GhostBusters 3 is Finally Being Made. (2020 Release)

[Awesome Possum]

I think I like the Mother & Son plot even less.
This doesn't really match the whole "giving it back to the fans" vibe they've been trying to give. This is far removed from what most think Ghostbusters is.

Did you even watch the first two movies? The plot centers on the Ghostbusters having to deal with a very serious threat. First they helped Dana who only turned to them because she didn’t know where else to go and the second is them helping her again because her baby is the target.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Danna's kid in GB 2 as a boy right? My first thought was that she was going to be the baby from GB 2, but that does seem unlikely if it was a boy.
Would she be the right age to have been one of the guys' daughter born after GB2?

She’s in her late 30s, but could easily play a younger character.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

For some reason it's really easy for me to imagine what Finn Wolfhard would look like in a Ghostbusters uniform...

 

[Teelie]

Yeah. I can see that too.

Spoiler

 

[Gaith]

You guys bring up a great point about the comedy. When EVERYTHING is zany and unrealistic, comedy loses it's effect...

That would be why no one remembers that old British show - Monty something...

You mean the show that told stories four or five minutes at a time, and didn't pretend anyone cared about the characters themselves?

And in The Life of Brian, Brian wasn't cracking jokes (far less sloppily improvised ones) and mugging for the camera amidst all the ludicrousness surrounding him. Nor, for that matter, was Arthur describing his farts or riffing on decades-old pop culture in Holy Grail. Both core characters were played absolutely straight.

In short: your comparison point makes about as much sense as comparing roast beef to Tuesday.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Timby, I am wondering where you get all that behind-the-scenes information; do you just read a lot of interviews, etc.? I'm just curious how much is based on people from the film saying things, versus educated guesses and personal opinions.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And in The Life of Brian, Brian wasn't cracking jokes (far less sloppily improvised ones) and mugging for the camera amidst all the ludicrousness surrounding him. Nor, for that matter, was Arthur describing his farts or riffing on decades-old pop culture in Holy Grail. Both core characters were played absolutely straight.

Arthur was anything but played straight. He was a caricature of earnestness, completely over the top, dry humor turned past 11 to 12 or 13.

Arthur pretended to ride a horse while his servant Patsy clapped together coconuts, like all of the other knights, FFS. It is literally absurd to cite a character pretending to ride an imaginary horse in a comedy film as an example of King Arthur played straight.

As for Brian, see again deadpan. Poor Brian, the guy who you claimed was played absolutely straight, actually stuck around to write huge graffiti of "Romans Go Home" in corrected Latin 100 times all over Pilate's palace, the schmuck. Played straight my ass.

 

[Refuge]

He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy! Now, go away!

BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we're all individuals!

BRIAN: You're all different!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!

DENNIS: I'm not.

 

[Gaith]

Arthur was anything but played straight. He was a caricature of earnestness

A key hallmark of a straight man character.

It is literally absurd to cite a character pretending to ride an imaginary horse

I've always thought Arthur genuinely believed he was riding a horse. There's a joke there, obviously, but Arthur's not the one making it.

As for Brian, see again deadpan.

You seem confused as to the idea of "played straight." It's not "played as if a real, normal person were reacting with astonishment at ludicrous circumstances."

Poor Brian, the guy who you claimed was played absolutely straight, actually stuck around to write huge graffiti of "Romans Go Home" in corrected Latin 100 times all over Pilate's palace, the schmuck.

And he did so without any hint of awareness that said action was funny or even absurd - which is pretty much the definition of a comedic straight man character: a key player in a joke who in no way seems to be trying to do or say anything funny. Your ass is confused.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

You seem confused

Don't think so. But I know a goal-post shift when I see it.

First of all, the presence of a straight-man character (a term you didn't use in the post I was responding to initially, by the way; a character can be played straight without being a straight man, even in a comedy, but that's neither here nor there, really) does not somehow enhance the realism of the situation. That's really the most crucial point here. Your pointing to the existence of a straight man would not win the point you were somehow pedantically trying to make in the first place. The fact is, Monty Python was zany, unrealistic, and successful.

In any case, Arthur isn't a straight man character at all, nor was he "played straight" in any reasonable reading of that phrase, for the reasons I already gave. For another, one that I thought of after submitting my first post, what straight man (or character played straight) counts, "One, two, five"? None.

