The Long, Painful History of “Ghostbusters” Canon
A look at one of the 1980’s most popular projects, how it evolved and whether we can ever decide what the true continuity is.
I will never take too much umbrage at anything that allows the wonderful, talented and gentlemanly Ernie Hudson to work. Ditto for the delightful Paul Rudd. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s work for either of those two then that’s reason enough. If Dan Aykroyd can be along for the ride, so much the better. He is a thoroughly delightful fellow.
In fact, I hope something nice happens to each of them today… Like they put on an old coat and discover $5 in the pocket that they didn’t know they had — something like that.
With all that said, we don’t need another Ghostbusters film, and I say that as someone who not only loves Ghostbusters but grew up with it. When I was six, my pals and I used to run around the playground at lunch bustin’ ghosts. We could identify full-torso, vaporous apparitions. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn’t even hesitate before saying: a Ghostbuster.
We have a complicated ball of string to unravel when it comes to Ghostbusters, with Columbia (now Sony Pictures) trying to recapture that late-80s mania for all things bustin’. The problem is, studios don’t exist to make art… they exist to make money and, after the runaway success of the Ghostbusters (1984), they were caught a little off guard. They knew they had to cash-in, but weren’t immediately sure how.
Whenever we rewatch the original, at the end — when the boys in grey have saved the world from Gozer and emerge to a hero’s welcome from New York City — I always smile to my husband and note that you know your film is going to be a hit if people are hawking bootleg t-shirts then-and-there in the background!
Now, obviously, this meant a sequel. There was going to be a sequel, come snow or storm. To fill the time, however, Columbia turned to animation. As was often the case in animation, the jobbing pros were not big names or stars… but they were damn good at what they did.
J. Michael Straczinski (Hugo Award winner; Saturn Award winner; BAFTA winner; GLAAD winner and all-around writing legend) scripted many of the stories, including most of the first series. To get the tone right, he purposely watched the original ’84 film every day: he wanted the cartoon Ghostbusters to match the vibe and tone of Aykroyd and Ramis’ original script.
The animation was ostensibly handled by DiC Entertainment, a French company now recently branched to Burbank, California. DiC outsourced lots of the production to Toei Animation, Japan. This gave the finished article a distinct anime-adjacent look: the characters were dynamic, expressive and consistently on-model. This stood in contrast to other shows at the time — for example The Transformers — where cheaper studios like AKOM turned in work that was often of much lower quality.
The characters were cast to voiceover artists who are, now, legendary — each with IMDb pages longer than your arm. Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman. Frank Welker as Ray Stantz. Laura Summers as Janine Melnitz. Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler. Arsenio Hall as Winston Zeddemore.
In addition to the stylish animation, the character designs and voices were purposely changed. Columbia were very concerned that they didn’t want to create animated versions of Ernie, Dan, Harold, Annie and Bill. That would have created any number of legal headaches for them, especially around merchandising, so the character designs were changed up. Some in subtle ways, others in not-so-subtle ways.
Peter Venkman was now a tall, handsome front-man. Lorenzo gave him a laid back, slacker vibe. The character was unmistakable, though: he was still a sheister with a big mouth.
Ray Stantz became a chubby red-head —but he still had a heart of gold and the excitability of a child. Frank gave him a youthful, naïve sound — reminiscent of his long-running characterisation of Fred in Scooby Doo.
Winston Zeddemore lost his moustache and Arsenio made him a little more engaged with the antics: still a straight-man, but not quite such a deadpan snarker. Ernie Hudson auditioned but, to history’s loss, they passed him over.
Janine Melnitz got a gorgeous punk makeover — and became even more deadpan, with Laura providing a suitably thick Bronx dialect. She was given striking outfits, angular green glasses and a bright-red rock-chick haircut. There is no a shadow of a doubt that she became many people’s first cartoon-crush.
Egon Spengler got the biggest changeup of all. Even taller than before, he was now blonde with a pompadour haircut. His face was even longer and his famous wire-rim, circular spectacles got a coat of red. Ironically, given the studio overlooking Hudson and purposely styling every character to be different to their film counterpart, Maurice was allowed to do his very accurate impression of Harold Ramis. Originally the casting was looking for a “Woody Allen” type.
