In Appreciation Of Ghostbusters
In recent years, I've written about Ghostbusters 2016. I liked that movie, though I intentionally avoided it when it first came out. I admit that I felt like it was sort of disrespectful to the franchise that they made it an all-woman cast, rather than trying to go back to the original cast and continue their storyline in some way. That situation was rectified with Ghostbuster Afterlife.
That controversy doesn't need to be included in this column. The fact is, if we didn't have Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, we wouldn't be talking about anything that followed. The second movie gets a little bit of disrespect, but I find that I enjoyed it just as much as the first movie. The movies were a fresh take on ghost movies, and I liked them.
Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, and there was a lot in there. By now, we've heard all of the bits of interesting trivia. There's the controversy of Huey Lewis and The News being asked to do the theme song of the first movie but being unavailable. Then, we have the theme song, written by Ray Parker Jr, which became very popular. It sounds eerily like I Want A New Drug by Huey Lewis and The News, and of course there was the legal fallout there.
Originally, John Belushi was going to star in this movie as Dr. Peter Venkman. He and Aykroyd had a few movie projects planned, but John's death put an end to that. Bill Murray came in and did a good job, but I think his love/hate relationship with this franchise is why we didn't get the third movie that we should have gotten. He and Ramis had a parting of the ways, unfortunately. I'm glad that they were able to reconnect before Harold died.
One of the people set to star in this movie was Eddie Murphy. They were definitely going for name recognition. Unfortunately, Eddie was a bit busy. It is said that the script for Winston Zeddemore was reduced just a little bit as Ernie Hudson was brought in to play the role. I feel Ernie did a good job as the "everyman" character who reacts to all of this stuff. I like his line in there about if they pay him enough, he'll believe anything.
You've got Ray, Egon and Peter, and Winston comes in as the fourth Ghostbuster. The three scientists come up with a way to detect ghosts, but also a way to remove them from the premises. I don't think we'd seen much of this concept expressed in entertainment.
There was a Sunday morning kids show of the same name before this franchise became a thing, and that's why the cartoon based on this movie went with the name The Real Ghostbusters. They went ahead and tied up the legal issues before they became a problem.
So, the three scientists realize that they can go into business removing ghosts from wherever they are haunting and make the place safe. The fun comes when they realize there is a bigger reason for all of the hauntings, and it goes back to something that happened in the past. I think the reason this movie was such a hit was because nobody had seen anything quite like it. This excited moviegoers, and we all had to be there to see it in the theater.
Everything didn't have to be a big blockbuster back then. I remember one measuring stick for the success of a movie back in those days was whether they made $100 million. If they did, it was a big hit. This movie was given about a $30 million budget and made nearly $300 million at the box office. With that kind of success, of course there had to be a second movie.
Ivan Reitman returned to be the director and producer, and the whole cast was back. This included Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett, Rick Moranis as Lewis Tully and Anne Potts as Janine Meinitz. They had a little bit more money to play with as the budget was estimated between $30 million and $40 million, but this time they made a little less at $215 million. Still, it was another success.
Loaded with special effects, good music and excitement, both of these movies captured the attention of the moviegoers from start to finish. Whether they were defeating Gozer in the first movie or Vigo The Carpithian in the second movie, all while being threatened by the local government, you were on their side.
This isn't your basic movie review. Most of us have already seen this movie. If you haven't, why haven't you? I love them both. They were lots of fun, and I was ready for a third movie. Sequels were becoming a thing in the 1980s, and they got past the stigma of sequels often ruining everything. We started seeing sequels to franchises that weren't so bad. Despite the fact that the second movie here gets a negative rap, it wasn't bad.
However, Murray didn't see any reason to come back to do another movie. Obviously, the cast didn't want to do it without him. Ramis and Aykroyd would occasionally write something with the hopes that they could get everybody back together again. We waited and waited until we got the closest thing we were going to get to a sequel with the Ghostbusters video game in 2009.
The original stars came back to reprise their roles as voice actors in the game that had a story. The four were basically training the new recruit, who would be a part of the team. At various times, you'd be working with one of them, and it had a story that unfolded much like one of the movies. It was actually quite enjoyable. In much the same way as the Back To The Future video game of around that time, many regard it as an unofficial sequel in the franchise.
With the passing of Harold Ramis, the idea was pretty much dropped to make a movie centering around these characters training new ones. The studio opted to give us the all-female cast in 2016, which in my opinion was not a bad movie at all. It's biggest flaw might be that it's seen as a slap in the face to the first two movies, especially in light of some of the jokes that were used. This included having the character played by Bill Murray being skeptical and ultimately flying out the window of a building to his death.
I think that maybe people went a little bit overboard in their hatred of that movie. Some of it comes from the passion of people wanting to see the original cast or something that was a continuation of what had begun with the first two movies. Ultimately, we got that with Ghostbusters Afterlife, which did a little bit better at the box office than 2016. It's seen in some people's eyes as having "saved" the franchise.
To me, art is in the eye of the beholder. A movie is good if the one viewing it thinks it's good. It doesn't matter whether the critics like it or not. If you're sitting there watching a movie and you are entertained by it, then you're not wrong to say you watched a good movie.
I will say that Ghostbusters 1 and 2 were both good movies. I know I'm short on details about the stories, but if you haven't seen the movies, what are you waiting for? Get them and prepare to be entertained.
