Well, this has certainly been a longtime coming. The original 1984 Ghostbusters remains one of the most beloved comedies of all time. It’s one of those movies that helped define its decade and shape a generation. Simply put, Ghostbusters was a phenomenon.
Despite being an adult-oriented comedy, its fun, supernatural premise made Ghostbusters one of those movies that won over audiences of all ages, with toylines, video games and a popular cartoon series released in its wake. Such franchising may seem commonplace these days, but in 1984, the only other movie that had that kind of impact was Star Wars, released seven years prior. One would think with the level of success Ghostbusters reached, that we would have seen many Ghostbusters sequels by this point.
Nope.
Five years after the first film, Ghostbusters II was released. Though a modest success, it failed to reach the critical and commercial heights of its predecessor (though the sequel has gained more appreciation in the years since). While it’s understandable that the humbler success of Ghostbusters II slowed things down, this was still Ghostbusters we’re talking about. A third film (and more) seemed inevitable. Yet fans waited and waited for years and years and years, and ‘Ghostbusters III’ never materialized.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Series creator, co-writer and co-star Dan Aykroyd had ideas planned out, and even scripts written in various different forms over the years. I can’t remember a time growing up in which there weren’t talks of Ghostbusters III nearing production. And yet, it never happened. Despite being one of the biggest hits of the 1980s, one of the earliest blockbusters, and one of the most popular film franchises in history, Ghostbusters – as far as the movies went – seemed locked in the 80s.
Fast-forward to 2009, which saw the release of Ghostbusters: The Video Game on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Not only did the game bring back the original cast to voice their respective characters, it was even based on several of the potential Ghostbusters III ideas. The game’s success, and the fact it was able to nab the cast (including Bill Murray, who was previously reluctant to return to the franchise) revitalized studio interest in possibly producing a third Ghostbusters film. A few more years went by, and still, nothing came about.
Sadly, in 2014, actor and filmmaker Harold Ramis – who portrayed Ghostbuster Egon Spengler and wrote the first two films alongside Aykroyd – passed away. This halted plans for Ghostbusters 3 yet again, which eventually lead to Columbia and Sony deciding to outright reboot the franchise.
It didn’t go well.
The 2016 reboot ended up being a box office bomb and was, sadly, one of those things that became unnecessarily politicized due to its all female cast, with studios all too willing to vilify disappointed fans, and blaming its lackluster box office run on sexism (Wonder Woman and Frozen say hello, by the way). In actuality, it was the nature of rebooting the Ghostbusters outright that was so deflating to fans (myself included). Again, we weren’t talking about a franchise that already had several sequels and was in need of a fresh start. Ghostbusters bizarrely halted after its second entry, and ‘Ghostbusters III’ always seemed to be floating around. Fans simply wanted it to become a reality. A reboot was not something that anyone asked for.
Finally, in 2019, it seemed like Ghostbusters III was actually happening, with Ghostbusters: Afterlife being revealed by director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman, the director of the original two films). The movie was originally scheduled for a Summer 2020 release, but we all know how 2020 ended up, and the film’s release was delayed by over a year.
So here we are, thirty-two years after Ghostbusters II, and audiences are finally getting a follow-up to the classic 1980s films. Being thirty-two years old myself as of this writing, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is, in a way, a movie I have waited my whole life to see.
Though it isn’t the movie that I (and I think others) ultimately wanted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife still provides an entertaining feature that plays out more like a love letter to Ghostbusters, and a fun way for today’s kids to jump into the series, if maybe not the proper Ghostbusters III we’ve waited ever so patiently to see.
Appropriately set thirty-two years after the defeat of Vigo the Carpathian, the Ghostbusters have long-since disbanded due to the lack of supernatural activity in New York City. Right off the bat, that’s a little disappointing. Knowing that the Ghostbusters didn’t have any further adventures in between Ghostbusters II and Afterlife is kind of a bummer. The film could have at least said the ghost activity quieted down after another decade or so, to at least let us imagine the shenanigans the Ghostbusters could have gotten into together during that time.
Anyway, as the Ghostbusters went their separate ways, only Egon Spengler continued his research on the supernatural. These studies eventually lead him to the small town of Summerville, Oklahoma, a town founded by the Gozerian cultist Ivo Shandor (who was mentioned in the original film, and served as the villain in the 2009 video game). Sadly, Egon has recently passed away due to a heart attack, leaving his Summerville farmland to his estranged daughter Callie (Carrie Coon).
Callie has recently been evicted from her apartment in the city, and moves into her father’s farm with her two kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), who never knew their grandfather and are unaware that he was a Ghostbuster. Though neither kid is too enthusiastic about living in the dilapidated farm, Trevor quickly takes to the new town, getting a Summer job at a restaurant to be close to his new crush, Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). The more socially awkward Phoebe has a tougher time fitting in, but manages to find a friend in a kid who calls himself ‘Podcast’ (Logan Kim). Though Phoebe is more interested in the ghostly presence that seems to be living in the farm than she is with the town itself.
Naturally, as time goes by, the Spengler kids begin to unearth their family history. Phoebe discovers her grandfather’s secret room, where he kept most of his Ghostbusters equipment, while Trevor repairs the Ectomobile hiding out in the shed. Additionally, Phoebe’s Summer school teacher, Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), a lifelong admirer of the Ghostbusters, helps the kids learn of their grandfather’s work.
Of course, with Summerville being founded by Ivo Shandor, there’s going to be more to the town than meets the eye. And Summerville hides a secret that connects it to the evil, interdimensional entity Gozer.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is undeniably a fun movie: It plays up the fanservice for the series and introduces us to some fun new characters, it’s a well-acted picture (with particular praise going to McKenna Grace, who fittingly makes Phoebe a young, female version of Egon), and the visual effects are quite good. But the film does hit a few bumps in the road.
Let’s get to the elephant in the room right away: the original Ghostbusters cast are barely in the movie. Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd all return as Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore and Ray Stantz (respectively), but only for a few all-too-brief moments of screentime.
Now, okay, I get it. It’s not their movie. I understand that, and I’m fine with it. After things got to a certain point, I always figured a potential third Ghostbusters movie would be about the Ghostbusters passing the mantle down to a new generation. The issue I have is that Ghostbusters: Afterlife isn’t that. The original Ghostbusters just kind of show up in Afterlife, without any real significance to the story, other than Egon’s legacy. While seeing Peter, Winston and Ray will always be a welcome sight, their role in Afterlife feels kind of like a glorified cameo. Annie Potts also returns as Janine Melnitz, but what you saw of her in the trailer is what you see of her in the movie. At least they’re all playing their beloved characters this time, instead of unrelated cameos like the 2016 movie.
What I’m getting at is the film really takes its time relishing in the fanservice of all the gadgets and gizmos of the Ghostbusters. The movie basks in the glory of the Ecto-1 and the ghost traps, but it didn’t stop and think that, just maybe, the fanservice Ghostbusters fans would most want is the Ghostbusters themselves? Again, I’m fine with the fact that it’s not their movie anymore, but after all the time that’s passed since Ghostbusters 2, I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have loved to have seen the iconic original cast actually have some role in the plot. I can kind of get what they were going for, building up to the classic characters that made us love the series to begin with. But after thirty-two years and all the start/stops of a potential third entry, we kind of want to spend a little more time with these beloved characters.
