THB #508: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
I keep finding myself writing the same thing about a lot of sequelized IP movies in the last few years… do less and get back to why people loved the original.
And so the now-sad story of the Ghostbusters franchise continues with Frozen Empire. It’s not truly terrible. It has elements from Ghostbusters that we all still seem to love. It’s not poorly directed. The actors are solid.
But the script has got it all wrong.
A major part of the problem is pretty clear. Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan, both very talented guys who made the last film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, seem to think that Afterlife was good and worth repeating. This was incorrect. Instead of taking the characters from that film (strong actors with plenty of potential to be more fun) and setting them up for an adventure in Manhattan more along the lines of the original classic comedy, they moved everyone to The Big Apple, added a bigger swig of stuff from The Original, and then failed to raise the bar to match the expectations that this created.
The idea of Afterlife was interesting. Take it out of the big city and the big male white man characters and bring the challenges to a younger group, who happen to be related to Egon Spengler. Kind of Goonies meets Ghostbusters. Throw in the originals at the end - including the very bad idea of a ghost Harold Ramis - matching up with Gozer and the dogs and then hint at the return to New York in the next film over credits.
Some of Afterlife worked really nicely. But it wasn’t the Ghostbusters we all knew and loved. Three mismatched friends - Bowery Boys or Marx Bros or Three Stooges - leap into this crazy idea of ghosts getting loose and that they can manage them without getting too much attention. (Add a cool black guy and a funny woman.) But then they become heroes when the the city becomes overrun with ghosts, ultimately threatening mass destruction. There is a kinky love story between the non-believing member of the trio and the woman he falls for, who becomes possessed. Add a great comedy nerd. And the square city management - represented by raging William Atherton - that desperately wants to stop them because they can’t accept that something supernatural is actually happening. It’s a comedy first with supernatural elements and a relentlessly light and silly touch, wisecracking amidst high quality special effects.
Afterlife and Frozen Empire have jokes… but both take themselves pretty seriously. They are coming-of-age movies before being comedies. But they aren’t terribly interesting as coming-of-age movies. There is a thing about New York that makes the city as the center of ghost activity make comic sense. Slimer with a mouthful of street cart hot dogs is not just a moment… it is a matter of context. Gozer in the middle of nowhere just because that is where Egon had returned and left a containment vessel is neither strongly motivated or a special context.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife opened under the specter of COVID… but the end of that period. In the October/November/December period of 2021, the film was #5 domestically with $122 million, behind a Bond film, 2 Marvel sequels, and a new Marvel franchise group film. It was #9 for the year. Worldwide, it was less of a win, #17 when counting only Hollywood releases (5 more Chinese titles made the vast majority of their money in China).
It seems a little unfair to hang the box office on Afterlife’s neck like a millstone. But it seemed clear to me - and apparently to Sony Marketing in how they have released Frozen Empire - that repeating this idea broadly was not likely to lead to a lot more success in the post-COVID market.
So what did they do? They repeated almost the exact same thing, now set in Manhattan.
If you look at the marketing, it would appear that the original Ghostbusters will, in some way, dominate in the new movie… or at least match the Afterlife spin-off with the OGs.
Nope.
The Spenglers (Egon’s daughter and grandkids) now live in the Ghostbusters firehouse in Tribeca. Gary is now the male parent of the family, though his status is unsettled with the kids through the film. Somehow, however unbelievably, the family has brought two unrelated underage people, Lucky & Podcast, with them to The Big Apple… I guess. William Atherton, proved an idiot in the original film, is now The Mayor… never explained or made into comedy. OG GB Winston is set up in the post-credits sequence in Afterlife as rich, which they do use in the film, but don’t do anything remotely interesting with this. Ray Stentz is happily in an antiquities business, funded by Winston. Venkman is unmentioned for most of the film… as is Dana Barrett and her son Oscar, who was at the center of Ghostbusters II and would be an adult in the context of the Jason Reitman films.
The film finds its audience hungry for the Ghostbusters that it loves and opens with a ghost chase through the streets of Manhattan, though without landmarks. (Apparently, the film was mostly shot in England.) It’s like one lick of a big soft-serve ice cream cone with your second favorite flavor. You know what it tastes like, it is tasty, but it leaves you wanting more and preferably, with your very favorite flavor.
This sequence brings up the first hanging question about the film. It seems they have been in town for a while… long enough for all the characters to have habits in how they behave in a city chase. They break out the classic sequel con, offering 2 new takes on the ghost trap, first on a motorized toy-car-sized buggy and then on a drone… because the old way always needs a topper!
But if you remember, the first 20 minutes of the original was the guys setting up their business and the story around the main ghost they will be chasing. In Frozen Empire, we get the family playing around in the firehouse, but the movie isn’t really interested in the idea of them moving from rural America to the big city. It isn’t interested in developing the choices made as each of them tries to find their role. Instead, we get a series of stereotypes in the script. The adults are almost story-free, though Paul Rudd is adorable. And the elder kid just turned 18 and wants to drive while the daughter is moody and is allowed to wander around Washington Square Park after dark by herself without a thought. Oy.
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