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Spoilers Ghostbusters: Afterlife grade and discussion thread

How do you rate Ghostbusters: Afterlife


  • Total voters
    70
I love the new team and how they´re slowly learning how stuff works. I hope Ghostbusters 4 won´t be too far in the future.

I do too. :) That said: I really hope there's either an Afterlife novelization or a "Last Days of the Ghostbusters" comic miniseries coming, because this movie left WAY too much unexplained re: Egon and his family; I don't want to have to wait for another movie to may-or-may-not provide those answers.
 
What I´m not entirely clear on...
Did Egon know he was going to die and become a ghost? Hiding the trap and the pke meter seemed so planned and deliberate.
 
What I´m not entirely clear on...
Did Egon know he was going to die and become a ghost? Hiding the trap and the pke meter seemed so planned and deliberate.
He seemed upset when the farm multi-trap didn't go off, so I presume he either had time before sitting down on the chair to hide the device. Or he had long ago prepped everything for "just in case" scenarios.
 
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He seemed upset when the farm multi-trap didn't go off, so I presume I either had time before sitting down on the chair to hide the device. Or he had long ago prepped everything for "just in case" scenarios.

Well...he IS supposed to be a genius...so he might just had plans b to z ready...
 
An absolutely wonderful conversation between Adam Savage and Jason Reitman about Jason's process in writing, directing, and producing the film and his reasons for doing it. And at the end, Jason turned the tables and talked about how important it was to have Adam involved in the production of the film and at such an early stage.

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Also: I love Adam's t-shirt! :D
 
That was awesome. I had seen a couple of Jason’s movies before this and was a fan. Very impressed with how he is handling all this. I have listened to numerous interviews with him this past week. Normally during press for a movie you hear the same stock answers to the same questions they are asked a thousand times. There are certain ideas that he repeats but there is something new in each one. You can tell he loved making this and open to doing more.

It’s a thrill just to see the Ghost Corps office. I remember when that was first announced and all the various sequels and spinoffs in development. For so long it felt so nebulous and just talk. Obviously now the movie is out and fantastic and successful - we are really just off to the start of many things.
 
One thing I loved hearing from Jason was that he wisely stepped back and let Bill and Dan write/perform their own dialogue for their respective scenes. Those who say Ray was wildly out of character during his phone call - hey, that was all Dan, and he knows Ray better than anyone! And for every line Bill said, there was at least one alternate that could have just as easily been used instead. Apparently he and Sigourney cooked up the 'revenge psychic test' scene between them! :guffaw:
 
Exactly! Also Dan Aykroyd is a producer on this movie. There is nothing in the movie he has a problem with. Same applies to Harold Ramis’ family. They were consulted from the script writing stage and all through.

That has been confirmed by his daughter Violet. But I just knew that had to be true without hearing it. To be very blunt - anyone who had any doubts of family approval on what the movie does... is clueless about how movies work. If the family objected in anyway the would have blocked it legally.

Same applies to Bill Murray. Anyone who follows his career knows he is extremely difficult. He only does what he wants to.
 
I do too. :) That said: I really hope there's either an Afterlife novelization or a "Last Days of the Ghostbusters" comic miniseries coming, because this movie left WAY too much unexplained re: Egon and his family; I don't want to have to wait for another movie to may-or-may-not provide those answers.
I had the same thought after I saw it. Has anybody picked up the comics license, since IDW apparently doesn't have it any more? I didn't realize they lost it, but before I went to see this I looked for the digital versions of their comics, and they've all disappeared, which usually only happens when the company loses it's license.
It’s a thrill just to see the Ghost Corps office. I remember when that was first announced and all the various sequels and spinoffs in development. For so long it felt so nebulous and just talk. Obviously now the movie is out and fantastic and successful - we are really just off to the start of many things.
I had completely forgotten that they set up Ghost Corps for the franchise until I saw the logo at the beginning of the movie. Hopefully this has been successful enough that this won't be the last time we see it.
 
I had the same thought after I saw it. Has anybody picked up the comics license, since IDW apparently doesn't have it any more? I didn't realize they lost it, but before I went to see this I looked for the digital versions of their comics, and they've all disappeared, which usually only happens when the company loses it's license.

Awwww, that's awful! :wah: They'd done such an incredible job with the license over the years - tying all the various versions of the GBs into a multiverse, crossovers with TMNT and Transformers as well as said other teams, even going some way toward redeeming the Answer The Call group. Their last effort, 'Year One,' was clearly setting up Afterlife at the end as the movie was supposed to debut right after it in May 2020, but then... well, we all know what then. :weep: They couldn't put out any more stories following up from a movie that hadn't happened yet, so I guess there was no choice. *@$^(&!@#% COVID...

EDIT: I've since learned that IDW's losing ALL its licenses: Transformers, TMNT, G.I. Joe, Star Wars Adventures (Dark Horse getting that one back). Presumably Star Trek next, and then they're out of business.
 
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I finally made the time to see it today, since I've missed being in a real theater since the pandemic. It felt weird remembering how many minutes of previews they have in front, though. :rommie:

Overalll, I enjoyed it. But I gave it a B- because I feel like the script could have used a bit more polish, and leaves too many important details unclarified that would have helped the narrative. It seems a tad odd that Olivia Wilde isn't properly credited for her shared role of Gozer (she plays the solid physical form, while Emma Portner plays the CGI spirit form and Shohreh Aghdashloo provides the voice).