It just seems so weird that Sony and Columbia can’t seem to figure this out. First they give us a reboot that no one asked for, and now we finally have a follow-up to Ghostbusters 2, and the role of the Ghostbusters is minimal. It really shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp. You have a Ghostbusters movie, give us the Ghostbusters!
Okay, I’m going on about this quite a bit. But I think this is an important aspect to bring up because I think depending on how you view Afterlife’s position as a sequel to Ghostbusters II will affect your overall opinion of the film (if you’re a longtime fan of the franchise like me, anyway). If you’re looking at Afterlife as Ghostbusters 3, then you’re probably going to be disappointed, because it doesn’t really fit that bill. But if you view Afterlife as its own movie that simply takes place in the Ghostbusters universe, it becomes easier to admire.
Even with its merits, however, Ghostbusters: Afterlife still folds a bit under the pressure of living up to the original 1984 film, as much of the plot is derived from the mythology surrounding the Gozer character established in that film (and sadly, as a fan/nerd of the series, I can point out some inconsistencies Afterlife creates within the established Gozer mythology). One of the downsides to this is that Afterlife simply recreates many of the same story beats of the original film in regards to said Gozer mythology, instead of getting creative and making something new out of it (we are talking about an interdimensional god, after all. There’s plenty of room to get creative with that concept). There are so many directions they could have gone when you have a villain like Gozer, so it’s a shame that Afterlife chooses to fall back on familiar territory.
Unfortunately, as much as Afterlife loves to make callbacks and create fanservice, it only does so in regards to the original film. Because outside of a few background Easter eggs, the only reference to Ghostbusters II is that Ray is back working at his occult book store, first seen in the 1989 sequel.
Look, I understand that Ghostbusters II isn’t as esteemed as its predecessor (I love it to death, personally), but it’s still an important part of Ghostbusters history. The characters in Afterlife are constantly referring to the events of the original film as the “Manhattan Incident,” but shouldn’t it be the Manhattan IncidentS? Did everyone just forget that the evil spirit of a 16th century tyrant almost resurrected himself through a painting, and that the Ghostbusters animated the Statue of Liberty to stop him? That seems like something the characters in this movie should remember. It’s almost like Afterlife is embarrassed by Ghostbusters II’s initial reception, and glosses over its events as a result. But in ignoring the sequel to Ghostbusters, it makes Afterlife’s reverence for the series’ history feel incomplete.
Another downer is that the whole subplot involving the Ivo Shandor character feels underdeveloped, like maybe there were several scenes involving this aspect of the story that were cut from the final film. Ivo Shandor’s subplot in the film is introduced, forgotten about, and then rapidly resolved all at once (sadly for fans, this also probably means Ghostbusters: The Video Game is no longer canon). Without spoiling any details, the scene that wraps up Ivo Shandor’s role in the story is also the worst scene in the movie, being edited so sloppily you can tell some of its events are clearly playing out of order (and not in a way I think was intentional). The scene in question moves so hectically and sporadically, that I wonder if the editor downed an entire gallon of Kool-Aid beforehand. It’s reminiscent of the chaotic pace of The Rise of Skywalker, albeit not nearly that bad (and at least here it’s just a single scene, not the whole picture).
Aside from that one scene/subplot, most of my complaints with Ghostbusters: Afterlife are admittedly rooted in my status as a lifelong fan of the series (it plays up fanservice but doesn’t feature enough of the Ghostbusters themselves. It pays homage to the original film but ignores Ghostbusters II, etc.). Granted, due to the continuity of the films, I feel those complaints are still worth mentioning, but they are still the complaints of someone who’s been waiting their whole life for Ghostbusters III. But let’s be fair, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is not Ghostbusters III. It’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. And that’s okay.
I admit it took me two viewings to be able to properly appreciate Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The first time, the shadow of its predecessors (and the whole “waiting my entire life” thing) worked against it. I still enjoyed it, but my misgivings were stronger the first time around. Only after seeing it a second time, and seeing it only for itself, did my complaints become more subdued.
There is a lot to like about Ghostbusters: Afterlife once you accept it for what it is. The film made the right choice by making its young heroes the descendants of Egon Spengler, with the whole film playing out like a loving tribute to Harold Ramis and the character he brought to life. There are also plenty of fun scenes to be had, with some highlights being a chase sequence where the kids follow a runaway ghost in the Ecto-1, and a scene where an army of mini Stay Puft Marshmallow Men torment Gary Grooberson in a Walmart.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is an entertaining movie. It may get bogged down at times by playing up the fanservice and not always getting it right. But this is a movie aimed more towards introducing a new generation of kids to the Ghostbusters. It presents the material in a more kid-friendly, Spielbergian way. So even though the film may fall back on nostalgia, it does open the door for a new direction for the series going forward. The Spengler family and their friends could have more adventures, and the film even hints that one of the original Ghostbusters may start things back up in New York.
During my first viewing of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, there was a group of kids in the audience dressed like Ghostbusters. It warms my heart knowing that the series still appeals to kids today. I think it’s important to remember that Ghostbusters: Afterlife was made more for these kids, with us older fans still getting a little bit of what we want out of it.
Ghostbusters III, as we always wanted it, is a myth. Sony and Columbia (bafflingly) missed that opportunity years ago. But Ghostbusters: Afterlife gives us something else to enjoy in its own right. And if all goes well, maybe the kids that this movie was made for can get a Ghostbusters III of their own.
First thing’s first, I owe Ghostbusters 2 an apology. In a recent post, I described it as a “disappointing” sequel. I suppose, in an objective sense, that’s kind of true, seeing as Ghostbusters 2 was only a modest success, whereas the original was a decade-defining movie. But I spoke out of faulty memory. I hadn’t seen Ghostbusters 2 in years, and after you hear/read about how it wasn’t as good as the original Ghostbusters so often, I guess at some point I let that get the better of me. As I’m gearing up for Ghostbusters: Afterlife (a movie I have quite literally waited my whole life to see, given I was born the year of Ghostbusters 2’s release), I watched the original two Ghostbusters movies. And you know what? Ghostbusters 2 is actually a solid sequel. Maybe not an all-time great like the 1984 original, but Ghostbusters 2 is definitely better than it gets credit for.
Sure, Ghostbusters 2 has its faults: some story elements feel very loosely connected, the story of the Ghostbusters getting back together plays a little too close to the story of the formation of the Ghostbusters in the first movie, and that echoing is really felt in the third act, which feels a bit too familiar. There’s also that weird part with the disembodied heads in the subway which comes out of nowhere. Point being Ghostbusters 2 is a good movie that has its flaws, but it’s better than its reputation suggests. It just has the burden of being a good movie that follows-up a great one.
With that out of the way, there is one element of Ghostbusters 2 that stands out from its predecessor: it has something to say. While the original is one of my favorite films (and arguably the most quotable movie of all time), it is more about the comedy, the concepts and the entertainment. But Ghostbusters 2 has a message for its audience, and while it may be a bit overt, it’s so well meaning and earnest that it’d be hard to call it preachy.
