[Ad - Sponsored by Entertainment Earth] Film Brain talks about the latest Ghostbusters entry, which is not an easy task and there's way too many characters and plots competing for space.
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00:00 This video is sponsored by Entertainment Earth.
00:02 Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, the Ghostbusters are back and this time they're facing a new enemy that wants to turn the world into his frozen empire.
00:12 [music]
00:28 The Spenglers, Mother Callie, played by Carrie Coon, her boyfriend Gary, played by Paul Rudd,
00:34 son Trevor, played by Finn Wolfhard, and daughter Phoebe, played by Mechanic Grace,
00:38 have taken over the old family ghostbusting business in the old New York firehouse.
00:42 When Nadine, played by Kameil Nanjani, donates his grandmother's belongings to Ray Stantz, played by Dan Aykroyd,
00:48 he passes over an orb containing the god Garakka, an entity feared even by other ghosts.
00:54 After Garakka is unleashed, he threatens to plunge the world into a frozen apocalypse,
00:59 and the only ones who can stop him are the Ghostbusters, old and new.
01:03 Now, you might recall that I had some very strong opinions on Ghostbusters Afterlife, which is to say, I didn't like it very much.
01:09 I'm a fan of the original 1984 film, as you can tell, as well as its first immediate sequel to a lesser extent,
01:16 but Afterlife really rubbed me the wrong way for a variety of reasons,
01:20 the first being the CGI resurrection of Harold Ramis, which I thought was downright ghoulish,
01:25 even though it claimed to be a tribute.
01:28 But also, just tonally, the movie was very strange to me.
01:32 It treated this pop culture property with very undue reverence for a comedy franchise.
01:38 It treated it something like Star Wars, and it just felt completely off,
01:43 and then it turned into just a scene-for-scene remake of the original 1984 film.
01:48 Ghostbusters is very strange as a franchise, because you could do so much with it,
01:52 but every time they try and make a movie about it,
01:55 they just keep circling back around to the original 1984 film and doing the same ideas over and over again.
02:01 It's very frustrating.
02:02 So for those reasons, I wasn't looking forward to Frozen Empire,
02:06 as it's a direct sequel to Afterlife from much of the same creative team.
02:10 Stepping into the director's chair this time is Gil Keenan, who previously directed Monster House.
02:15 He also directed Bill Murray in City of Ember.
02:19 He steps into the director's chair after Jason Reitman stepped down.
02:23 Jason Reitman directed Afterlife.
02:25 His father Ivan directed the first two Ghostbusters movies.
02:29 After that movie was released, Ivan passed away shortly thereafter.
02:34 Understandably, Jason decided to step back from helming the sequel,
02:38 so Keenan steps in his place, especially because he's a co-writer on both this movie and Afterlife.
02:44 He and Reitman wrote the screenplays together.
02:47 Reitman is also a producer on the movie, alongside his late father,
02:51 who is also listed as a producer, and the film is dedicated to him.
02:55 Is it an improvement on Afterlife in my personal opinion?
02:59 I think it is.
03:00 I like this a bit more than I did Afterlife, but it's still got some substantial problems.
03:06 Ghostbusters Frozen Empire got me on side relatively early on,
03:10 because they got the tone right, for the most part.
03:13 Afterlife took itself way too seriously,
03:16 and it seems like the filmmakers have actually sat down and listened to the complaints about that,
03:21 and have put the humour more forward this time out.
03:24 It feels more like a comedy, which immediately makes it feel more like an actual Ghostbusters movie.
03:30 There's also something to be said about the fact that it's now back in New York, or at least nominally.
03:35 In actuality, most of Frozen Empire filmed in London,
03:38 because that's how tax breaks work, and filming in New York is very expensive.
03:43 Unfortunately, that does mean that the movie doesn't really have a lot of authentic New York flavour,
03:48 which you can definitely find in the first two movies in abundance.
03:51 But nevertheless, there is something to be said about having Ghostbusters back
03:55 in its original iconic locations.
03:58 It immediately feels like it's back in a comfy pair of slippers,
04:03 especially because it means that the film can go back to even more references
04:08 to the original 1984 film,
04:10 getting the opportunity to reference all the things they couldn't do in Afterlife,
04:14 like the library ghost, and etc, and etc.
