By now, you’ve probably seen the teaser trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Maybe you put it on repeat and watched it over and over again, wondering where you might get one of those red, GB parkas. It’s a decent enough trailer that doesn’t give too much away, so that’s good. And I’m happy that they appear to be moving away from legacy villains and existing ghost designs. I mean, seriously, the only new design elements in Afterlife were the pseudo-Slimer, the Ecto-1 gunner’s seat and Bill Murray’s jowls. However, my fear is that this will just be another kids movie.
When GB was made in the 80s, it was a raunchy comedy because that’s what those guys did back then. Sure, it was toned down a bit to get it out of R-rating territory for Columbia pictures, but it has a ghostly blowjob scene in it for crying out loud! Ghostbusters wasn’t made for children back then. But now, it is.
Afterlife was a fairly successful merging of the 80s kid movie aesthetic (think Goonies and ET) with the Ghostbusters IP because, in the years since 1984, GB loomed large for kids. I blame The Real Ghostbusters, that substandard animated series that came up with some flimsy excuse for none of the guys looking or sounding like the characters we knew. Most adults completely ignored it, but as it turns out, it was highly successful with kids. In fact, it was a gateway for them to get into Ghostbusters, and it remains a nostalgia trip for many millennials.
Now, we’re full on in the world of family-friendly Ghostbusters. In my opinion, despite the best efforts of Paul Rudd, the new GB isn’t very funny and it should be. I forgot that when watching Afterlife the first time because I was just so relieved it wasn’t as bad as the 2016 Paul Feig dumpster fire. I guess we’ll all see what we get next year when the new film’s released, but I’m not holding my frozen breath thinking we’ll ever get another GB movie that’s anything like the original film.