In Ghostbusters 2, as the titular paranormal exterminators are slowly reforming, they discover a mysterious pink slime is taking over New York City. Meanwhile, at an art gallery, the spirit of a 16th century tyrant, Prince Vigo von Homburg Deutschendorf, begins to enter the world of the living through a painting, with his presence bringing about other specters as well.
It turns out that the slime is a physical manifestation of human emotion. Though the slime that’s building up under New York City is specifically the product of negative feelings: people’s anger towards one another, their contempt, frustrations, hostilities, and hatred. Vigo, the spirit of a wicked magician, is drawing strength from the presence of the negatively charged “mood slime,” allowing him to gain more and more power and influence in the physical world (though he plans to kidnap a baby and possess it to have a proper physical form).
The presence of the slime both creates and feeds off the negativity of people. When Ghostbusters (and friends) Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore (Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson) are exposed to it, they nearly come to blows. The negativity of the people of the city created the slime, and the slime in turn enhances that negativity. Hatred begets more hatred.
Later, the Ghostbusters learn that the slime can in fact be purified when exposed to positivity: love, friendship, hope, happiness, even song and dance. The presence of the “evil” slime isn’t entirely doom and gloom, and people can in fact reverse the negativity that they themselves created.
As Vigo gains in power, he can manipulate the negative slime to do his bidding, eventually sealing the art gallery with an impenetrable shield of negative energy so no one can interrupt his planned ritual to possess the aforementioned baby. To combat Vigo’s power, the Ghostbusters need to produce a massive amount of positivity in order to enter the art gallery. They end up using the purified “good” mood slime to animate the Statue of Liberty (“something that everyone in this town can get behind… a symbol“) as a means to instill hope and unity in the people of New York, blasting Howard Huntsberry’s “Higher and Higher” through loudspeakers for good measure.
Using the Statue of Liberty and the positivity it produces in people, the Ghostbusters break through the barrier into the art gallery. Although Vigo manifests, overpowering and immobilizing the Ghostbusters, the people throughout New York City, inspired and united, begin singing and embracing each other, weakening Vigo and forcing him to retreat into his painting. The Ghostbusters are then able to use the positive slime on the painting (in an admittedly disappointing final encounter) to seal off Vigo’s access to the physical world. Although the Ghostbusters get that last little moment of action, the real victory took place a few moments before then, when they instilled hope and happiness in the citizens of New York. It’s that positivity that destroyed Vigo’s power.
“Aw hell yeah!”
A few other creative works have had similar messages, that the very idea of good can save the day, but they are still pretty rare, and fewer still that feel genuine enough for their message to ring true (It’s a Wonderful Life and EarthBound are among the exceptions that come to mind). And it’s this optimistic, hopeful attitude that I feel propels Ghostbusters 2 into being a better film than it gets credit for (this, and the entertainment value).
Some may say that’s cheesy or naive (though by doing so, those same critics may be proving the movie’s point), but I think it’s a beautiful little message. One that resonates truer today than it did in 1989 when the film was released. In this day and age when it seems like people want any and every excuse to be angry at the world, hate on everything, and embrace cynicism and nihilism as some forms of intellectualisms, we could all learn a thing or two from something so purely optimistic. We’re willingly bringing about Vigo’s world. Let’s all try to be a little more like the Ghostbusters, piloting the Statue of Liberty and bringing out the best in each other.
Somehow, my October movie watching managed to surpass my September movie watching. So I figured a second edition of this “My Month in Movies” thing was in order. But I stress this again, don’t expect this to be a monthly thing. Only something I’ll do when I feel I’ve watched enough movies to warrant it, and if I have the interest. But I certainly had the interest this month!
I managed to watch twenty-five feature films throughout the month of Halloween, with the holiday itself inspiring me to watch a number of them as a means to get in the holiday spirit (I’m festive like that). And somehow, I still managed to find the time to rewatch the entirety of what is arguably the best television show of all time. I honestly don’t know how I managed to watch everything I did in October, but I guess a bit of insomnia freed up some of my usual sleep time, so that probably “helped.” Additionally, the only video games I put any time into during the month were Metroid Dread and Mario Party Superstars, the latter of which wasn’t released until the tail end of the month (but it was still released before Halloween, which is what Nintendo should have done with Luigi’s Mansion 3 a few years back. No, I still haven’t forgiven them for releasing Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the day of Halloween but constantly advertised it as being “just in time” for Halloween).
*Ahem!*
Anyway, my point being my free time this month was basically in watching, not playing. Which is another reason why I may skip writing another one of these next month (we’ll see). I’m so backlogged in my reviews and write-ups for video games, that I really should prioritize that aspect of my website for a while.
Why am I explaining all this to you? I have quite a few movies to talk about, so let’s get cracking at this.
Here is the full list of movies I watched in October 2021, in chronological order of when I watched them. Once again, movies I watched for the very first time are marked with asterisks.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
The Maltese Falcon
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Spirited Away
Casablanca
Venom: Let There be Carnage*
The Addams Family 2 (2021)*
No Time to Die*
North by Northwest*
Dick Tracy*
The Adventures of Tintin
Jaws
Jaws 2*
Jaws 3(D)*
Jaws: The Revenge*
The Evil Dead*
Evil Dead 2*
Army of Darkness*
Dune (2021)*
Psycho
Rear Window
Howl’s Moving Castle
The Birds
Ghostbusters
In addition to all these movies, I also watched all 180 episodes of Seinfeld, as well as the 50-minute Disney+ special, The Muppets Haunted Mansion, which was cute (Gotta love The Muppets).
So quite the eclectic lineup, I must say. While in September my overall “flavor of the month” seemed to be action movies, for the obvious reasons in October it seemed to be various forms of horror and suspense. But if that’s too obvious, let’s say the flavor of the month was Alfred Hitchcock, seeing as I watched no less than four films by the great director. And yes, I started things off by watching the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy again. What of it?
After Ninja Turtles, I rewatched The Maltese Falcon for the first time in a few years. A classic Humphrey Bogart film, and the first to pair him up with actors Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, the latter of which made his acting debut in The Maltese Falcon as the villain, Kasper Gutman, AKA “The Fat Man.” The Maltese Falcon is often considered the first film noire, but that’s debated. Either way, it’s a great piece of classic cinema.
Then I had the terrific opportunity to once again (more specifically, thrice again) see my all time favorite movie, Spirited Away, on the big screen. With Spirited Away’s limited re-releases in 2016 through 2019, as well as these three viewings and when I first saw it in 2003, this brings my overall theatrical viewings of Spirited Away to 14! That’s the third most I’ve seen a movie in theaters (or fourth, depending on how you view a tie), and if these re-releases keep up (please do), it will climb it’s way to the top in no time. It would be fitting, seeing as it is my favorite film.
