Ghostbusters III: Afterlife

[Neon Ignition]

[teddymeow]

1 star in The Guardian

Contains a massive spoiler despite saying they won't talk about spoilers.

[Cassius_Smoke]

1 star in The Guardian

Contains a massive spoiler despite saying they won't talk about spoilers.

It sounds like it's all very 'on the nose' and almost 4th wall breaking with its nods and winks to the audience. We'll have to wait and see.

[Neon Ignition]

With the obvious caveat of having not seen the film I've been quite confident in ignoring that review. The vast majority of reviews for the film have been pretty solid and there's a clear weird strange of vitriol channeled in that review.

There's a real lack of substance to the criticism and a real sense he hated the setting that he watched the film in. I'm still curious to see why 'nostalgia' is suddenly a weaponised criticism for Ghostbusters when it doesn't seem to be for the myriad of other sequels either. Also, it may be nostalgic to see the ECTO-1, the old cast, ghosts, equipment etc but it's also canonically correct as well, it'd be wrong if they weren't there.

I suspect this sentence exposes the real bug up his ass though:
"

Consider the casual cowardice of a script that uses its own mythology to subtly erase 2016’s all-gals reboot from the canon, giving the rage-choked trolls carpet-bombing IMDb with zero-star ratings the vindication they’ve always craved."

[chopemon]

There's nostalgia then there's pandering. I'm all for nostalgia but reboots and sequels are so afraid of doing anything for themselves that pandering references are just cynical and unentertaining. So many people with loud mouths on the internet allow the media they consume to define their personalities and movie/game/TV studios play into that because it is an easy win. It makes people almost devoid of a brain feel happy because someone (a movie exec that only cares about money) understands them (tricks them).

Same with that new Resident Evil movie. That zombie writing itchy tasty on the window is just there to give a dopamine hit to morons.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it definitely needs to balance its history with its future but I think that's almost where some of the hypocracy in the reviews comes out. The film is simultaneously pulled up for playing to the older fanbase whilst also being yanked for not emulating the 1984 enough also in terms of its direction.

It's downplayed comedy because it has to navigate avoiding confusion with the 2016 film that headed blindly down that road and also because the 2021 is severly cruel to comedies. These days you just can't justify a big budget pure comedy, we're in the Marvel era where comedy is enfused with multiple other genre types and I'd 100% argue that Ghostbusters is better served by that approach too.

It's like how Halloween 2018 recieved massive success for playing into the original film, or No Way Home getting record breaking views on the basis of a Spider-Man from the naughties making a cameo, Jurassic Park being revived bigger than ever based on repurposing the plot of the original etc. Star Wars fans going mental over Luke appearing in a TV show for 5 seconds. It's fine to not like the playback aspect of these projects but then for reviewers it feels like getting someone who despises Football to review FIFA 23.

It could 100% be that Afterlife is a very poor play by play of call backs but the trailers suggest that all the references are canonically correctly used. A review on Forbes said the film was good but complained about it heavily repeating stuff from the original such as explaining the who's and why's but you're going to get that, a massive chunk of the potential audience won't have seen the original or know it inside out.

To be honest, I do feel like the situation around Afterlife is like the opposite end of the 2016 debacle. Like the franchise has been in suspended animation for so long that whatever they do with it there'll be an overly dramatic reaction. It can neither reboot or sequelize, neither emulate or progress the franchise tone and ever be right. It's just strange that every other franchise seems to have a pass on all this but GB seems to be enshrined for some reason.

I guess part of the problem is that the GB mythology has never exactly been laid out in a clear way too. GBII's events are seen as being a purple goop caused event that brings a painting to life but the actual lore is that literally every facet of that plot ties into and is connected to the original film. It's the same with the videogames plot, everything is all related to the same cause as the original film. From what I can gather Afterlife will attempt to open things up so that future films can happen without relying on the same 'out of work' loop the series has been on forever but it can't do that without first addressing the lore which means following the road to terror dogs, Zuul etc again which seems to be heavily overlooked. That might not happen but then that would be a problem with Ghostbusters 4, not 3.

That's a long ramble for what is likely a click bait review in the first place:

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/ghostbusters-afterlife-first-reviews-mckenna-grace-shines-in-a-worthy-sequel-fans-will-love/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ghostbusters_afterlife

[Dogg Thang]

I think that's almost where some of the hypocracy in the reviews comes out. The film is simultaneously pulled up for playing to the older fanbase whilst also being yanked for not emulating the 1984 enough also in terms of its direction.

Both of these things can be true, as you pretty much demonstrate in the rest of your post. We haven't seen it so we can't say if "all the references are canonically correctly used", which is something I'd probably suggest is a bit on the silly side and doesn't remotely dictate whether a film is good or not. This is just one review among many positive ones and there is a slight air here of when people lose their nut over a negative review of a game they haven't yet played. You're critiquing a review without context or knowledge.

It's not like you're not going to see the movie based on this so let's just go see a movie and hope to enjoy it.

[Neon Ignition]

Definitely, there's a real risk that the film misuses its elements, I'm just hoping the criticism of nostalgic elements isn't just purely down to the reappearance of Terrordogs, Zuul, Gozer, Ecto etc.

It's been something of a recurring element with recent releases, like the pandemic has stopped a lot of people paying attention to plot details. Last night there was a moment in the new Pitch Meeting vid uploaded that repeated the same issue raised in many negative callouts I've seen since No Time to Die released, it's a false reading of the plot like no-one can follow things anymore without a pause button via TIVO to hand

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, that's a weird one. Sometimes it really bugs me when a plot is overly explained, like they have to beat us over the head with it in or we won't understand what's happening. And then I see so many people not get things in movies and call stuff plot holes when really they just missed what seemed obvious. I guess you can't cater to everyone.

[MoFo2]

And IGN gave it a 9 out of 10.

[Yakumo]

And IGN gave it a 9 out of 10.

That doesn't mean **** though. IGN can never be trusted with review scores of any kind.

[Cassius_Smoke]

That doesn't mean **** though. IGN can never be trusted with review scores of any kind.

Agreed. Someone slides them a paper bag of money and depending on the amount inside, dictates the score.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH6u_033YBA

Final trailer is out but - WARNING - It's effectively the film

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/exclusive-ghostbusters-series.html

Pinch of salt and all that, apparently Sony is working on Ghostbusters: The Series

[Neon Ignition]

Heard over the weekend that when the cast signed up for Ghostbusters II part of the contract agreed was that Akroyd, Ramis, Murray and Hudson were each given veto rights on Ghostbusters III. In effect, no matter what was planned, as long as one of them didn't like it the entire project would be shelved. Murray would always be the one who veto'd the film because he didn't like the pitches or want to be involved and that's why it took so long to get a new film. By the sounds of this it would make sense as to why so many versions were abandoned, maybe why Ramis and Murray fell out and then why we're suddenly seeing new films as Murray and Ramis apparently patched up things as Ramis was dying and presumably Murray felt like he'd unfairly held the others up all these years so is more favourable to just letting the series run now.