In-movie reason for Ghostbusters II logo

[Broccoli]

It is interesting I am seeing comments on how GB2 was trying to be dark. I never got that impression at all from the movie. If anything, I felt the first one was darker and this one was much lighter in comparison (likely driven by the popularity of the kids cartoon).

Well, the very name Slimer for that particular ghost comes from The Real Ghostbusters, the animated series, where he was the team's mascot. So I guess they were following that lead, although the sequel is hard to reconcile with the show's first couple of seasons.

Yes, Slimer was added because of his popularity on the cartoon. His addition was a no-brainer given the character's popularity. Him helping Louis, I kinda dug. I took it as the logical progression of the minor Louis/Slimer subplot in that they've become friends as opposed to the general idea of Slimer helping the GBs (as he did in the cartoon).

Now, why Slimer was hanging around in the firehouse to begin with...well, that's another question all together.

I don't think it is worth trying to reconcile the cartoon and the movies. They don't work together and (beyond a random reference) never really intended to.

I think that was the idea behind the third movie for at least part of the development process, to have the old guard handing over the reins to a new team, like the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon.

While it is not a bad idea at its core, I feel that's what'll do a potential sequel in. The chemistry of Murray-Aykroyd-Ramis was lightening in a bottle. Trying to replicate that with either unknowns or popular comic actors of today is a Herculean task rife with multiple inherit potential problems.

 

[Trekker4747]

I dunno, the second movie had some pretty dark moments in it which sort of contrasted with the "lighter tone" they were also going for given the cartoon (which itself was pretty dark and serious plenty of times.)

The "darkest" moment that comes to mind in GB2 was the scene with Ray, Egon and Winston in the old pneumatic-transit/railway tunnel.

 

[Aldo]

I remember there was supposed to be a sequence during the second montage (where all hell is breaking loose) in which a demon attacked a subway driver. I remember reading they cut it because the actor portraying the driver was playing it too funny, when (at least for that sequence) they were going for dark.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As for the 2 logo, I kinda like the OP's Carolco/C2 Pictures analogy. Maybe the Ghostbusters lost the rights to the original logo in the ensuing lawsuits between the 1st & 2nd movies.

As for the possibility of Ghostbusters III, I'm pretty lukewarm about it. I agree there's a strong possibility that it could turn into another Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Although I do have some of my own ideas for how it could be done and done without Bill Murray in it.

(Basically, the reason why Ray & Egon have to go back to Ghostbusting after all this time is because Peter lost all of their money in shady Wall Street deals. Peter is absent from most or all of the film because he's in jail for securities fraud. Walter Peck comes back, now as an SEC regulator. Also, Egon now has a young, Polynesian mail-order-bride.)

It's strange, really. Bo Welch has done some really good stuff, like Men in Black and Batman Returns, but the look of Ghostbusters II is almost universally wrong. (Michael Chapman's cinematography didn't help, of course, and his subpar work is possibly even more bizarre than Welch's, given his pedigree.)

I once did a play with one of the sound designers from Ghostbusters II. If you brought it up, he would bitch about it a lot, particularly how some of his favorite sound effects were never really heard because the music drowned them out during the montage sequences.

Well, the very name Slimer for that particular ghost comes from The Real Ghostbusters, the animated series, where he was the team's mascot. So I guess they were following that lead, although the sequel is hard to reconcile with the show's first couple of seasons.

In what ways? (Honestly, I haven't watched The Real Ghostbusters in 20 years. I don't remember that much about it.)

But moving a stories-tall, tons heavy, rigid structure and getting it to move and behave in a manner that it cannot (the robe was even draping and moving around the statue is if it was really a fabric as she walked) is beyond what I'm willing to accept. The slime is shown to be nothing more than a substance that moves and reacts to the psycho-kentic energy/moods around it and not to be "capable of thought" the same way the ghosts in the movies are. (Not sure what word works there... "alive", "sentient", "sapient...?") It's just a substance that reacts.

If ghosts had "possessed" the materials in the SoL and made it move that'd be a touch different. But it's not what happened, the Ghostbusters sprayed a substance all over the inside of the SoL, hooked a damn Nintendo-control up to it were able to make a rigid structure walk and move like a person. That's... more than I'm willing to hand-wave away.

Even if the slime isn't intelligent, it's possible that, between the toaster experiment & the Statue of Liberty incident, Ray & Egon had been doing further experiments with the slime to give them more sophisticated control over it by putting electrical impulses through it, impulses controlled through a gerry-rigged device made from a repurposed Nintendo controller. And who says the slime, when energized, can't alter the density, consistency, & flexibility of metals at strategic points?

 

[Trekker4747]

It's just more than I'm willing to accept and believe.

 

[Christopher]

...although the sequel is hard to reconcile with the show's first couple of seasons.

In what ways? (Honestly, I haven't watched The Real Ghostbusters in 20 years. I don't remember that much about it.)