You know, I’ve made it no secret that Spirited Away is my favorite movie (along with My Neighbor Totoro), and yet I still procrastinate on making my lists of favorite films (whether by decade, genre, overall, what have you). And I feel like I’m not alone there. It seems like a lot of people can point out their absolute favorite of something, but then when it comes to making some kind of concrete list, there’s some pressure with making it for some reason. You’d think knowing your favorite would make everything else fall into place. I don’t know, that’s just an observation.
Next up was Casablanca, one of the most acclaimed and beloved films of all time, and another that starred Bogart and featured Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. It also features one of the most famous misquotes in movie history (“Play it again, Sam!” is never actually uttered. Though Bogart’s character does tell a character named Sam to play a song on a piano, the words are never in that specific order). Another great classic.
After that I saw some recent movies in theaters. I’ve already reviewed Venom: Let There be Carnage and The Addams Family 2, so you can go ahead and read those if you want. But I also saw the newest James Bond film, and the last to star Daniel Craig: No Time to Die.
I mostly enjoyed No Time to Die. It featured some exhilarating action scenes, and it was a fitting, melancholic sendoff to Daniel Craig’s James Bond. With that said, I don’t think it was as good as Casino Royale, Skyfall or Spectre (I actually still haven’t seen Quantum of Solace). Despite doing most of what it did well, I don’t think No Time to Die did them as well as those aforementioned movies. But one thing that was a huge downgrade from the past few Bond films was the villain. The past two films featured Javier Bardem and Chrisoph Waltz as the villains (the latter as James Bond’s big bad, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, no less). The former was physically imposing, the latter was mentally intimidating. So when No Time to Die wheels out Rami Malek as the bad guy, he kind of falls flat. He just doesn’t have a villainous presence like his predecessors, and his character’s motives are murky, at best. Not to mention his defining physical trait is that he has bad skin. A lot of Bond villains have some hook to their appearance: Blofeld is usually bald and has a nasty scar across his face; Oddjob has his hat; Jaws has, well, a big metal jaw. But No Time to Die’s villain, Lyutsifer Safin, has bad skin… Yeah, not quite the same.
What’s really disappointing is that No Time to Die brings back Christoph Waltz as Blofeld, but just for a single scene cameo. He should have just been the villain again, really. Especially since this was Craig’s last Bond film, it would have made all the more sense for Blofeld to be the final villain, given the character’s history in the franchise. By making Blofeld the villain of the previous film and then ending this current James Bond series with a new villain, it actually makes the whole scenario feel less important. Why doesn’t Hollywood have any faith in the idea of returning villains anymore?
I really should just review No Time to Die. Maybe some day I’ll rewatch all of the Craig Bond films and give them all a write-up.
North by Northwest was the first Hitchcock film I watched in October, and was the only one of the four I watched during the month that I watched for the very first time. Even if you’ve never seen North by Northwest, if you’re familiar with iconic movie moments, you’re probably familiar with this one.
The fact that I watched North by Northwest right after a James Bond film was coincidental, but fitting, seeing as it greatly influenced the spy thriller genre, most notably James Bond. The twist here being that the main character isn’t actually a spy, but gets mistaken for one. This is another great Hitchcock film, but one that I feel has one major flaw: the ending is waaay too abrupt.
I know, I’ve committed cinematic blasphemy once again. But the film has such a great build and execution to just about every moment beforehand, and then it literally wraps up seconds, seconds, after the final confrontation with the bad guys. If a modern movie did the same thing, all people would ever talk about would be the abrupt ending. With classic Hollywood it’s the opposite, and we skirt over something like that and only highlight the good. Granted, I would prefer people be more positive and have the outlook that the good outweighs and overpowers the bad, but it does seem like film buffs have a bit of a double standard with these things.
Otherwise North by Northwest is another winner in Hitchcock’s belt. The film’s writer even mentioned that he wanted to make sure he wrote “The Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films” (which admittedly seems a bit odd. You’d think Alfred Hitchcock would be the only person in the film’s production who could rightfully make that call, really).
Next we have Dick Tracy from 1990. What a wild ride this movie is. Although its story and characters are very simplistic, what really makes Dick Tracy stand out is its utter commitment to style. While modern comic book movies try to make the worlds of the comics look “grounded” and “more realistic,” Dick Tracy had the complete opposite mentality. It wanted to make reality look like a comic book! Talk about being ahead of its time!
There’s so much color and style in Dick Tracy, that its imagery really sticks in the mind afterwards. Not to mention its wild parade of villains, with pretty much all of them hiding under heaps of prosthetic makeup. You have guys with tiny faces, guys with no faces, and guys with prune faces!
Dick Tracy kind of reminds me a lot of The Rocketeer (1991), which I guess is fitting, seeing as both films were attempts by Disney to create their own Indiana Jones-esque franchise. The key difference between the two is that Rocketeer was released under Disney itself, while the (relatively) more mature Dick Tracy was released under Disney’s now-defunct Touchstone brand (which, despite popular misconception, was just a brand name Disney used for more mature movies, and not a separate studio). Both should be ranked among Disney’s best live-action films.
I also reviewed The Adventures of Tintin already. And Fun Fact: I posted that review on the tenth anniversary of the film’s original release in Belgium (which is appropriately where the film was released first). Again, I’m festive.
After that, I watched the Jaws movies. Or should I say I watched Jaws, a genuine classic of horror, suspense and action, and then proceeded to watch three fanfictions that somehow got turned into feature films?
Okay, so in all fairness, Jaws 2 isn’t so bad, it’s just that it really had no hope to live up to the original. Jaws 3 is pretty darn bad though, but it actually got off a little easy over time because Jaws: The Revenge is so bad that it became the one everyone talks about in hate and disgust to this day.
At any rate, I don’t think anyone would blame me that I’ve seen the original Jaws many times over the years, but only just now watched the sequels for the first time. The first Jaws is an all-time classic, and the film that made Steven Spielberg Steven Spielberg. It was the first-ever Summer blockbuster, and it still has to be one of the best.
Steven Spielberg’s films are rarely complex, but they’re so well done at everything they do that he makes them unforgettable. Jaws really is a simple horror movie at heart, but it’s surely one of the best ones. It really helps give the film some emotional weight that Spielberg made the three main characters into complex figures, and that each of the shark’s victims aren’t simply treated like mere “movie kills,” but are made appropriately tragic (two concepts that seem lost on most horror movies). And the shark (which is its name, not “Jaws” like the James Bond villain, just “The Shark”) is one of the great movie villains. A mostly unseen presence of terror and death, defined by its theme music.
Jaws really hasn’t aged a day. In fact, in some respects, it may resonate even stronger today in many ways. A deadly problem arises that could be resolved if a few simple rules are followed, but some selfish, greedy, stupid people blatantly ignore those rules and make the problem worse. Why does that sound so familiar?
It’s definitely worth mentioning that Spielberg had no hand in any of the Jaws sequels. Though to their credit, I suppose the Jaws sequels produced two of the most famous/parodied taglines in movie history. Surely you’ve heard some variation of “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” (Jaws 2) and “This time, it’s personal” (Jaws: The Revenge).
After Jaws I went into even more horror territory with the Evil Dead trilogy by Sam Raimi. The first Evil Dead is a straight-up horror movie. A low budget affair that sees the now iconic Ash Williams character (Bruce Campbell) survive a haunted cabin as his friends are possessed by demons one by one.