The stage was now set for two series, 78 episodes, of superb children’s television. They had the tools, and they had the talent. The stories are quintessential Ghostbusters, perfectly fitting the tone of the original: a little bit scary, a little bit cool and quite tongue-in-cheek. Dubbed The Real Ghostbusters, to avoid conflict with Ghostbusters by Filmation (itself an animated version of an earlier TV programme), the show was rounded out by a slight retooling of Ray Parker Jnr’s Ghostbusters and a gorgeously 80s pop-punk soundtrack.
To this day, the “green ghost” busted in the Sedgewick Hotel is still known around the world as Slimer — the name he was given by Ray in The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, purposely to spite Peter.
What happened next was two-fold. Firstly, after two series, Columbia decided to take a more active role in The Real Ghostbusters. Secondly, the long-awaited sequel to the 1984 original came out: Ghostbusters II.
Despite being a major success, and pushing a line of toys by Kenner, Columbia brought in the dreaded consultants to try to fix what was not broken. Suffice to say that nobody who had been involved until that point was particularly happy with the changes they were handed, but what are jobbing professionals to do? They did their best.
Amongst the changes were three biggies: they ditched Lorenzo Music for Dave Coulier, they recast and redesigned Janine and they made Slimer the focal point for the series. The scuttlebutt around Music/Coulier was that Bill Murray had watched an episode and asked why Venkman didn’t sound like him. Meanwhile, Janine was considered too “sharp”, and so she was visually and vocally softened into a more motherly figure. Lastly, the studio wanted Slimer to be the star.
You can see the hangovers from this in Ghostbusters II (1989). Janine has lost her pixie-cut and is now looking to be a mum and Slimer has several cameos — with even more ending up on the cutting-room floor. It seemed that the green ghost wasn’t quite the draw Columbia thought he was: the kids weren’t interested and the parents were just confused, so his much more extensive involvements were mostly cut out.
In addition, the script for Ghostbusters II went through a lot of changes. Murray was originally up for the sequel — in theory — however the script he got before the first day of filming was quite different to the one he had seen and liked. For once, the princess actually had a reason to be upset.
This isn’t to trash Ghostbusters II. It didn’t recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle of the original, or the playfully sharp adaptation of the cartoon’s first two series… but it’s not bad. My brain is trained to go “meh” when it’s mentioned, but I have learnt that if I give the movie a chance on its own merits it is very enjoyable. The performances are good, and the last-minute reshoots which added in the fire in the camera dark-room and the ghostly train track sequence deliver an otherwise missed feeling of legitimate threat. The film even has plenty of quotable lines — especially in the first half.
But, Ghostbusters II didn’t perform like the original. Murray was pissed off. Well, pissed off more than the preening diva normally is. Aykroyd had plenty of ideas for a sequel, but had a hard time getting studio buy-in. Meanwhile the cartoon, now retooled as “Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters” had diminished its ratings and was finally cancelled in 1991.
Studios exist to make money, not art… but sometimes they hire the right group of people, and give them enough leeway, that they will also make something good. Columbia wanted Ghostbusters back because it was a money-maker, so they began building a new cartoon series.
Like its predecessor, The Real Ghostbusters, Extreme Ghostbusters (1997) was produced by Richard Raynis and was pitched as a direct sequel. After years of minimal paranormal activity, Egon — the last remaining Ghostbuster and caretaker of both the firehouse and the containment unit — had to train a new team with new tools to deal with a resurgence in ghostly activity!
Extreme is, unfortunately, a pretty good series. As the episodes went on, they developed more and more connective tissue to Real Ghostbusters, culminating in a full-on old-meets-new reunion in the finale “Back in the Saddle”. The acting is good — featuring LeMarche again as Spengler and a new cast. The stories are a little darker and sharper. The diverse choices made in designing the new characters may feel a little ham-fisted, in true 90’s style, but are none the less very welcome: the team consisted of goth-girl Kylie (Tara Strong), paraplegic athlete Garrett (Jason Marsden), Hispanic slacker Eduardo (Rino Romano) and the level-headed MD-in-training Roland (Alfonso Ribeiro).
So, why did I say “unfortunately” when it sounds like the series was solid? Well, it failed — and not for reasons of quality. It failed because it came out right at the transition in TV programming towards “blocks” of children’s content and dedicated TV channels. Extreme was bounced around the schedules, trying to find something that worked. It also suffered because Ghostbusters has always been driven by twin engines of concept and characters… but with characters being the more important component. The concept of Ghostbusters in Extreme just wasn’t enough to win over audiences to a new cast of characters.