Well, for one thing, in the RGB world, the existence of ghosts and the supernatural is an accepted reality. Story editor J. Michael Straczynski reasoned that after the very public events of the first movie, there'd be no question that ghosts were real and it would've been silly to have society go back to a state of disbelief -- which is exactly what happened in the second film. And in the RGB continuity, the Ghostbusters tackled dozens of high-profile supernatural menaces all over the country, including several near-cataclysms rivalling the advent of Gozer. (They even battled Cthulhu himself at one point.) So it wasn't just one event that could be chalked up to mass hysteria.

For another thing, the show ran with the Janine-Egon "ship" from the first movie -- not to the extent of having an active romance between them, but enough to show that Janine's feelings for Egon were strong and sincere, and that he reciprocated in his own reserved way. So the second movie pairing Janine with Louis (who wasn't even in RGB's first couple of seasons) is difficult to reconcile.

Of course, once the second movie came out, the animated series just ignored those issues and was revamped to follow on from the sequel, adding Louis to the cast.

 

[Gotham Central]

...although the sequel is hard to reconcile with the show's first couple of seasons.

In what ways? (Honestly, I haven't watched The Real Ghostbusters in 20 years. I don't remember that much about it.)

Well, for one thing, in the RGB world, the existence of ghosts and the supernatural is an accepted reality. Story editor J. Michael Straczynski reasoned that after the very public events of the first movie, there'd be no question that ghosts were real and it would've been silly to have society go back to a state of disbelief -- which is exactly what happened in the second film. And in the RGB continuity, the Ghostbusters tackled dozens of high-profile supernatural menaces all over the country, including several near-cataclysms rivalling the advent of Gozer. (They even battled Cthulhu himself at one point.) So it wasn't just one event that could be chalked up to mass hysteria.

For another thing, the show ran with the Janine-Egon "ship" from the first movie -- not to the extent of having an active romance between them, but enough to show that Janine's feelings for Egon were strong and sincere, and that he reciprocated in his own reserved way. So the second movie pairing Janine with Louis (who wasn't even in RGB's first couple of seasons) is difficult to reconcile.

Of course, once the second movie came out, the animated series just ignored those issues and was revamped to follow on from the sequel, adding Louis to the cast.

The Real Ghostbusters had some interesting continuity issues. For instance they actually reference the events of the first movie in an episode that immediately follows the events of the film (they return to the Firehouse, which had a gaping hole in the roof, and rebuilt everything, including a new larger containment unit...they even reference the change in uniforms beige to the more colorful animated versions).

The weird thing is that events of GBII also happened and Louis joins the team and they even use some of the mood slime from the Vigo incident. However, the Ecto-1 and logo never change and Dana is never part of the picture.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Maybe the TV series is set in a slightly alternate universe where the events of the movies are assumed to have mostly happened but with some slight differences here & there. Kinda like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Stargate.

 

[Trekker4747]

It would seem that while the events of the movies "happened" they didn't happen quite the same way. There was an episode of the cartoon where the Ghostbusters are consulted on a movie about them and at the end of the episode it's suggested that the movie we saw is the one they saw. So it's possible the movies are fictionalized accounts of the "Real' Ghostbusters adventures and possibly tweaked a bit for marketability. (So Dana in the RGB universe never existed, the GBs never went out of business, etc. all of that was made up "for the movie.")

 

[Christopher]

It would seem that while the events of the movies "happened" they didn't happen quite the same way. There was an episode of the cartoon where the Ghostbusters are consulted on a movie about them and at the end of the episode it's suggested that the movie we saw is the one they saw. So it's possible the movies are fictionalized accounts of the "Real' Ghostbusters adventures and possibly tweaked a bit for marketability. (So Dana in the RGB universe never existed, the GBs never went out of business, etc. all of that was made up "for the movie.")

It's not merely suggested, it's explicit. We're told outright in the episode that the stars of the film are named Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis ("Sounds like a law firm"), and at the end of the episode we see actual live-action footage from the film (though just barely, so they wouldn't have to pay for actor clearances).

So in the RGB universe, it's a given that the movies are fictionalized accounts based on the true experiences of the real Ghostbusters. Although I'm still not sure that explains GB2, because if it were made in a universe where the existence of the supernatural was proven and universally accepted, why would a movie postulate that it had all been dismissed as a hoax?

 

[Dick Whitman]

I am sure there would still have been skeptics. In fact I could imagine certain "groups"... would disregard any public evidence because it conflicts with their personal belief systems. I could imagine in the RGB world the studio toning things down to appeal to the largest possible audience.

 

[Trekker4747]

Although I'm still not sure that explains GB2, because if it were made in a universe where the existence of the supernatural was proven and universally accepted, why would a movie postulate that it had all been dismissed as a hoax?

Movie audiences likely would accept, or assume, that in the "movie universe" the supernatural isn't a universally accepted fact. Unless the movie(s) in the RGB were billed as "based on a true story" people would see them as fictionalized accounts or takes on events and that it's has it's own reality.