Evil Dead 2 is probably the best movie of the trilogy, and combines the horror with comedy. Interestingly, it’s as much a remake as it is a sequel, with its first ten or so minutes retelling the events of the first film while omitting most of the characters from the original (save for Ash and his girlfriend) and retconning the ending. And then many of the events of the first movie that involved the characters left out of the sequel are redone with different characters and situations in part 2. It’s an interesting take on a sequel, to say the least. I admit I have some mixed feelings about how it wipes away certain elements of its predecessor (effectively making the original movie a half-canon prologue), but Evil Dead 2 really does outdo the first film in basically every way otherwise. Plus, this is the one where Ash gets his chainsaw hand.
The third film of the trilogy, Army of Darkness, is relatively less acclaimed, but kind of brilliant in its own way. Although it’s still classified as a horror movie, it feels more like a total change of genre, doubling down on the cartoonish comedy of the second entry and placing the action in a swords and sorcery setting (okay, chainsaws and sorcery). That’s right, Ash goes back in time to medieval days and battles an army of skeletons. You have to respect a sequel that’s willing to be so different to what came before. It’s one of the most bonkers sequels ever.
We go back to modern releases with Dune, the latest cinematic interpretation of Frank Herbert’s influential sci-fi epic. Like No Time to Die, maybe I’ll write a full review of this in the near future, but I have to say I wasn’t won over by it. I feel like Dune is one of those things where you really, really have to love sci-fi to get into it. I don’t know, it feels like one of those sci-fi stories that’s more about the situation and politics of its world than it is about story and characters. I find it really difficult to get into that kind of thing. And when turned into a movie it kind of works against itself. It’s basically watching a movie where people are constantly explaining things, but you don’t really feel for any of it. The new Dune movie takes its sweet time with so many things, but little of it goes into making you care about who the characters are. And I found the constant presence of big name celebrities to be more distracting than anything (a guy takes off his mask to reveal, dun dun dun, it’s Javier Bardem!).
I will say, the film is a spectacle, sometimes an effective one. And I think Bootstrap Baron Harkonnen is a good bad guy. A big, floating fat guy. Now that’s a villain! More villains need to be big, floating fat guys.
Back to Hitchcock with Psycho and Rear Window.
Psycho is probably Hitchcock’s most widely known film, and one of my favorites. The first half is more of a suspenseful movie, as a young woman steals forty-thousand dollars and runs off to start a new life with her boyfriend, only for it to switch into a horror film once she stops at the Bates Motel on her way to reunite with said boyfriend. The switch occurs, of course, in the infamous shower scene, which has to be the most famous “movie kill” in any horror movie. It also has to be the biggest switcheroo of a movie plot, and Alfred Hitchcock went to great lengths to ensure theaters wouldn’t permit anyone into the movie after it had already started, as to avoid spoiling the surprise. Wouldn’t that be cool if such a thing could still happen today? A classic.
Rear Window is less horror, but more suspense. The Entire movie takes place in a single location, but you really forget about that fact when watching it because it’s so engrossing. Rear Window is, of course, the movie where James Stewart plays a photographer (L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries), who has a broken leg which is keeping him stuck in his apartment. So he takes on the hobby of peeping at his neighbors to pass the time (yikes!), but suddenly his pastime has some importance, as he realizes one of his neighbors has murdered their wife in the middle of the night. Another very effective thriller by Hitchcock.
Along with Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle was also given another limited re-release in theaters (though I only saw Howl once this time around). I’ve stated in the past that Howl’s Moving Castle is the only Miyazaki film that’s notably “weaker” than the rest of the great director’s works, but that really is a very relative complaint. Howl’s Moving Castle still is a magical, imaginative movie with memorable characters. I got very nostalgic watching Howl this time around, with memories of seeing it in theaters when it was first released in the US sixteen years ago (geez, how has it been that long? How?). The screening of Howl’s Moving Castle even featured a showing of On Your Mark, the only music video directed by Miyazaki.
Going back to Hitchcock yet again, I watched The Birds, probably the most famous post-Psycho Hitchcock film (unless I’m forgetting the ordering of his movies, which is possible because he directed a ton of them). Another great horror movie. You could even make the argument that The Birds is a zombie movie, even though there’s no actual zombies, just (quite living) birds. But the way the movie plays out certainly feels like a zombie movie.
The Birds tells the story of a young woman who, after an encounter with a man at a pet store, decides to purchase him some birds (it’s more complicated an encounter than it sounds, but we’ll save the details for another time). She buys a couple of lovebirds, and shortly after delivering them to the man’s family home in the middle of a fishing hamlet, all of the birds in the area – regardless of species – begin to attack people. The film has a nice slow burn, with about a full half hour going by before the first bird – a single seagull – attacks our heroine.
One of my favorite things about The Birds is its heavy use of uncertainty, which really adds to the horror element. There’s never a given reason why birds start violently attacking people. It’s implied to the audience (not the characters) the presence of the lovebirds is the cause. But that’s – quite wonderfully – an explanation that creates more questions than answers. Hitchcock didn’t want to give a detailed explanation for why the birds start going crazy, which I can’t imagine a movie like this would do these days. If there were a modern movie like this, it would no doubt have to explain away every last detail. But Hitchcock was wise enough to know that the uncertainty of it makes it all the scarier.
That uncertainty is also present in the birds’ attacks. In the film, birds just start gathering in large numbers, and will swarm and attack at seemingly random moments. To add even more uncertainty to the picture, The Birds doesn’t really have a traditional ending. It ends with the surviving characters quietly leaving town after another attack – with the lovebirds in tow(!!) – amidst a currently tame mass of birds.
I kind of like that The Birds doesn’t really have an ending. Some may say that’s hypocritical, given my complaints with North by Northwest’s ending. But the difference is I feel like the vague ending of The Birds fits with the kind of movie it is, whereas the ending to North by Northwest is so abrupt it feels out of place in a movie that otherwise takes its time.
Finally, the last movie I watched this month was Ghostbusters, the 1984 comedy that was one of the biggest hits of its decade, and still a comedy classic. It was followed by a disappointing sequel in 1989, and an even more disappointing and unnecessary reboot in 2016. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a third film in the original series (finally) comes to theaters later this month. Here’s hoping that Afterlife ends up being the first worthy sequel to Ghostbusters (not counting the animated series The Real Ghostbusters or the 2009 Ghostbusters video game, both of which seem to have a mostly fond reception).
It’s kind of funny that Ghostbusters spawned such a big franchise, because it really wasn’t that kind of movie. It was a comedy starring SNL alumni that was based in Dan Akroyd’s interest in the paranormal. But the film was just so well made, from writing and dialogue to its special effects, and perhaps most importantly, it had an imaginative story that in turn captured the imaginations of audiences. Ghostbusters is one of those comedies that stops being “just” a comedy and is simply a great movie all around.