Not to be deterred — especially where money is to be made — Columbia spent the next two decades trying to work out what to do. They had a franchise, it was popular, how could they wring more money out of it?
Dan Aykroyd was still developing Ghostbusters III, which would have seen the OG ‘busters hand the reins over to a new team, but Murray was a constant holdout. Worse, yet, Murray and Harold Ramis had fallen out, years back, on the set of Groundhog Day (1993). Ramis, by all accounts a very patient and relaxed man, had been pushed to the point where he grabbed Murray by the collar and slammed him against a wall; so fed-up was he with Murray’s moods, demands, complaining, ego and general asshole-ry.
Comic books filled the gap, with IDW Publishing acquiring the rights to Ghostbusters and publishing numerous long-running and cross-over stories. They were picking up the baton from 88MPH studios, who only held the license for four issues in 2004 before financial troubles forced them to cancel further work. Prior to that, Marvel and NOW’s had produced comics and UK annuals for The Real Ghostbusters back in the late 80's.
By this point, there were now four distinct Ghostbusters continuities — four different universes that each represented a different way to take the franchise forward for Columbia.
- The Movie Universe, consisting of Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989). Aykroyd’s Ghostbusters III would have slotted in here, too.
- The Cartoon Universe, made up of The Real Ghostbusters (7 series), the late 80’s comics and Extreme Ghostbusters.
- IDW’s Comic Universe.
- “Other stuff” — the various board games, cameos (like Ray Stantz’s cameo appearance in Casper (1995)) and other nachos.
With the original cast now aging out of their original roles, elements of Ghostbusters III were then rolled into a new idea: a first-person videogame released in 2009 called Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
Taking on the role of a rookie, The Video Game further extended the story of the Movie Universe. We learnt more about the characters and where they were in the mid-90’s — still bustin’ ghosts, Winston now having a PhD and Slimer being held for study in the firehouse. It also built upon the lore: Ivo Shandor, only mentioned in dialogue previously, was revealed to be a paranormal super-fiend who (having failed to achieve his ends using Gozer) now turned to a new plan to ensure his conquest of the world of the living.
The game fucking rules and if you don’t think so, you’re just wrong. I don’t want to hear any valid criticisms about game mechanics, or difficulty scale, or Bill Murray’s lacklustre performance. BUSTIN’ MAKES ME FEEL GOOD, got it?
The Video Game sadly represented the last time all four original Ghostbusters would appear together.
To be honest, I’ll never forget when I read the news about Harold Ramis’ death in 2014. One of the Ghostbusters was dead, and I didn’t quite know how to handle that. It was a little like reading that Father Christmas had died, it didn’t seem possible. I remember people leaving flowers and Twinkie bars outside the Hook and Ladder fire-station in New York. Someone published a digital art photo of an abandoned proton pack, with a distant silhouette of a man being gently led away by Slimer and the caption “please look after our friend”.
Yeah, I still mist up at that… come at me if you think you’re hard enough!
A sequel was now all but impossible, so the studio decided on a reboot instead. Ghostbusters (2016), also known as Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, got nothing but abuse as soon as it was announced. Its early trailers were downvoted online into oblivion and it was review-bombed to within an inch of its life.
Lemme make this clear, loud and as definitive as I can make it: Ghostbusters (2016) is a good film.
Is it as good as Ghostbusters (1984), even accounting for thirty-plus years of nostalgia? No, of course not. 1984 was lightning-in-a-bottle. But 2016 wasn’t bad — on its own merits, it was an enjoyable fantasy-comedy.
What Sony had managed to do, probably accidentally, was recapture some of the essence of what came before: they got four Saturday Night Live alumni, added a funny script, and then let the cast and director riff on Ghostbusters for a couple of hours.
Not all the jokes land, but enough did for me. It paid enough homage to the original to feel respectful. The cast were funny — Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are very talented and funny people. We also got cameos from the surviving OG cast, including Sigourney Weaver, and human emotional-tornado Bill Murray.
