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I mean, look, we’ve been waiting to show this movie for awhile.
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I want to ask you, first up, how did it feel yesterday to finally show it to fans? And that reaction, and that emotion come out of people? When we sat down, we discussed why he chose that path, assembling his cast of kid Ghostbusters, and his philosophy on directing Bill Murray. But now, the film faces wider audiences who might be more skeptical of the path he’s chosen. Reitman was upbeat in that moment, luxuriating in the aftermath of that successful exhibition. Reitman and I spoke the day after the first screening of the movie, at New York Comic-Con. Replicating that might be the hardest thing to do in franchise filmmaking.ĭespite all of those existential hurdles, Jason Reitman, son of the original director Ivan, took on the job of rebooting and continuing the Ghostbusters mythology with Afterlife. The original film was a lightning bolt into the popular consciousness back in 1984. Audiences expect something from these movies, but what that is is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps all that waiting is why the response to Answer the Call and this month’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems so fraught. In the decades between Ghostbusters 2 and the 2016 Paul Feig reboot Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, countless attempts were made to resurrect this universe. What started as an eccentric sci-fi comedy from the mind of Dan Aykroyd has now turned into a third rail of genre filmmaking. I would never want him to watch me work, because creative processes are different even between father and son (or daughter) and the cliché about too many cooks in the kitchen is true, especially when the cooks are related.Seemingly out of nowhere, Ghostbusters has become the most preciously held franchise outside of something like Star Wars. My father was a writer - a food critic, poet, and academic. In a preamble to the screening this journalist attended, Jason Reitman describes working with his father over his shoulder, and makes a quip about what it would be like for one of you to take your parents to work. And while adults can find comfort and meaning in kids films (hello, Pixar?) Afterlife is too busy with a convoluted plot that tries to tie it to its previous legacy to let its story breathe.
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The original Ghostbusters film was for adults – the humour was raunchy in spots and grown-up enough that it holds up to time, rewatch after rewatch. Helmed by Jason Reitman, son of original Ghostbuster s director Ivan Reitman, the new version focuses on the grandchildren (Finn Wolfhard as Trevor and Mckenna Grace as Phoebe) of Egon Spengler, and their mother Callie (Carrie Coon), who inherit Egon's barn and discover the wealth of ghost activity he was trying, on his own, to ward off.Ĭeleste O'Connor does their best job at fleshing out the entirely 2D 'love-interest / trapped townie' Lucky, while Logan Kim brings charm to the (we can't believe we're writing this) character named Podcast (no, he never gets a real name) whose entire schtick is being into podcasts. Because what's here is the 2021 long-delayed sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which has positioned itself (whether purposefully or unintentionally and by circumstance) as the antithesis to the 2016 film. Whether you thought the film was good or not is almost neither here nor there.
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Commenters abandoned finding a nuanced opinion somewhere in between ' this movie is terrible' and 'this movie is ground-breaking', in part because the people behind the film were being trolled on social media and the film was being 'review bombed' by "fans" on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB before it was even in cinemas. When the 2016 Ghostbusters movie came out, the discourse around remakes and gender-swapping of roles was renewed.