The Good Stuff:

Visually, the effects are pretty good and a nice nod to the originals. I liked that the story got more into the past of the Shandor cult and provided some background for the Shandor Building in New York. McKenzie Grace did a nice job as Phoebe Spengler and it was fun to watch her interact with Egon's ghost at times. :D It's kind of nice also that Ecto-1 has a roller trap, although that also creates some annoying confusion (see below).

The Not as Good Stuff:

As I said above, there are areas of the story that really needed more detail. A lot of reviewers and fans have been uncomfortable with the portrayal of Egon running off alone to Oklahoma, and Callie's constant inferences that he was a shitty family member. And while I do think Egon was always an eccentric nerd, that doesn't seem to fit his character. It would seem especially strange for him to act that way in the context of the second movie, with Peter strengthening his relationship with Dana and wanting to protect Oscar.

I also feel like both Callie and Gary could have used a bit more fleshing out, in terms of their personalities. Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd are both good actors, but it feels like the characters are used more to advance plot points at times than feeling natural. Callie is never given much personal detail as far as her interests or job skills, because her main driving force for most of the film is her estrangement from Egon. Gary is rather conveniently a seismologist because it works for the story, but it would be nice to have a line or two where he explains that he stayed in Summerville because of the odd phenomena.

I think it was a mistake to imply that the Ghostbusters just sort of disbanded and were largely forgotten, because it just doesn't make logical sense. When GB2 was being developed, Harold Ramis came up with the idea that the team had to deal with some fallout after defeating Gozer and would have to build themselves up again. And it's not a bad concept, but it's not executed very well for that film. It's more like the majority of New Yorkers just conveniently forgot or were connived the Ghostbusters were a hoax.

Ray tells Phoebe that the spirit business sort of "dried up" and ultimately led the business to fall apart, with the exception of Egon and his studies of the Gozer cult. But I feel like the concept of him disappearing and being thought of as a weird crank in the middle of nowhere could have been worked out better. It's also kind of jarring that Podcast had never found anything on YouTube about the 1984 events before Gary described them, when YT seems to have plenty of information on those events. It's just the sort of thing he would already love.

There's a bit of confusion and a plot hole or two regarding the ghost traps, albeit kind of minor. It seems like the kids have two main traps essentially: the one that Egon used at the beginning to trap one of the terror dogs (maybe Zuul?), and the roller trap they find in Ecto-1.

This leads into some weird and arguably silly stuff with the plot, as there'e no logical reason for Gary to open the trap at all. He seems to be the only one who knows about the Ghostbusters and at least a basic idea of how their equipment is meant to work. And he knows the trap is full, so why open it? At first I thought it was meant to free the trap so Phoebe could use it on Muncher, but they wind up using the roller trap anyway.

Later on, Podcast uses the roller trap to capture Zuul and free Callie from its control, and the trap is stored aboard Ecto-1. But when Phoebe lures Gozer into the field, with the normal trap (like Egon does at the beginning), Zuul is somehow inside that trap when Gozer destroys it. Maybe the intent was that the roller trap is modular and the wheels are bolt-on, but I can't recall it ever being shown that way in the movie. It seems to be a separate unit designed specifically for Ecto-1.

It's a bit strange that even though Summerville is meant to be the isolated town archetype in the middle of nowhere (which doesn't really exist generally outside of Hollywood :D), there are times when it seems to be strangely devoid of people even for such an obscure place. It's particularly weird during the Wal-Mart chase, as the Wal-Mart is literally empty except for Gary. It would have been better if it were more normally crowded, since there's plenty of potential for Vince and the mini-Stay Pufts to scare other patrons.

I have to say, the mini-Stay Pufts are the only element I could have done without. They didn't serve any useful story role and they seemed to show up randomly for plot requirements, even within the first few minutes of the Wal-Mart sequence. They just randomly appear in various sections of the store where there likely aren't any marshmallows to possess, so does this mean some of them are just random ghosts that look like Stay Pufts? :lol:

I had a good time with Afterlife, even it it's not perfect. But it could be worse. :) I just wish some plot elements had gotten a bit more polish and foundation personally.
 
Watched it a second time and honestly I think I liked it even more on a second viewing!
I also happened to notice that one of the supposed plotholes isn't a plothole at all: Ray says Egon took his pack AND all the traps, not ALL the packs and traps. So the other three packs at least were left behind, and presumably Ray still had them plus the flightsuits. That also tracks with the fact that there was only one pack in the house: Egon's, which Phoebe wears, plus the one that was integrated into the Ectomobile. The ones rigged to auto at the mine seem to be new builds of a different, much more heavy duty design, which is presumably what Egon did with the isotope material he took off with.

Also on reflection, the mini-puffs make a little more sense when you remember that this is Vinz, not Zuul, and as we saw in the the original, Vinz is the chatty one obsessed with all of Gozer's old destructor forms. One might even assume that had Louis not thrown that coat on his head and pissed him off, that party might have been overrun by lots of miniature giant sloars! :lol:
Also, Zuul decided to randomly cook some eggs and announce her presence weeks ahead of time, so secondary spiritual activity around a terror dog possession at least has some precedent.
 
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