Better yet, the whole thing felt like Ghostbusters to me. I can’t explain more than that… I felt like I was watching a natural continuation of the same stories I’d seen and loved before. Despite being an ostensible reboot, it was even given a broader meaning in IDW’s comics — which indulged in crossovers from all the various “universes” we had at that point — as an offshoot from the ’84 busters caused by their “crossing the streams” to seal the Manhattan Cross-rift and defeat Gozer.
Hence the post-credits scene of Leslie Jones listening to a spiritual recording, taking off her headphones and then asking the others “hey, what’s ‘Gozer’?”
Sadly, we never got an answer to that. The reviews were good — 74% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being that it’s biggest drawback was, if anything, being too reverential of its source material.
But the fans fucking hated it.
Why? Well, the short answer is just “the general outrage and frustration with where men are at this point in late-stage Capitalism”. Many men are frustrated, angry and fed-up of losing ground to minorities. We could see this when Right-wing provocateur and noted gobshite Milo Yiannopoulos turned his army of Twitter followers against Leslie Jones, following a racist tirade he directed at her. Yay, stochastic violence! Over a comedy movie about people catching ghosts!
There was a huge pile-on. Why were they all women? OMG it’s too woke. It’s not funny because women aren’t funny. It’s wokebusters. Blah blahdy friggin’ blah.
Even now it’s not included in box set releases, with some fans declaring they won’t ever buy any box set of Ghostbusters media that includes it.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
So much for the reboot, which was not only solid on its own merits but had potential for even more. At this point, our Ghostbusters canon is starting to become very much… tangled.
- The movie-ish universe: Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), Ghostbusters The Video Game (2009).
- The IDW comics universe, now including crossovers with Ghostbusters (2016), Extreme Ghostbusters and The Real Ghostbusters.
- The cartoon universe: The Real Ghostbusters, its seven series and comics, and Extreme Ghostbusters.
- Ghostbusters (2016).
See, I blame Transformers for this. Why bother trying to tie things together when you can just constantly break your own universe into pieces and claim it’s a multiverse? Honestly, if I ever meet the man who came up with that “multiverse” concept, probably back in the ’70s at Marvel Comics, I will punch them in the dick.
But things were about to go bang, big time. Sony (née Columbia) had learnt the same lesson as they were taught with Extreme Ghostbusters: the concept of Ghostbusters only gets you 40%-ish of the way there, what you need are the original characters, too.
Enter what we could legitimately call Ghostbusters III, but was titled Ghostbusters Afterlife (2021). It brought in new characters, sure, but they were very closely tied to the original characters who, themselves, appear as more than just cameos (as with Extreme) or actor Easter Eggs (as with 2016). It also features the delightful Paul Rudd, who I am never averse to seeing get work.
Afterlife actually integrates Ramis’ death into the plot, showing us that Egon Spengler has now died on a remote, dilapidated farm. It turns out that Gozer wasn’t done, and a second temple was built to them by Ivo Shandor. With the other three busters not believing him (for some reason…) Egon stole the Ecto-1 and a load of their equipment to go stop Gozer a second time, single-handedly.
His plan failed, and Egon was killed by one of Gozer’s terrordog minions.
The twist is that Egon actually had an estranged family: sometime before the events of the original 1984 film, he had a relationship that led to the birth of his daughter, Carrie. She now had her own kids and, after being contacted by Janine Melnitz, they now inherited the farm… And all the ghost busting equipment Egon hid there.
Cue a “discovering stuff” and “family histories” story that doesn’t entirely make sense. The kids watch some old news clips on YouTube of the original Ghostbusters in action, they phone Ray Stantz and get the skinny on what happened and slowly they uncover the story.
I’ll linger briefly on that point, just because it bugs me: there is video news footage of the Ghostbusters, which must include the Stay Puft marshmallow man walking along Central Park in downtown Manhattan, and somehow this isn’t a big philosophical, cultural and scientific turning point for humanity? Like, in this universe, ghosts exist and are real and there is irrefutable proof, accessible to the masses, that has been available for nearly forty years and just… nobody cares?
Whatever. Movie logic. It happened off-screen, therefore it makes sense.
At the climax, Gozer returns and we get almost a line-by-line retread of the 1984 original. The three surviving Ghostbusters turn up to help, plus a little spectral assistance from Egon, Gozer is defeated and the day is saved.
I’ll tell you the exact same thing I told my husband when we left the cinema: “that was well-acted, well-done and obviously came from a place of tremendous love. It was also completely unnecessary and served no purpose.”
