JonXCTrack wrote: ↑January 10th, 2022, 9:52 am I watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife with my sister and brother-in-law over the weekend. They couldn't make it to the theater to see it because they have a two year old and at the time of the film's release their babysitter was dealing with a family emergency.
Both of them liked it, although I think my sister lost a bit of interest in the middle of the film because I caught her looking at her phone a few times. This made me consider that while us fans wanted more to help explain more background information, more casual viewers likely would have been put off by the slow pacing. While the ghostheads would have loved to learn more about the town's history, the reason why Shandor was still "alive" and the whole point of there being a second temple, casual viewers just want the basics. Hopefully we will get some kind of content through deleted scenes or a comic book prologue that fleshes out the things we want to know about. But I think what we got was the best version of Afterlife for all audiences, which in turn generates a higher profit for the studio, which helps the suits decide if future projects should be greenlit.
I don’t buy that casual viewers wouldn’t find that stuff interesting…if it’s done right that is. Exposition delivery is an art. You do it right? You keep an audiences invested & interested. Take Jurassic Park & Mr. DNA. That sequence is one big giant exposition dump but it doesn’t feel like it because they made it interesting. Or when you have someone like Dan Aykroyd deliver information, it can’t help but sound interesting and important. When you make a mystery out of something, the audience wants answers. Take Indiana Jones explaining the Ark of the Covenant to the government agents in “Raiders”. Great exposition(Steven Spielberg is a master after all) scene.
In Ghostbusters 1 or 2 there’s nothing that doesn’t work as a result of lack of information. We aren’t bored in the jail cell scene when the GB’s compare notes about Gozer and Shandor. It’s interesting stuff. When we learn about Vigo, same thing & it’s just enough. The only thing that’s kind of iffy in GB2 is Janosz turning into a Ghost Nanny and even that is something you can explain by way of Vigo’s powers. Makes me wonder, would your sister be checking her phone during those parts? Maybe not.
Here it all kind of feels half baked & unnecessary. The original Ghostbusters has Spook Central described as a huge super conductive antenna designed for pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence. Boom. That’s beautiful exposition. Right away the audiences gets it. Simple and to the point
This movie? There’s a well & a mountain and a mine. Nothing about spiritual turbulence. Why is there a well? What purpose does it serve? The original has the ETU explode and it’s the “sign”. What is the sign here? In the original I thought the temple was part of the dimension Gozer belongs to. We see it when Dana opens her fridge. Here it seems like something Shandor constructed.
Then we get into…what does Gozer want? The original movie answers that question. And we know how Gozer would go about doing it. Here we get nothing about a Destructor(aka the most iconic part about Gozer). Here when Gozer gets hit with proton beams she isn’t neutralized. There is no complete particle reversal. There’s rules and mythology we’ve established and when those rules and mythology aren’t adhered to you can’t ignore it. Well you can but you’ll lose part of your audience.
Everytime I think about this movie I lose a bit of respect for it. I think I started out at giving it an 8/10 and now it’s dropped it a 6. Maybe a 5.
Having Gozer get trapped just doesn’t work for me. Yes there’s hundreds of traps but I’ve always liked that the big bads in these movies are not “trapping” style ghosts. Because they aren’t ghosts. Gozer is not a ghost. Vigo is..kind of a ghost? More of a sorcerer. Vigo is a grey area.
All the issues I’ve raised can probably be headcannoned by mrmichaelt. But I think there’s a lack of verisimilitude in the story here that those first two films have. Granted this is an issue I’m seeing with more and more modern films.
Another weird thing is the voices of Zuul & Vinz. Why does Vinz sound like a demon all the time? That’s what was so funny about him possessing Louis. He still talked like Rick Moranis lol. If I had to guess it was probably due to the fact that they needed to communicate to the audience that he’s possessed and quickly where the original film has Egon discover something is wrong over a period of scenes. Nothing communicates “possessed” like a demon voice.