Now, Brian might have been a straight man some and maybe even most of the time (happy?), but there were other times when he was unbelievably idiotic and the vehicle himself for delivering some of the jokes, as in the example I cited. I mean, sticking around to paint the graffiti is Curly-level stupid. That's lifting a page right out of the Three Stooges. Even conceding that Brian is the straight man generally speaking, it would not detract from the fact that Life of Brian is zany and unrealistic.

 

[Mudd]

Gaith's posts don't display an understanding of the terminology...or the concept under discussion, really.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Does anyone think besides other reasons, Bill Murray didn't want to be in GB 3 because he was angry with Harold Ramis over Groundhog Day for years and didn't try to put it behind him until he found out Ramis was dying and spoke to him again only just weeks before he died.

And I have sources. Unusual for me.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/ne...ay-and-harold-ramis-became-enemies/ar-AAxh5mK

https://www.cinemablend.com/new/How...ll-Murray-Harold-Ramis-Partnership-67345.html

https://parade.com/676204/m-b-rober...endship-between-bill-murray-and-harold-ramis/

https://www.joe.ie/movies-tv/groundhog-day-25-years-later-614739

From the last article:
There were also reports by friends and co-workers that Murray had grown to dislike the idea that Ramis was responsible for Murray's career highlights, but even upon Groundhog Day's release and subsequent commercial and critical success, Murray remained steadfast on the idea of not working with or speaking to Ramis again.

So that sounds like it wasn't just GB 2 was bad, he didn't want to work with Harold again. Main reason I'm pointing this out, other than I just read about it myself recently, is some people were saying "Why would Bill now?" Maybe this is why, or partly? It's more of a reason that we get for a lot of things.

You got it and nailed it.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I wanted to like the 2016 movie, and there are elements I like about it. And I love all of the individual performers, I love Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. But the humor in it just did not work for me. When I tried to watch it the first time, I turned it off at the scene in the Dean's office, with Steve Higgins. That just rang so false and unfunny, with him just flipping them off in a variety of ways. Ivan Reitman said in an interview you bring in one off kilter thing, but otherwise the world is real. For example, in Dave that there could be an exact duplicate of the president, or in Ghostbusters that ghosts were real and could be captured. Outside of that thing, the comedy comes from the world reacting to that one off-kilter thing. It felt like Paul Feig was just trying too hard to be zany, and the humor just flat failed for me.

I don't know that it's about realism, per se. I think that the original movies took the time to craft consistent characters and then derived the humor from watching their reactions to each other and to the situations. The remake had, apart from Holtzman and Chris Hemsworth, very loosely defined characters that could just be whatever the scene needed them to be, which actually means that they have to work a lot harder to get a laugh than the original cast did. Tons of lines from the originals aren't necessarily that funny in isolation but become funny based on who is saying it. Without that character depth, the remake becomes far more dependent on "gags" and random wacky supporting characters.

But while the originals aren't totally realistic, they are true to the reality of their fictional universe. Monty Python isn't realistic at all but it is committed to the internal logic of its own surrealism. Ghostbusters: Answer the Call lacks the same level of commitment.

 

[Gaith]

That's really the most crucial point here.

Disagree - the most crucial point is that, had Arthur and Brian been cracking (loosely improvised) jokes and riffing on pop culture for the vast majority of their screentime, as pretty much every GB16 character did, Life of Brian and Holy Grail would certainly not be remembered as comedy classics decades later. Indeed, they probably wouldn't be remembered at all, except maybe as failed footnotes to the Monty Python brand.

 

[Trekker4747]

I don't know that it's about realism, per se. I think that the original movies took the time to craft consistent characters and then derived the humor from watching their reactions to each other and to the situations. The remake had, apart from Holtzman and Chris Hemsworth, very loosely defined characters that could just be whatever the scene needed them to be, which actually means that they have to work a lot harder to get a laugh than the original cast did. Tons of lines from the originals aren't necessarily that funny in isolation but become funny based on who is saying it. Without that character depth, the remake becomes far more dependent on "gags" and random wacky supporting characters.

But while the originals aren't totally realistic, they are true to the reality of their fictional universe. Monty Python isn't realistic at all but it is committed to the internal logic of its own surrealism. Ghostbusters: Answer the Call lacks the same level of commitment.

The humor in the original Ghostbusters is dry. It tries to stay grounded in some level of "realism" and not step too far out of that. The three main characters are pretty much tropes and we see how the play off one another but they're still, mostly, grounded in "a" reality,

The one that came out a few years ago, pushed the humor bar too far and took the move into a level of parody. In the original the humor of the Ghostbusters' equipment is how destructive it is and how inexperienced they are with it in the hotel scenes. In the remake? Ha ha ha ha. It's so powerful it makes her fly around like a balloon with the knot undone! .... Until the final scenes where they're using the equipment like experienced pros.

