Even though the movie has already hit Amazon and thus is already on the way to home video, I really still wanted to see this in the theatre. Finally got to see it Mon night. I do agree that it leaned on the first movie just a bit too much, at least in terms of delivering new visuals or thrills. But I also understood the tact it took, in order to give Egon/Harold Ramis a full and heartfelt franchise send-off. Linking the story back so strongly to the original makes it more personally his, where his mark is felt the most. Otherwise, the reverent tone was appropriate, but I do find the film gave plenty of room for the new cast to breathe, as well. Pacing-wise, I think the only real stumble was during Callie's trip to Egon's bunker. I understand the need for her to go on that journey as well, but the scene winds up being a retread of Phoebe's previous tour. McKenna Grace is an amazingly talented young actress. I'm much too young to have seen the original films in theatres (at least during their original runs. I've had no desire to go to limited engagement screenings to see films I already own. I'm typically not that kinda fanboy over things), so getting to experience this one on the big screen was a treat. I wholeheartedly agree with Winston, that the sounds of the packs and throwers is sublime. The sound design in the 80s films was on-point, and finally getting to experience that with the full pounding theatre bass was almost worth the price of admission alone. I squealed internally so hard at Phoebe's first boot sequence. And Ecto-1's sirens are such a treat to come back to, as well. I really liked that they seemed to go out of their way to not obsolete the original Terror Dog effects, sticking to animatronic work for the close-ups, and with the CG work largely replicating the disjointed jerkiness of the original stop-motion puppets. I mean, it was still definitely a higher-fidelity effort, but not as jarring a mismatch, as say, comparing the original Alien or Aliens to the modern CG creature effects. Fenrys already addressed the first point. As for the others, while I have no answers about the mom, she's just not relevant to the narrative. Things were a mess because of Egon's absence and failure to provide, not because of whatever it was the mother was doing. Maybe already dead by the time of film, as well, if Callie wasn't able to turn to her for assistance or guidance. As for Janine, it's possible it was because of Callie that Egon didn't reciprocate Janine's feelings. People have made note of many of the clippings on Egon's "shrine" wall dated around 1983 or such, a year before the original film. Perhaps as a retcon, Egon never made himself available because he was already in some form of relationship that he kept separate from his work-life. Likely not marriage, given his character, but maybe some sort of academia fling that partially lead to his estrangement. On the latter point, Ray did also mention that Egon had made an attempt to re-establish contact years after their initial falling out, but Ray was still so incensed that he didn't even give him a chance. On top of that, we know from the second movie that photographing paranormal events can have unexpected results, so maybe that was non-viable. Otherwise, the film falls back into the typical genre trope that modern technology "simply doesn't exist" as far as making things easier is concerned. Horror movies and tropes tend to fall apart pretty hard when instant photography and communication are at your fingertips, so they bend over backwards to find ways to invalidate it, or just ignore the possibility and hope the audience doesn't notice.
Another possibility with Callie's mom is that she's not dead, but the rigors of single parent-hood caused her to give Callie up as well, in some way. But probably something that happened late enough in life that Callie's made her peace with that part of her life, and that she resented Egon more for not being there at all.
From the pictures in the shed basement, I have to assume Egon was never there or a part of the family. Callie has severe daddy issues for someone who never had a daddy.
Afterlife has passed the reboots box office friday! Also lord and miller talk about a spin off to ghostbusters afterlife with chris pratt and Tatum that was a early pitch years ago. From the sound of it this will be a second team (the sony video game and comics confirmed they made other teams for other parts of the world) going on adventures. Sounds like this will take place in the post right after gb2 era. Phil Lord and Chris Miller Confirm They Developed a New Ghostbusters With Ivan Reitman (comicbook.com)
Just watched this last night. It was... fine. I definitely enjoyed it more than 2016, but it didn’t quite reach the level I was expecting. It’s well made, the cast was great, but the story wasn’t quite there. The family side of it was fine, but the ghost side of it was all callbacks to the first movie, but executed in a fairly lackluster way. Spoiler when the Egon ghost first physically showed up, that kinda got me, but then the longer he stuck around, just smiling and looking at everyone, it really took away from it.
It's still behind on the worldwide box office, though. I mean, I know there's a pandemic and all, but damn.
Yup. With today's technology they could've easily used old clips to chop up some lines and add them in.
They could have, but they have to draw a line between "loving homage" and "gratuitous cashing in". For things like Rogue One and The Mandalorian, it makes sense to include full digital inserts (especially since one instance can still be performed by the original actor), but for others (such as in this case) it would come across as massively inappropriate.
What I liked to show they weren't going full cash-in (you, besides getting the full go ahead from the family) was instead of using Harold's real life appearance, they digitally scanned images of him from the first two movies and digitally aged that composite up as he looked VASTLY different leading up to his passing. So, what we saw was the character, not the actor. One thing that does irk me is that there is a LOT of cut scenes and footage and we only have ONE deleted scene on the physical home release. There's a ton of footage and scenes we should've gotten. Two instances: prior to Phoebe and Podcast going to Rust City and encountering Muncher, Phoebe does a literal "field test" in a cord field after repairing the proton pack. That's where she gets the popcorn in the scene where she's watching the old Ghostbusters ad on Youtube. The other is after the joyride and Callie is yelling at Phoebe, the fight gets more intense and Callie smashes the PKE meter which Phoebe later repairs. You can see the PKE meter is WAY more beat up when Callie uses it to find the hidden lab and there's even a picture of Phoebe working on the broken PKE meter from some older promotional images. Ah well, it's not like I haven't double/triple/quadruple dipped on Ghostbusters movies in the past...