Also of note, Ghostbusters was the first “visual effects comedy.” Before Ghostbusters, comedies weren’t considered commercially viable enough for studios to spend the money required for big visual effects. In that regard, Ghostbusters opened the door for movies like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It’s just a shame that visual effects comedies are now basically extinct (can you think of a modern example of the sub-genre?).
Now I’m turning into a Ghostbusters history book. Point being, it’s a great movie, and one of my favorite comedies. But I guess I’ve rambled enough and we should be moving on. Let’s dish out some awards to the movies I watched in October!
Best Movie I Watched All Month: Spirited Away
Seeing as Spirited Away is my favorite movie, it’s guaranteed to be the best movie I watch in any month I watch it (if I watch it in the same month as My Neighbor Totoro, I guess it would be a tie between the two). With all due respect to the numerous great movies I watched this past month like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Psycho, Ghostbusters and Jaws, Spirited Away of course wins the crown. Chihiro’s odyssey to save her parents in a world of spirits and monsters is unforgettable from beginning to end.
One of the funny things about having favorites of anything (movies, video games, TV shows, songs, etc.) is that after a while, you tend to only think of the “whole” of your favorites, and take for granted the little details that helped make them your favorites to begin with. And when you experience your favorite things again, every now and again you’re reminded of those little things.
Spirited Away is a beautiful, touching film. But something these recent viewings reminded me of is its sense of humor. There are so many funny little touches to Spirited Away: The witch Yubaba using her magic to repair the damage done to her office, only to manually straighten a lampshade. A bowl of rice melts into goo due to the stench of a Stink Spirit. There’s the famous scene with the soot sprites carrying coal to a furnace. Chihiro notices one such sprite struggling to carry his lump of coal, and takes it upon herself to carry it for him (struggling herself in the process). Afterwards, all the soot sprites purposefully drop their coal in hopes Chihiro will do their work for them.
As an added bonus, the English dub features a small role for John Ratzenberger (remember that the Pixar guys helped in the dubbing of Miyazaki’s films), and the actor delivers some terrifically funny adlibs (that also don’t detract from the spirit of the movie, importantly).
Spirited Away is my favorite film, so I’ll continue to talk about it whenever I can. But because these recent viewings really made me appreciate Spirited Away’s many humorous moments all over again (and reminded me the part they played in me loving the movie to begin with), I figured I’d highlight those here. Spirited Away is widely (and rightly) acknowledged as one of the greatest and most influential animated films, but its sense of humor doesn’t get talked about as much as many of its other aspects. It should be talked about more, because along with everything else, Spirited Away is also a very funny film.
The best movie.
Worst Movie I Watched All Month: Jaws: The Revenge
From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows…
Last month, I mentioned how Speed 2: Cruise Control is sometimes considered the worst sequel ever. While Speed 2 is a bad sequel, and sadly crushed any hopes for a Speed 3, it did have some merit. The same cannot be said of Jaws: The Revenge. Behold, the worst sequel of all time!
Well, I may have to double check that later. But considering how great the original Jaws was in relation to how truly, unspeakably awful Jaws: The Revenge is, it has to be the greatest drop in quality a movie series has seen. It just has to be. How could something be worse?
Sure, there were two other Jaws movies in between the first Jaws and The Revenge, but The Revenge is so bad it could have been 16 sequels worth of diminishing returns. The Revenge is an insult to Jaws 3, let alone Jaws 2, let alone the original!
Why is it so bad? Geez, where do I even begin? Wait, I know a good spot to begin: the fact that the shark in this movie is literally out for revenge on the Brody family for what happened to the sharks in the first two movies! Oh yeah, I say the first two movies because Jaws: The Revenge ignores the events of Jaws 3 and is its own third entry. So it’s basically Jaws 3-2.
Not only is the idea that a shark could actively seek revenge absolutely ludicrous, but it even contradicts a line of dialogue from Jaws 2. This is also the movie where the shark roars like a lion. The movie where the shark blows up after getting stabbed by the front of a ship. And I don’t mean its body pops and blood and guts fly everywhere, I mean the shark actually explodes into a fireball!
Okay, so the movie is insulting to the audience’s intelligence, but even if we try to look past the idiocy, it’s still a bad sequel all around: Chief Martin Brody is dead from the get-go, having died of a heart attack in between Jaws 2 and this movie. So Roy Scheider is sorely missed (by the audience, I’m sure Scheider was happy he wasn’t featured). I guess he wasn’t in Jaws 3 either, but at least that continuity didn’t kill Martin Brody off screen. Though I guess getting killed off screen is a better character fate than surviving one horror film only to get killed by the same/virtually the same villain in one of the sequels, which just undermines their victory in the first movie. I hate that!
So the widowed Ellen Brody is the main character here. Her younger son is engaged to be married, only to be killed by the revenge-seeking shark…at Christmastime, of course (let’s kick Ellen Brody while she’s down). So Ellen leaves Amity Island to stay in the Bahamas with her older son, where the shark naturally follows her in a matter of days. That is one fast as hell shark!
And did I mention that Ellen Brody seems to have a psychic connection with the shark, and is able to sense its presence when it’s near? She also has flashbacks to events from the first movie in which she wasn’t even there to witness them. Geez…
Do I have to keep talking about Jaws: The Revenge? Maybe one day I’ll review all of the Jaws movies. But damn, what a fall from grace.
The worst sequel.
Best Movie I Watched for the First Time This Month: Dick Tracy (Evil Dead 2/Army of Darkness are close runners-up, and let’s include North by Northwest out of obligation)
If we’re being technical here, then sure, North by Northwest was the “best movie” I saw for the first time this past month. But I really can’t get past that abrupt ending. So North by Northwest seems like the answer I’m supposed to say here, but not the one I pick.
Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness may have also taken the crown, but I’m undecided as to which one I actually prefer (Evil Dead 2 is probably the best of the trilogy from a pure filmmaking perspective, but I really like how Army of Darkness just changes genres and goes nuts). Since I’m undecided there, I guess I can go ahead and select Dick Tracy as the winner for now.
Okay, so maybe my pick here isn’t as definitive as last month’s, but it’s something.
Again, Dick Tracy isn’t anything complex, but it’s a very easy movie to appreciate, perhaps more so today than it was in 1990. This is a movie that is unapologetically faithful to its source material. If anyone in the audience is confused or weirded out by it, that’s their problem. That’s a beautiful mentality that I wish we saw more of in movies today, when comic book movies and fantasy and science fiction feel the constant need to compromise.
As mentioned earlier, Dick Tracy reminds me a lot of The Rocketeer, released by Disney a year later. But where The Rocketeer had one villain encased in prosthetic makeup, I think Dick Tracy has more actors wearing prosthetics than those not wearing them. What other movie would give Al Pacino a hunched back, a goblin nose, and a butt chin? Or give Dustin Hoffman crooked lips and have him speak in incoherent mumbles?
Dick Tracy’s use of bright colors and cartoony sets are a constant delight, and its sheer commitment to bring the look of a comic to life in the most literal sense is admirable. Some might say that Dick Tracy is an exercise in style over substance, but so are Quentin Tarantino movies, and people seem to like those just fine. Not every film has to be deep.