Despite performing a little worse than Ghostbusters (2016), Afterlife didn’t generate backlash — only praise. It seems Sony had finally gotten a working formula for more Ghostbusters films.
I maintain that it is, by most measures, a worse movie than 2016 — not least of all because it eschewed comedy for a much more straight-faced “family fantasy” approach. Sure, Rudd does have some lighter moments, but Afterlife is no more a comedy than E.T. (1982) or Hook (1991).
It’s that tongue-in-cheek humour which, previously, had defined every iteration of Ghostbusters. Afterlife also re-trod so much ground from, and spent so much energy in reverence to, the 1984 original that the arguably overly-respectful 2016 reboot looked positively irreverent by comparison.
But I’m not here to re-litigate my original review. You can read it if you want my full, unfiltered reckonings on the subject.
What I will draw on, though, are some continuity problems brought up by Afterlife. Firstly, the Ecto-1 lost its restyling from Ghostbusters II — dubbed Ecto-1A — and reverted to how it looked in Ghostbusters (1984). The real-life reason for this is obvious: brand-recognition and marketability… but this choice, and a bunch of similar ones, poses the question as to whether Ghostbusters II is even canon any more.
Director Jason Reitman says it is still canon, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is no aspect of the 1989 sequel visible anywhere. The “slime blower” packs are gone. Ecto-1A has reverted to Ecto-1. Nobody mentions Vigo the Carpathian or the events of New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, when the ‘busters walked Lady Liberty down Main Street to break open the “psychomagnotheric” slime shell covering the Metropolitan Museum.
More overtly, The Videogame is now impossible because of Ivo Shandor being present in both: only one can now be true. The movie-continuity now directly contradicts The Videogame — erstwhile dubbed “the third movie” by Aykroyd.
This new universe is clearly the continuity that Sony considers Primary, and it has been expanded this year, 2024, by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which blows our already very convoluted continuity family to pieces!
What we’ve got left are more like jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Some fit together, others disqualify other pieces from fitting. Largely this is because of Afterlife and its incongruities with The Video Game and Ghostbusters II.
- Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) still fit together, naturally.
- The Videogame (2009) still fits after Ghostbusters II but only provided we then ignore Afterlife and Frozen Empire.
- The 1984 and 1989 movies kinda almost work with Afterlife but mainly just because Jason Reitman says so. On their own merits, Ghostbusters II and Afterlife contradict each other in some not-huge-but-also-not-trivial ways. Personally, I’d argue including the 2021 film mostly precludes the 1989 film.
- Somewhat peculiarly, The Real Ghostbusters’ first two series also slot neatly after 1984, and its latter series slot nicely after 1989. Neither is compatible with Afterlife, but do mostly work with The Videogame. There’s nothing obvious contradicting anything else.
- Extreme Ghostbusters works nicely with Real Ghostbusters, obviously, but is again incompatible with Afterlife. It could fit after The Video Game, however.
- The comics by IDW remain their own thing, acting as a nexus point for all the other universes and the various sundries that don’t go anywhere else, like Casper and the board games.
- The 2016 reboot also remains its own thing, since it happens in its own distinct universe. I’d say the only thing it actually depends on is the 1984 film, but doesn’t otherwise contradict any other media.
Yikes. I expect this to get worse with Frozen Empire. Have I mentioned I hate multiverses? Or, more accurately, I hate multiverses as a get-out-of-jail-free-card for lazy writing. There’s no specific reason I can think of that means Afterlife has to be such a continuity wrecking-ball. It effectively nukes Ghostbusters II, The Video Game and Real / Extreme from ever being considered part of the same story just because.
Let me elaborate with a side note, Star Trek: Discovery does the same thing. It ignores the canon history and rules of its own franchise for no real reason other than “we couldn’t be bothered”. Nothing that happens in it needs to break continuity, it just does it because fuck it. That’s how they’ve written themselves into corners and ended up needing to send the Discovery hundreds of years into the future to undo a bunch of massive consequences that break all the other Trek series it’s supposed to exist with! It makes me want to shake the writers and say “it’s your series, guys: you control it and literally wrote this to all happen… you’ve no excuse for now needing a plot-contrivance to wave a magic wand and fix everything: just write better stories!”