And I'm not 100% certain that the people in the RGB universe would universally accept that ghosts (and ghost busting) was real. Consider that the New York City area has around 10 or 14 million people in it, the country in the 1980s around 200 or 250 million and a world population of billions. As far as we know in the cartoons the Ghostbusters (likely to Venkman's disappointment) never franchised so they were pretty much the only paranormal investigators and eliminators in the world further proven that they travel to other places in the country, around the world and even into space to do their jobs. So it would seem that in spite of many very public and near apocalyptic events paranormal activity is still fairly rare and uncommon. Hell there were episodes of the cartoon where the Ghostbusters bitched about a lull in business and an episode where business had grow so stagnate they temporally went into crime-fighting in order to stay afloat.

So while they may have had fans and supporters, mostly people who've witnessed their encounters and such there's probably also likely to be a lot of Walter "Dickless" Pecks out there who think the Ghostbusters are frauds, scam-artists or who simply just dismiss "reality" as much as possible in spite of overwhelming evidence.

I do agree that in the movie universe GB2 doesn't make much sense (again, given that live-action shows/movies are going to have a higher standard for keeping into reality) given the events of the first movie. What happened in the first movie would have been huge international news and events in it would be very hard to dismiss as a hoax given the wide-spread appearances of ghosts and such around the city after the containment unit blew and, well, hoax a 20-story tall man of marshmallow and the tons of marshmallow that covered the area afterwards would be pretty damn hard to fake.

When the judge in the beginning of GB2 says "let's leave [the ghost stories] to the kiddies" Louis should have raised his hand and say, "Sir? You do remember when Central Park West looked like giant fluffernutter during an 18-month clean up process of tons of marshmallow, right?"

It's really absurd in GB2 how the Ghostbusters seemingly went out of business between movies, and were sued by various local governments. I think a simple "Did you see what happened? We saved the world, I think we can be excused for some mild inconveniences around the area. And, hey, we told Dickless not to turn off our equipment."

 

[Christopher]

Movie audiences likely would accept, or assume, that in the "movie universe" the supernatural isn't a universally accepted fact. Unless the movie(s) in the RGB were billed as "based on a true story" people would see them as fictionalized accounts or takes on events and that it's has it's own reality.

The Ghostbusters are major celebrities in the "real" world of the animated series, just as much as in the "fictional" world of the live-action movies. So it would be pretty common knowledge that the films were based on true stories. I mean, the Statue of Liberty walking across Manhattan would be a major worldwide news story for weeks, maybe months (considering how hard it would've been to get the thing back into place and repaired). So a movie based on it would not be something that any informed viewer would mistake for pure fiction.

And I'm not 100% certain that the people in the RGB universe would universally accept that ghosts (and ghost busting) was real. Consider that the New York City area has around 10 or 14 million people in it, the country in the 1980s around 200 or 250 million and a world population of billions. As far as we know in the cartoons the Ghostbusters (likely to Venkman's disappointment) never franchised so they were pretty much the only paranormal investigators and eliminators in the world further proven that they travel to other places in the country, around the world and even into space to do their jobs. So it would seem that in spite of many very public and near apocalyptic events paranormal activity is still fairly rare and uncommon.

There hasn't been a manned mission to the Moon in decades, but everyone but some conspiracy-theory nuts still accepts that they were real. (Ironic that in the RGB universe, the rational, informed belief would be that ghosts and demons were real while the lunatic-fringe conspiracy theory would be that they were hoaxes.)

A lot of the events in the series were just as big as the events in the movies, and as you say, they would've garnered worldwide media coverage and the physical evidence and damage would linger for months. So the animated series' premise that the reality of the supernatural was globally accepted makes sense within the series' universe. Which is why Ghostbusters 2 doesn't make much sense as a docudrama produced in the series' universe.

Anyway, I personally tend to disregard most of the stuff in the later seasons of RGB, because JMS left as story editor and the show was retooled at network insistence and the continuity was hard to reconcile.

 

[Trekker4747]

Agreed, I think maybe the first half or so of the cartoon is the best especially during the times when it remained somewhat "dark." The "retooling" it got after GB2 I think hurt it and it was especially hurt when it became "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters" where the "main Ghostbusters story" became shorter and was tacked with a more crudely animated Slimer short.

Ugh.

 

[captcalhoun]

there was a text story in the Real Ghostbusters UK's comic annual one year in which a new rival paranormal pest control outfit showed up and claimed the Ghostbusters were faked after they were stitched up by a TV show. The 'Spectre Rejecters' (their logo was a ghost behind bars in a circle) ended up being undone when Slimer turned up at the studio and caused merry hell before exposing them as fakes...

 

[Ethros]

And remember people, forget that Myan 2012 nonsense, the world will end in just under 4 years!

 

[Trekker4747]

I thought it ended on Valentines Day in 1990? Some woman was told this by an alien in a Paramus Holiday Inn.

 

[Aldo]

It could have been a room on the spaceship made up to look like a room at the Holiday Inn

 

[Ethros]

It's February 14th 2016

as she say's on World of the Psychic



"Valentine's Day. Bummer."

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Ah. There's still time to get a Ghostbusters/Men In Black crossover movie going! Four more years!