On the downside, Dick Tracy is (like last month’s The Fugitive) one of those rare movies that was a really big deal the year it came out, but then fell under the radar over time. That’s a shame, because it really is something to see. Let’s start talking about Dick Tracy again! But let’s all try to forget the NES video game adaptation…
Another issue is that Dick Tracy is one of those movies Disney seems embarrassed of today, and the film is unavailable on Disney+. Probably because you can see boobs in one scene of the movie. Disney is okay with Thanos murdering half the population of the universe, but showing boobs? That’s going too far!
It may not be as readily available as other Disney movies, but Dick Tracy is definitely worth seeing. Don’t expect a masterpiece, but expect something that looks unlike anything else, and is defiantly itself.
One more thing: Big Boy did it.
The Guilty Pleasure Award: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
This crown really belongs to the 1990s TMNT trilogy as a whole, but I think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze is the one that best exemplifies “guilty pleasure.”
The first TMNT movie is probably the most genuinely liked of any TMNT movie. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 is probably the most hated (though I can certainly find joy in it, if even ironically). But the second entry is the one where things started to get goofy, what with the “traditional pre-fight donuts” and the annoying pizza delivery boy sidekick and that Vanilla Ice scene. Not to mention the titular “secret of the ooze” isn’t actually revealed in the finished film (in early drafts of the script, the film would have revealed David Warner’s character to have been an Utrom, the same alien species as Krang. So the “secret” would have been that the ooze was created by aliens. Good thing they cut that but kept Vanilla Ice).
It’s a silly movie, but one in which my enjoyment of it is genuine. The first two TMNT movies remain some of my earliest movie memories, and while the first film is the better movie, as a wee tyke I preferred the sequel because it had mutant bad guys for the Turtles to fight (perfectly sound reasoning for a young child). It’s a nostalgic treat for me. But a really powerful one where it doesn’t merely bring back fond memories, but watching the movie takes me right back to the feelings I had when watching it as a kid, as if no time has passed. It’s hard to explain.
Simply put, TMNTII: The Secret of the Ooze is dumb fun. And I love it.
Just don’t ask me how regular Shredder survived getting crushed by a garbage truck in the first movie, yet meets his ultimate demise in TMNTII when a bunch of planks of wood fall on him after he mutated into the Super Shredder. I’ve been pondering that one since I was a kid…
The Best Sitcom Ever Award: Seinfeld
As mentioned, October wasn’t all about the movies for me, as I watched the entirety of Seinfeld (again), the best sitcom of all time. One of the few shows I appreciate in the same way I do a great movie.
Seinfeld began airing in 1989 (the year I was born, no less). Interestingly, that’s the same year The Simpsons debuted, and unless you count the locally broadcast “season zero” of Mystery Science Theater 3000, it’s the same year that show debuted as well. So 1989 was basically the most significant year ever for television comedy, but that milestone rarely gets brought up for some reason.
Seinfeld, the “show about nothing,” really was one of a kind. A show of a thousand catchphrases, that permeated through pop culture and created (or popularized) terms and phrases that people still use today (“Yadda yadda yadda, anyone?). Virtually every episode provides something memorable and quotable. And what other show continued to create iconic moments even in its late seasons (the infamous “Soup Nazi” episode was a product of season seven)?
An important element to Seinfeld’s enduring appeal is that it ended. When the show was at the zenith of its powers as the zeitgeist of all pop culture, Jerry Seinfeld and company decided to end the show on their terms, as to not overstay their welcome. I can’t think of another show that decided to end when it was still the show. In true George Costanza fashion, Seinfeld went out on a high note. If only The Simpsons had been so wise.
Sure, Seinfeld hit some bumps along the way (unpopular opinion, but Elaine really became insufferable in the later seasons), and the finale itself may not be so fondly remembered, but it wasn’t anything that damaged the reputation of the show (it wasn’t the Netflix seasons of Arrested Development, after all). Hey, with 180 episodes, it can’t all be perfect. There were bound to be some missteps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The best sitcom.
And there we go. It’s done! Goodness gracious, I did not intend for this post to be this long at all. This My Month in Movies could eat the last My Month in Movies. If I decide to write any more of these down the road (emphasis on if), I certainly hope they don’t end up this long by default. I don’t know what happened here, I just started writing and then couldn’t stop.
There are a few movies I’d like to review soon: the fact that I still haven’t reviewed Luca and The Mitchell’s Vs. the Machines is dumbfounding for me. I should have reviewed them sooner. I would also like to review Ghostbusters: Afterlife once I’ve seen it. And I may review The Eternals, seeing as I’ve reviewed so many Marvel things already it feels like I’m obligated to do so by this point (though truth be told, I think I’m finally getting a bit Marvel’ed out… I blame Loki). Aside from those, and maybe a review for an older movie or two, I really want to start focusing this site on video games again for a while. Remember when this site used to be focused entirely on animated films and video games? I do. And I kind of miss it.
I have a whole stack of games that are ready and waiting for their reviews, I don’t know why I haven’t gotten to them yet. Maybe I just needed a break from writing about games and just needed to enjoy them for a while? Playing video games for fun… what a concept!
Anyway, I hope you had a fun read with this. It certainly was fun to write. It’s kind of nice to just write a bunch of quick things about a bunch of movies, as opposed to one big review for each individual movie. In a way, this felt like the “writing about movies” equivalent of WarioWare. Which reminds me, I still need to review the newest WarioWare. Dang it!
At the very least, I like to think I gave a sneak peak into my love of Spirited Away and Seinfeld, and gave you a place where Casablanca, Psycho and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all live in harmony. Now I’m off to review some video games.
Unlike the mediocre 2016 reboot, the Ghostbusters of the 1980s was a cultural phenomenon, and became the most successful comedy of that decade. With video games also growing into prominence during the 1980s, it only makes sense that Ghostbusters would find its way to the world of video games. With Nintendo in particular becoming a powerhouse in the gaming industry, a Ghostbusters game of course found its way on the NES.
Too bad it really sucked.
Ghostbusters on the NES is one of the most tedious and monotonous video games ever released. In fact, it barely resembles the film in which it’s based at all.
As soon as you begin the game, you’ll find what’s in front of you to be nothing short of baffling. You have a screen that is supposed to represent a city, but instead looks like disjointed green boxes with pictures of buildings in them. In the center of this “map” is a building labelled “Zuul” (attempting to be named after the film’s villain, which is inaccurate as Gozer was the name of the villain, Zuul was one of his followers). You’ll also notice a shop, gas station and the Ghostbusters’ headquarters on the map.
Because the game can barely contain what is present on the screen, don’t expect to control the classic Ecto-1 car. Instead, on the map screen you control the Ghostbusters logo. Before you think you simply move the logo to a location and select a stage, you first have to buy the Ghostbusters equipment at the shop (don’t the Ghostbusters make their own equipment?).
So first you head over to the shop, but instead of going straight to the shop, you first have to finish a driving stage. These driving stages are played from a top-down perspective, with their fast movements and ugly graphics quickly becoming an eyesore. Here, you actually control the Ecto-1, but it looks more like a cube with a tiny Union Jack on top.