For the record, I don’t think continuity should be a straight-jacket to stop creativity and good story-telling. If something super-minor contradicts something else super-minor: fine, “a wizard did it” or whatever. Similarly, visual styles move on with the passage of time: fine, I get that. Star Trek in 2024 can’t look like Star Trek in 1967 because that would look stupid.
Likewise, if you have a super cool awesome story that simply must be told and you have to retroactively change-and-explain something, fine. That’s a good tradeoff and a good reason. If you want to twist in a new direction and tell a new riff on an old story, fine, go create an alternate universe. That’s also a good reason.
However, if you’ve got some warmed-over characters and borrowed plot-beats that you want to film because we need the movie to happen, and you consider your time too precious to waste watching (in the case of Ghostbusters) two movies and some videogame cutscenes, that’s a bad reason. It’s lazy and unimaginative.
So, just what is the Ghostbusters story as of 2024?
Near as I can tell, the official timeline is now:
- Ghostbusters (1984)
- maybe Ghostbusters II (1989) …if you squint
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
and that’s it. Everything else is now a grab-bag of alternate realities that splinter, combine and recombine depending how (and if) you try to fit Afterlife in.
To my mind, that throws away too many good stories, characterisations and plot-beats that add to the concept of Ghostbusters — for me. I don’t see Ghostbusters as a family fantasy, I see it as a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi fantasy that has a very distinct feel and tone. Irreverent, paradoxical and fantastic.
It’s four people, plus their sassy receptionist, who are simultaneously superheroes who save the Earth… but also blue-collar exterminators permanently on the brink of bankruptcy and litigation. Loony geniuses who consult ridiculous tomes like Spate’s Catalog and Tobin’s Spirit Guide when they’re not building nuclear accelerators or sleeping with mood slime. A fast-talking salesman, a stoic everyman, a naïve engineer and a mad scientist who adopt a ghost as a pet and try to hide their utter disregard for scientific ethics and safety from the EPA.
So let’s flip the script and combine all the pieces in the way that best fits and includes the most Ghostbusters-y stories. Let’s put together a head-canon:
- Ghostbusters (1984). Duh.
- The Real Ghostbusters (1986–1987), series 1 and 2, which conveniently establish in “Take Two” that the 1984 film is a dramatisation of the Ghostbusters’ story.
- Ghostbusters II (1989).
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009)
- Extreme Ghostbusters (1997)
And into that, we can add Ghostbusters (2016) as one alternate-reality and the IDW Ghostbusters comics as another. The latter serving as a focal-point for crossovers between IDW, the cartoons and the movie. This way we have a nice, diverse and varied main canon with two alternates which we can use for riffs and “what-if” stories, or just stories that don’t quite fit in the main timeline.
I’ve dropped Real Ghostbusters series 3 onwards. With all due respect to Dave Coulier, Buster Jones and Kath Soucie (Mk. II voices for Venkman, Zeddemore and Melnitz, respectively) the tone, style and stories just don’t fit properly. It’s weird to split the show into two like that, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. There’s too much good stuff in S1–2 to ignore, and too much tone dissonance in S3+ to write-off.
We can even include Afterlife and Empire in as another alternate reality, if we’re desperate to — some other branch-universe where the events of Ghostbusters (1984) happened but none of it was funny!
For me, that’s the perfect continuity for Ghostbusters. It includes everything that makes the idea what it is, and kicks the 2020's sequels into the “other” box, rather than making them part of the main pillar of the story.
As I said at the outset, I won’t begrudge most anything that gives Ernie Hudson and Paul Rudd work. That said, I probably won’t see Empire in the cinema. I’ll wait for it to be available at home. I also don’t expect to like it very much, I think it’ll be much the same as Afterlife: not nearly comedic enough; too full of reverence for the Ghostbusters concept and too willing to throw away stuff that actually is Ghostbusters for the sake of making more stuff that isn’t, really.
I don’t doubt it’ll be a perfectly good film, and I’m sure everyone involved will do excellent jobs. Like its predecessor, however, it just won’t have a compelling reason to exist beyond we need a new movie to happen.
Do you have a mental map in your head of what is and isn’t Ghostbusters to you? Indeed, do you have a preferred head-canon of what’s in and out? Perhaps you simply like it all, because it reminds you of both something you love, and of a time when you used to run around the playground bustin’ ghosts with your pals?
Drop me a note and share, if you like. I’d be curious to know.