In the original Ghostbusters Louis Tully is an extreme caricature of a nerdy CPA with no sense of social boundaries. It's an unrealistic character but his behavior is humorous and mostly within the "reality" of the movie.

In the reboot? Their secretary is so dumb he thinks you block out loud sounds by covering your eyes. .... This is a level of stupidity that's just beyond graspable. It doesn't fit in any level of reality, beyond him being certifiable. He wears glasses frames without lenses, the whole talk about his pet, the improvised humor stands out and it just doesn't fit with any kind of reality. It's too broad.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The secretary in the reboot kinda reminds me of Jon Hamm's character from 30 Rock who wasn't good at anything and was a complete idiot but never realized it because he was in "the bubble" where everyone let him get away with it because he was so handsome.

 

[OCD Geek]

The article says that the earlier reports are actually inaccurate and the movie is about a whole family, rather than just a group of kids, and that the mother is actually the main character, not the kids.

It could be interesting if it was done like those supernatural horror films that focus on the psychological trauma they’re going through. But the experts they bring in are the Ghostbusters. Closer in tone to the original which is all played pretty straight with the humor coming from the Ghostbusters’ reactions to ghosts and each other, plus Louis who is a living cartoon. All the stuff with Dana is played very seriously and has actually scary scenes.

Okay, I really love that approach where the haunting victims are just as important as the paranormal experts that save them. Not only did the first Ghostbusters do this well, but so did The Exorcist, Poltergeist (kinda) and the first two Conjuring movies. I'm totally down for this.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The lack of a Dana Barrett type character is, I believe, a key flaw in the reboot that no one talks about. Without that outsider character, the plot has no personal stakes, just generic save-the-world stakes, which are a dime a dozen in modern blockbusters anyway.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Disagree - the most crucial point is that, had Arthur and Brian been cracking (loosely improvised) jokes and riffing on pop culture for the vast majority of their screentime, as pretty much every GB16 character did, Life of Brian and Holy Grail would certainly not be remembered as comedy classics decades later. Indeed, they probably wouldn't be remembered at all, except maybe as failed footnotes to the Monty Python brand.

There are other ways to be zany and unrealistic, besides "mugging for the camera" amidst ludicrousness, "riffing pop culture," etc. Maintaining a deadpan demeanor amidst the zany and ludicrous is itself zany and ludicrous, because a real person would never behave as the straight man in such circumstances. That sort of overly "normal" behavior represents an exaggeration for comedic effect. Even so, that doesn't describe Arthur at all because he was over-the-top hyper-earnest from the get-go and outside the parameters of a straight man. It's more of a point about Brian, as that is one facet of his behavior that he exhibited sometimes, but another is that he's just not that bright, and he was sometimes stupid in ways that were themselves zany and unrealistic.

But yeah, if you're trying to say that Monty Python would not have been successful, if they had done things that upset the ways by which they had been successful, yeah, maybe so, of course. But that doesn't really tell us why GB16 failed to achieve broader success than it did. @Serveaux brought up Monty Python to show how the combination of zany and unrealistic can work and has worked in successful films. If it failed in GB16, it just means that that particular flavor of zany and unrealistic failed, not that it necessarily must in general.

 

[Amaris]

The humor in the original Ghostbusters is dry. It tries to stay grounded in some level of "realism" and not step too far out of that. The three main characters are pretty much tropes and we see how the play off one another but they're still, mostly, grounded in "a" reality,

The one that came out a few years ago, pushed the humor bar too far and took the move into a level of parody. In the original the humor of the Ghostbusters' equipment is how destructive it is and how inexperienced they are with it in the hotel scenes. In the remake? Ha ha ha ha. It's so powerful it makes her fly around like a balloon with the knot undone! .... Until the final scenes where they're using the equipment like experienced pros.

In the original Ghostbusters Louis Tully is an extreme caricature of a nerdy CPA with no sense of social boundaries. It's an unrealistic character but his behavior is humorous and mostly within the "reality" of the movie.

In the reboot? Their secretary is so dumb he thinks you block out loud sounds by covering your eyes. .... This is a level of stupidity that's just beyond graspable. It doesn't fit in any level of reality, beyond him being certifiable. He wears glasses frames without lenses, the whole talk about his pet, the improvised humor stands out and it just doesn't fit with any kind of reality. It's too broad.

I loved Kevin so much.
That said, Holtzmann is my inspiration.