During these driving stages, you have to collect canisters of gas, which show up so spontaneously you’ll probably miss them. All while avoiding reckless drivers who go out of their way to bump into you, which results in you having to pay for the damages. If you run out of money, you can’t buy the Ghostbusting equipment, and the game is over. And if you run out of gas, two Ghostbusters come out of the car to slowly push it to the gas station, which is an absolutely needless addition to the game that only serves to make it all the worse.
Once you (finally) get to the shop, you have a variety of items to buy, but you can only hold four at a time. You can buy beams to hold on to the ghosts and well as traps to capture them, as well as ghost armor and ghost bait which are used at a later point in the game.
After the pointless shopping section, you are back on the world map, where you must find one of the squares that’s flashing red. You can enter these red squares, which will immediately take you to another driving stage. Once the driving section is over, you get to do some ghostbusting. Or, at least, an approximation thereof.
You move two Ghosbtusers, one drops the trap and shoots his beam directly upwards, while you can continue to move the other from side to side to shoot his beam at the ghosts. You just need to snag the ghosts, bring them to the trap within an incredibly short amount of time, and that’s it. Just a single screen of monotonous ghostbusting.
Each ghost you successfully capture gives you extra money, which you then need to buy more items (the first traps you can afford need to be emptied via trip to Ghostbusters HQ, but if you have enough dough you can buy one that doesn’t need to be emptied, making the original traps another useless element in the game). Thus the process repeats itself again and again. It is beyond tedious.
This formula already makes the game an absolute bore, but after maybe an hour of keeping this up, the “Zuul building” finally unlocks, which is where the formula finally changes, though not exactly for the better.
Once inside the Zuul building, the Ghostbusters must ascend an absurdly-long staircase while avoiding ghosts. In order to move the Ghostbusters, you must tap the A button non-stop, and press B to backtrack should the ghosts come closing in. If you get hit three times, the game is over, and you have to start the whole thing from the beginning.
This stair segment is when the aforementioned armor and ghost bait come into play, but they don’t do a whole lot. The armor only adds a couple extra hits to the Ghostbusters, while the bait only temporarily keeps the ghosts at bay, as once the screen scrolls upward as the Ghostbusters continue their ascent, the bait disappears and the ghosts are back on your tail.
If, by some miracle, you actually make it up the stairs, you have a dud of a final encounter against Gozer, followed by one of the most infamous ending screens in video game history.
Ghostbusters on NES is simply a disaster of a game. Everything about it is tedious and boring, with many of its elements feeling utterly pointless. On top of all that, the graphics were ugly even in their day, and the music consists of a single, out-of-tune loop of the Ghostbusters theme, which plays during the entirety of the game, non-stop!
Ghostbusters was one of the most iconic films of the 80s, but its NES adaptation should go down as one of the all-time lows of licensed games.
The original 1984 Ghostbusters is an icon of 80s culture. With its smart sense of humor, innovative concept, and visual effects that, somehow, still hold up, it’s no wonder that Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing comedy of the 1980s. There was one sequel which lacked much of the humor found in the original, leaving many fans dissatisfied. Though a third film in the series was often planned, it was a project that was ultimately not to be, as it fell through one time after another after another after another.
Now we finally have a third Ghostbusters film, though not a third in the same series. Like many franchises that have laid dormant for an extended period of time, this 2016 film is a reboot, with an all-new cast of characters starting from scratch. This has, of course, lead to many fans of the original films feeling disheartened that they never got the third film they waited so long for. And sadly, this newer version doesn’t give a whole lot of reason to win fans over. Ultimately, the ghosts of its past are just too prominent, and the new material not strong enough to bust them.
The new film reimagines the Ghostbusters as a team of female paranormal patrol officers. The two at the center of the story are Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) and Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), while the two other members of the quartet are Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones).
Yates and Gilbert were once best friends and colleagues. Both of them believed in the supernatural and became scientists on the subject. Somewhere along the line, Gilbert left paranormal research behind her. Though that didn’t stop Yates from releasing the book they both wrote on the subject some time later. Gilbert is immediately discredited upon the book’s release, and confronts Yates about her actions. This leads Gilbert to becoming an inadvertent tagalong with Yates and her new colleague Holtzmann, as they investigate a supernatural happening. They successfully document the presence of an apparition, reaffirming Gilbert’s belief in the supernatural, which leads to her being fired as a university professor. So she decides to join Yates and Holtzmann on their new ghostbusting endeavors.
The group is later joined by Tolan, the everywoman of the team, and hire a handsome but impossibly buffoonish receptionist in Kevin Beckman (Chris Hemsworth). The four women have fluctuating success at capturing ghosts as they develop new equipment for the job, but a much larger threat looms over the city of New York as a madman is developing a means to intensify paranormal activity across the city, in hopes of opening a portal and unleashing an army of ghosts on New York.
The plot is a bit basic, but it has some fun with its nature as a reboot and focuses a little more on the Ghostbusters getting to know their craft than the original film did. Perhaps the best addition to the reboot are McCarthy and Wiig, who have great chemistry together, and do what they can to bring out the best in what they have to work with.
On the downside of things, the writing is largely inconsistent. Though some jokes are mildly funny, many don’t hit the mark, leaving the film to feel more awkward than humorous. The film as a whole just has a mediocre feeling to it, and this is only magnified by the film’s rocky pacing.
Too many unimportant scenes feel dragged out, while a number of key plot and character moments go by all too quickly. The central relationship of the film is the friendship between Yates and Gilbert, and it’s good when it’s present, but it often feels like that central element is lost in favor of the aforementioned inconsistent jokes.
One aspect of the film that’s full of highs and lows are the callbacks to the original 1984 Ghostbusters film. There are some moments in the film that purposefully mimic the events of the first film, and that’s understandable for the most part, but the film’s third act maybe feels a little too familiar to anyone who’s seen the original film. So we have a reboot trying to reinvent its franchise that’s simultaneously afraid to reinvent.
These callbacks also take the form of cameos by most of the cast of the 1984 film, who play new roles in bit parts. While the cameos of Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts are small enough as to be fun and not distracting, Bill Murray’s small-but-relatively-larger role comes off as a disappointment. Murray’s character’s first scene works well enough, but the film later brings him back for a second go, almost hyping him to be an important character in the story, before unceremoniously writing him off. It may have actually been interesting to see Murray in an important role in this reboot that’s wildly different from his main character of the original, so the fact that nothing comes of it makes the character’s return appearance feel misleading and entirely pointless. It just deviates from the plot when his first appearance would have sufficed for a cameo.
Another disappointing aspect of the film are the visual effects. Much of the CG looks a little bit behind the times. The final, big bad ghost works well enough. But many of the standard ghosts the titular busters face don’t exactly look like what you would expect from a big budget movie like this in 2016. There is a brief visual created with traditional, hand drawn animation in one instance, which is probably the effect that stands out the most.
As a whole, the 2016 Ghostbuster reboot just fails to deliver. The writing and pacing aren’t never seem to click, the visual effects leave a lot to be desired, and the ghost of the original is constantly looming overhead, and not always for the better.
Wizard Dojo 