Yep, that good one. I like it as a story, but I’m really into it.
Okay, quick history. In 1975 Filmation created a kids sitcom called The Ghost Busters, a reunion for F Troop‘s favorite duo of Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch. They played paranormal investigators who were sent Mission: Impossible style on missions along with a gorilla named Tracy (Bob Burns in a costum…sorry, “training” Tracy). Fast forward to the 1980s. Dan Aykroyd wants to make a horror movie with comedy elements about a group of paranormal hunters he was calling Ghost Smashers, but later decided to call it Ghostbusters. The movie did so well that Filmation brought their version back, this time animated and with a bit of a superhero bend rather than the original’s PI bend, as the children of the originals took over the family business. This matters only for the naming and why there were two cartoons.
The other, named The Real Ghostbusters, is probably a swipe at the Filmation series, which is technically a continuation of the ORIGINAL Ghost Busters. The show is supposed to be the “real life” adventures of the characters from the movie. One episode, “Take Two”, even has the Ghostbusters visiting the movie set as consultants on their own life story, when it gets haunted by a real ghost. Our quartet never gets to meet the actors but they are name dropped and the end of the episode features the opening from the movie as the guys watch it later. This also explains the differences in character design between the characters from the movie who return to the cartoon: Peter, Ray, Egon, Winston, and Janine. Slimer basically looks the same. This show was a huge hit, lasting for seven seasons on ABC, getting a one-season syndicated original run alongside it, and a sequel series Extreme Ghostbusters in 1997 that turned up the horror levels while still being kid-friendly body horror. It was for an older audience.
Back to the Real show though. It was such a huge hit that a sequel movie was greenlit, simply titled Ghostbusters II because not every movie needed a fancy subtitle back then. It came out in 1989, three years after the cartoon began and into the fifth season. This is where trouble begins. Ghostbusters II is a good sequel on it’s own. I do enjoy it because the people making it seemed to care about what they were doing. On the other hand I’m just not really into the movie, and this has become total apathy for the more recent sequels. I can tell you why, and it all begins with a trope I am so tired of seeing: the reunion movie!
I could do a Trope Shark article about my problems with reunion movies but the short version is that the formula is the same. Everybody departs and has to come back together. Sometimes not even the married couples stay together, though most of the time they do. Everyone else? Gone. They didn’t just go to their own lives, they left town. They rarely communicate. Or they just stopped doing what they were doing and did other things.
That last one is Ghostbusters II‘s failing for me. After the end of the first movie the business is done. Ray and Winston are doing kids birthday parties. I forget what Egon was doing but it wasn’t as embarrassing, while Peter became an author. We know plenty of time has past because Dana had time to get married, lose her husband, and have a one year old son named Oscar to raise on her own. Meanwhile, Louis Tully went from being an accountant to the guys’ lawyer just to keep him in the movie. They didn’t even want to do a sequel. Columbia Pictures did, and the success of The Real Ghostbusters on ABC and the merchandise and licenced comics that came with it just made them more insistent. They also wanted Slimer to do more in this movie. The character was a breakout thanks to appearing in all the advertising before and then getting “fleshed” out in the show.
And here’s where my problems began. I liked the movie, but I really liked the show. I know, it’s not canon to the movies anymore than other animated spinoffs. Outside of Star Trek I can’t think of an animated spinoff that was canon, and even that one took years to make official while Lower Decks is only maybe canon thanks to the two annoying characters ending up on Strange New Worlds, with the Pike crew. Men In Black had the same division, but Men In Black: The Series wasn’t partly responsible for their sequel, which I don’t like for altogether different reasons. The Real Ghostbusters, on the other hand, added quite a bit to the franchise.
Why did Egon start looking for ways to contain spirits? He was tormented by the Boogieman as a child. We visit Ray’s hometown. Janine continue to pursue Egon until the sequel forced Louis Tully into the cast for some reason. Winston gets to do more to help out, even coming up with a few plans of his own, and showing off mechanical skills. Peter’s attitude makes more sense when we meet his traveling con artist absentee father, but the show also fleshed out Peter to show he does have a soft side, even for Slimer despite his arguing with him until the later seasons screwed everything up. ABC brought in some consulting firm who apparently spent more time reading child psychology books than actually being around children and made some really bonehead decisions we won’t get into here. You don’t have to be an activist group like Sweet Baby Inc and likeminded “consultants” to suck at good consulting. Before they showed up, though? The show built on what the original movie did and did it beautifully.