Well, that is probably why there will be a director's cut in the future though I wouldn't hold my breath in these next few years since it took us almost 40 years to get a special 84 version. Not to mention, we are now finally getting some of the extra GB II deleted scenes after 22-23 years. Still no possessed Ray scene. I really want to see that one. Too bad they deleted the scene where Callie held the toaster. It was the reference to the old man eating finger eating toaster trick since people are now assuming AL tries to erase GB II from canon despite Ray's Occult appearing in the movie. As for AL, you can clearly see there was a scene (from the extra's behind the scenes) that Janine was supposed to be in the final sequence. Shame, they removed it since it would had been a nice sendoff from all of the GB staff. The AL trailer also has some alt takes or scenes not in the final film.
I don't fault them for the GB2 stuff being left out for so long. Sony legit lost that stuff and it ended up in a private collection and was discovered shortly before the last collector's set came out. While I know Ray's possession was shot, it might not be in a state that it can be used? Just theorizing at this point. Maybe for the 40th which isn't too far away -sudden existential crisis as he remembers the concept of time- As for the claims of erasure, it never made sense. While a LOT of the GB2 stuff couldn't be seen, there were plenty of references including Ecto-1A's license plate in the barn that was JUST out of frame, the Gigameter, a GB2 promotional mug, and of course, Ray's Occult. There's still the question of Ecto-1 and the 1A... but if you consider that they're two different cars in universe, it makes more sense. Ecto-1 was BARELY holding together when Ray and Winston were doing birthday parties, and probably put into storage until they could fix her up. Ecto-1A was bought after the courtroom bust and a LOT of that extra equipment on the roof was designed to contain the pools of slime that were cropping up. After 1990, ANYTHING could've happened to the 1A for them to recommission the Ecto-1 where the gunner seat and RTV were added on. yeah, there's a little head canoning needed until something official comes out. You also gotta love the dedicated ones trying to figure out how to keep the videogame and comics canon... bless their hearts for trying though.
I have a feeling some of the fans wanted the movie to reference Vigo or the slime that plagued NYC. I missed the Gigameter though people did mention it so I'll look for it again next time. But Reitman did stated that he wanted the film to focus more on 84 so it made more sense everything pointed to Gozer. Perhaps, in the sequel there will be more references to GBII.
With the Ecto-1 and (presumably) most of the proton tech back in New York, I can see more references to GB2 made... I just don't want Vigo to be the big bad of GB4. What I'd LOVE to see? A slight rework of the Ghost Smasher arc from the IDW comics. Winston and Ray re-establish Ghostbusters with the assist of Phoebe. Hell, I can kinda see Winston helping Callie get out of her MASSIVE loads of debt she inherited from Egon on top of her own (either out of pure kindness to the family of an old friend or out of guilt for not staying in touch with Egon and feeling partially responsible for his death) and have the Spenglers move to New York. Lucky and Trevor could be going to college or just visiting (set it during summer again). During the shuttering of Ghostbusters, a rival group could have taken up shop in the city (Ray did mention that ghost cases had slowed, but not STOPPED before Egon left) using knock off proton tech, but they don't trap and contain: they destroy entities... or they think they do. What is actually happening is the ghosts are just being dissipated and are slowly reforming, but as a single entity. Ghostbusters get blamed due to re-opening just as things are starting to get bad.
Dan Aykroyd did state he wanted 3 more sequels with the boys. The concept you brought up about destroying entities reminds me of the episode Robobuster. I wonder if they can salvage what was left of the canceled hellbent?
Just finished our marathon of all 3 GB movies & this was also our first watching of Afterlife. It was so DAMN good!! I’ve stayed away from spoilers pretty well, though I did know about the ending, and it was still incredible despite knowing. Seeing how it all actually played out was awesome. I can’t really think of any glaring flaws. It was a solid movie from start to finish. Very frickin awesome. 10/10
I took that as he has completed his mission, made peace with his friends/family so he is moving on to heaven. His particles went up where we typically associate where heaven is.
Yeah, but it felt like he lingered around a little too long, which was made extra awkward by the fact that he never says anything. I understand the real-world limitations with that scene, but because of that I think they should have hastened the “moving on to heaven” part.
Dan always wants more sequels though. I’m just glad that this one got made. I don’t expect that we’ll ever see more with the original cast & I don’t think it would hold the same specialness if they kept trying again and again with them. I’m pretty happy with Afterlife marking the end of their trilogy. Hey, quick question- I’m sure this came up somewhere in the 45 pages of discussion, but is Egon’s family still broke at the end of the movie? Is Winston helping them out? I don’t think they gave any resolution to their money issues.
It's not really elaborated on, but I think that's the insinuation with Winston's stinger scene. If he's keeping Ray above water, he's very likely to be willing to give Egon's family a hand up as well.