04:17 Although I will say that most of these references are more on the kind of cute side,
04:22 more than anything, so I tolerated them.
04:24 And you know, they're fun, they're momentary,
04:27 they don't really distract too much from the movie.
04:30 And the opening action sequence is fun.
04:33 Where they're driving around in Ecto-1, and they're chasing after the sewer dragon,
04:37 that makes you feel like you're watching a Ghostbusters movie.
04:40 And the core concept of Ghostbusters is one of the reasons why the franchise has endured so long.
04:45 The idea of catching ghosts, it appeals to both kids and adults.
04:50 There are kids that are fans of Ghostbusters that weren't even a twinkle in their grandparents' eyes
04:54 when the original film came out.
04:56 I wasn't even born when the original film came out.
05:00 Ghostbusters is one of those things that gets passed down from their parents to their children.
05:05 And so it's understandable why the new movies have a very generational approach
05:09 that appeals to both new and old viewers simultaneously.
05:13 And one of the fun things about a new Ghostbusters movie is new technology.
05:18 The way that they try and put new spins on the old traps.
05:21 A trap in a drone, and so on and so forth.
05:24 That stuff is fun.
05:26 I don't geek out about it like the real hardcore fans do,
05:30 but I do think it's enjoyable to see that kind of creativity in the premise.
05:35 And to that end, we've got Ernie Hudson's Winston,
05:37 who is overseeing a new research centre in an abandoned aquarium.
05:42 And clearly, this is all very franchise-minded.
05:44 When you're watching these scenes, you can tell they're putting in the building blocks
05:48 for expanding this franchise further.
05:50 Maybe having multiple sets of teams, or spinning off in different directions,
05:55 or going into different cities, and having this as maybe a home base or something like that.
06:00 There are a lot of different possibilities here.
06:02 But also introducing different kinds of ghosts, and different kinds of entities.
06:07 You can tell they've taken a lot of inspiration from the real Ghostbusters TV series.
06:12 And that's a good place to be taking ideas from,
06:15 because as many fans of the series really think of those cartoons
06:20 as much as the original two films.
06:22 And in many ways, the animated spin-offs of Ghostbusters
06:26 are more successful attempts at trying to expand the world of the films
06:30 than anything that's been done in the live-action realm so far.
06:34 And while I'm very critical of Afterlife being a pseudo-remake of the 1984 film,
06:38 that doesn't mean that you can't bring back old elements,
06:41 so long as you use them in the right way and justify them.
06:45 Rey is a great example of this.
06:48 Dan Aykroyd looks absolutely jazzed to be at the centre of a brand new Ghostbusters movie.
06:53 I mean, why wouldn't he?
06:54 It's his baby, after all.
06:57 And he looks like he's having the most fun out of anyone.
07:00 In fact, I think that Aykroyd is probably the most energetic and lively
07:04 that I've seen him in a film in probably over two decades here.
07:08 If you're going to keep bringing back the old cast members,
07:11 maybe limit it down to Aykroyd and Hudson,
07:13 who are clearly the most passionate about this new iteration.
07:17 And let it also be said, it's really great that Ernie Hudson
07:20 is finally getting his due in Ghostbusters.
07:23 Winston has always been chronically underappreciated,
07:26 and it's nice to see him getting a big prominent role in these movies.
07:31 I wish that he got a bigger part in this one.
07:33 It does seem like some of his stuff has been left on the cutting room floor.
07:37 We'll get to that in a little bit.
07:39 But some of the scenes between Rey and Winston,
07:42 they're some of the best scenes in the movie.
07:44 The scenes where they're talking about,
07:45 yeah, maybe they're a little bit past it, maybe they need to retire,
07:49 but they're still passionate about this stuff.
07:52 That stuff really works on an emotional level for those older viewers.
07:56 But it's also clear that some of those older cast members
07:59 maybe don't actually want to come back.
08:02 Bill Murray in particular pops up intermittently,
08:05 and it feels like he's mostly here out of polite obligation,
08:08 or maybe even just plain contractual obligation.