What’s that, you say? The cartoons weren’t canon and you admitted the people making the movie didn’t even like the show or want Slimer involved? Yes, I know that and while I’d personally like to see that, I understand why it isn’t. Like with the original, the second movie could just be considered fictional in the show’s world even as is. What I’m getting at is that the show didn’t make it a reunion story. The ghosts didn’t stop showing up for three years so that somehow people forgot ghosts exist. While this is already dumb in the two more recent sequels, three years ago…
A GIANT MARSHMELLOW MASCOT STOMPED ON A CHURCH AND THEN EXPLODED IN MARSHMELLOW ALL OVER THE BLOCK!
You could make the case that the supernatural stuff was all done after Gozer was defeated and the Traveler blowed up real good, but for the Mayor’s reelection campaign manager to decide ghosts weren’t real just to have another Walter Peck situation made zero sense. It was three years ago. For that matter why did all ghost activity seem to stop after Gozer’s defeat until the cursed Vigo painting showed up in the museum? Which came first, Vigo or the mood slime? Why couldn’t they have had Peter and Dana marry, and Oscar be HIS son, giving Peter higher stakes beyond wanting to get back with Dana, instead of reverting to type from the first movie? (Sure, he didn’t torture some dude as part of a fake lab experiment so he could get in some college girl’s pants, but he was still a jerk in the interview about his book.)
Have the story be just the next big adventure for the Ghostbusters, whether you consider the show lesser stories or ignore it altogether. Samhain, Nexa, and the Boogaloo among other stories are hardly “smaller” threats that Gozer, Vigo, or the monsters from the last two sequels, but you know what I mean. They weren’t movie level threats, not even Nexa. The guys should have still been fighting ghosts instead of having to go to trial and only proven justified when the Scolari brothers showed up in ghostly electric chairs (family picture, right?) to attack the judge who sent them there. Louis could still be doing their taxes but outside of romancing Janine away from her crush on Egon and making friends with the ghost Ivan Reitman didn’t even want in the first place, he doesn’t do a lot. I don’t need the philosophical spiritual debate of religions after proof ghosts and a Sumerian god show up in Manhattan like some people want to see. How do you even do that without ticking off real world believers in those faiths? I just want to see the next chapter like the shows did, not another “get the band back together” story.
Every other sequel not a new continuity makes the same mistake except for the video game that was considered the third Ghostbusters “movie” until Afterlife came out. In that game, rendered non-canon like other such games–poor Tron 2.0, the Ghostbusters are still going strong and the player takes on the role of a new recruit. This is a better idea than Egon the absentee father dying and his kids having to take over. They could even take from the Extreme Ghostbusters playbook, only have it be Ray’s students since Harold Ramis passed away, but either have the business still in business (critics of the 2016 gender-swap reboot even stated you could have had it as a franchise in Chicago or somewhere and make it a continuation) or have a good explanation why the supernatural stopped until just before this story. This is also a mistake Extreme Ghostbusters had in that only one student believed in ghosts, the class was empty except for the new quartet, and it wasn’t until a new threat spread a ghost virus around New York City that the new group showed up.
Even then the 90s show got some things right despite the reunion thing and having to remind everyone ghosts were real, which is even dumber in the cartoon continuity than it is in the movie one. It passed the torch not only in keeping Egon, Janine, and Slimer as mentors to the new kids but in a two-part episode they had Ray, Peter, and Winston come back to help them and bridge the generation gap as the two teams eventually win each other over. I’ve heard what Phoebe did in Frozen Empire and Kylie did it better because she had more important personal stakes than a new ghost bestie she may or may not have been gay for. Kylie thought she was contacting her grandmother’s spirit, being the only member who believed in ghosts. Apparently a giant marshmallow man and a river of slime solidifying around a museum was enough for her along with her own repressed childhood experience with the Grundel in a similar fashion that Egon had with the Boogeyman.
The 2016 trailers and clips don’t look funny or interesting, Afterlife is another movie where the sun doesn’t exist and is just nostalgia bait, with critics I follow who supported it reassessing after Frozen Empire took some of the…sorry…life out of the new movies. I’m just not interested in any of them, and while the second movie was okay it’s not what I wanted to see the movies do when the shows had the better idea. I’m not saying make the shows canon (though I’d love it), but see what they did right and take those notes to the sequel. I wouldn’t mind playing Ghostbusters: The Video Game or seeing a good runthrough of the story as it seems to have the right idea, but I’m happy with the original movie and the cartoons. Yes, even the Slimer shorts. That’s a topic for another time, though.
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