I… don’t know what to make of this first trailer. The original Ghostbusters remains one of the best Sci-Fi/Nerdy Comedies ever made. I liked the second one as a kid, and enjoyed the reboot well enough (it’s not perfect, but wasn’t anywhere near as bad as so many people pretend it is).
When they announced that the long-rumored 3rd movie in the main series was actually going forward with production, I was kind of surprised. Dan Aykroyd had been trying to make it work… well, since the second one bombed, I guess, but it seemed like the project was sunk after all the preemptive backlash to the reboot and the death of Harold Ramis back in 2014. Ultimately, though, it was revived by Jason Reitman, son of original producer and director Ivan Reitman – who is a very esteemed director in his own right.
I don’t trust a lot of trailers, but this one is both good and bad. Good because it does a great job of tying together old and new without seemingly relying on the old characters being there for the plot. We get a brief glimpse, seen how it’s been forgotten (does anyone really remember the 80s anyway), and tie a lot of nostalgia for the viewers. We get Paul Rudd, whom I will always welcome in any movie, and the new characters introduced.
What feels off, for me… is mostly in the product that’s being presented. Fun fact… Ghostbusters was originally going to be a bonkers horror movie that was nothing like the product we got. If you’ve read the original treatments, well, they’re rough and don’t sound like a great movie… which luckily we never got.
With this, the comedy is light to non-existent, and it’s clear that whoever is making it, or made this trailer, is really big into Stranger Things. This looks like a good movie, but much like the reboot, feels somehow out-of-step with what the spirit of the original one. It’s not the same, the reboot was out of step because it was too hard into the comedy and ignoring the message and politics of the original, here it’s because it’s looking at the lore but not the comedy and tone. On the other hand, maybe this time the “bad guy” will not actually be the good guy that we’re supposed to pretend is the bad guy despite the fact that he was right and just doing his job, so it will end up as a wash.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife will hit theaters on July 10th, 2020, and we can find out how well it works then.
