongside the original movie’s Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson. The thing that doesn’t seem to be returning from the original movie? A sense of humor.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghostbusters’ cultural longevity has always struck me as deeply bizarre. On the foundation of one pretty good ‘80s comedy, 40 years of sequels have been built. Some of that is just how these things work now. When Frozen Empire hits theaters next year, three of the five films in the series will have been released in a 10 year span — a gain in momentum that points to the force driving much of this: Hollywood’s bottomless need for well-known IP. That has also led to quite a few🍬 game adaptations in recent years, with six dedicated games since 2016 alone.
But, even before Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, and Leslie Jones donned the khaki jumpsuits for the 2016 reboot, Ghostbusters occupied rarified air for a certain generation of movie fans. The Duffer Brothers dressed their kid leads in Ghostbusters costumes in the first season of Stranger Things, and that makes sense given the mental real estate that this franchise occupies for older Millennials and young members of Gen X. And I’d argue, it’s only really that group. While bi♏g ‘80s franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones maintained popularity with younger generations thanks to new films and video games, Ghostbusters 2 went 27 years without a sequel. As a result, Ghostbusters means a whole lot to the generation of adults who were kids in the 1980s, and the franchise’s sensibility has warped to fit their sentimental view of a series that started with a ghost giving Dan Aykroyd a blowjob.
The trailer for Frozen Empire presents the movie that way, with the seriousness once reserved for a long-awaited Star Wars sequel. The trailer has hints of levity, but no jokes. This is an Important Franchise now, and though Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson may report for🗹 duty, the spirit of their original effects comedy is nowhere to be found.
Which is why I find it so puzzling that Ghostbusters fans seem to be happy with this new direction — at least happy enough that Sony is releasing a sequel to the movie that la🎀unched the reboot in quick succession. When I really respond to a new film or TV show in a franchise that I like, it tends to be because it’s recapturing some element of what made the original great. I liked The Force Awakens because it felt like Star Wars — given how closely it mirrors the story beats of the original film, you could argue it felt too much like Star Wars. But at the same time, it felt new. It introduced new characters in Finn, Rey, Poe, and Kylo Ren, to coexist alongside the others. It had all the big moments that defined Star Wars — a young person in the desert is given meaning by a new mission, they meet an old mentor, they go to a cantina, the mentor dies, they blow up a huge planet-sized weapon. The Force Awakens set a template by carefully balancing the new with the old in a way that was endlessly replicable. Afterlife and Frozen Empire are running the same plays as The Force Awakens, but that reverent nostalgia is a bizarre fit for the second round of lega-sequels to a slacker comedy.
And, as someone who doesn’t care about Ghostbusters, I fee൩l alienated from what is otherwise a somewhat interesting premise. “An ice age caused by ghosts hits New York City” is a weird idea that sounds like it could make for a cool, kinda gonzo movie. But the fact that it’s the pitch for a Ghostbusters movie kills my interest. These movies had a simple premise: four guys fight ghosts and tell jokes. I don’t understand why that premise has been aban💮doned in favor of high concept sci-fi, and I wonder whether the people behind these movies do, either.