08:12 He's kind of fun in a little cameo-like scene midway through the movie,
08:17 but he pops back up again in time for the climax,
08:20 and Murray just looks incredibly lost in the big CGI-ness of it all.
08:25 It becomes very clear that he doesn't know where to place his eyeline
08:29 or what he's reacting to.
08:31 He mostly just looks confused a lot of the time.
08:34 And Annie Potts also turns up once again,
08:37 and it's nice to see Janine Farley in a jumpsuit
08:40 in a live-action version of this franchise.
08:43 I mean, that's mostly a bone for the fans
08:46 because the character doesn't really do all that much.
08:48 She doesn't get to bust a ghost by herself or anything like that.
08:53 And that's the thing.
08:54 It feels like they have to get the old band back together
08:58 just simply for the fan base
09:00 instead of actually giving them something to do.
09:03 And speaking of the comedy,
09:04 one of the more successful new elements, in my opinion,
09:06 is Kameo Nongiani's character,
09:08 who becomes more pivotal as the movie progresses.
09:11 He kind of sets the plot in motion
09:13 and then disappears until about roughly halfway through,
09:17 and then he becomes a major character from that point forward.
09:20 And Nongiani, I think, has the right energy for Ghostbusters
09:25 in that his character has to deal with this big, epic fantasy storyline,
09:30 but he's dealing with it in this very kind of low-key,
09:33 almost awkward fashion.
09:35 And that's always been what Ghostbusters is about,
09:38 that kind of irreverent spirit,
09:40 almost shrugging off the kind of more fantastical elements
09:44 with a kind of strange world weariness.
09:47 That's always been the heart of the humor at these movies,
09:50 and I think that Nongiani nails that.
09:53 While it is, admittedly, a spin on the Rick Moranis character
09:57 from the original 1984 film,
09:59 it's not replaying the same arc over again.
10:02 Instead, it takes that kind of idea
10:05 and then turns it into something completely different.
10:08 And that's how you do it.
10:10 That's how you try and make new things out of old properties,
10:13 is that you expand upon them
10:15 and maybe take ideas in a different direction.
10:18 I mean, obviously, there's a lot of things that kind of nod to the fact
10:21 that we're doing a bit of Rick Moranis
10:23 as the bit where he's wearing the colander on his head,
10:25 because you remember that thing, right?
10:28 But for the most part, the movie gets it.
10:30 And I liked what they did with this character.
10:33 In fact, I would say the movie's actually at its best
10:35 when it's doing the Ghostbusting stuff.
10:38 That's the stuff the audience wants to see.
10:40 And unfortunately, there's not as much of that as you would hope.
10:44 And the reason why that is, is because there's far too much plot.
10:48 There is plot out of this movie's ears.
10:52 And I can be very sympathetic towards that,
10:55 because let's break this down, shall we?
10:58 Let's look at the cast of characters this movie has to deal with.
11:01 Okay, so they bring back the Afterlife main cast.
11:05 So that's two parents and the four kids that are Ghostbusters.
11:09 That's six main characters right there.
11:11 They bring back the OG Ghostbusters.
11:13 That's four more characters.
11:15 That's ten.
11:16 And that's all Ghostbusters by themselves.
11:19 Then they bring back William Atherton as Walter Peck.
11:23 This time, he's the mayor of New York.
11:26 And he's kind of doing the same old motions,
11:28 but he's a secondary antagonist.
11:30 That's our 11th character.
11:32 Then we've got two or three more new characters to the cast.
11:37 That's about 14 or so.
11:39 And then we've got the movie's big bad.
11:41 That's the 15th.
11:42 Can you imagine trying to write a movie that has 15 major characters in it in speaking roles?
11:50 That's an absolute nightmare.
11:52 I don't envy that in the slightest.
11:54 And trying to get every single one of those characters something to do?
11:58 And unfortunately, that weighs down the movie heavier than a Proton Pack.
12:02 Because in a two-hour movie, not everyone's going to get the same level of screen time.
12:06 And that does mean that there are quite a few cast members that show up and have virtually nothing to do.
12:13 By far, some of the biggest casualties of this are the Spenglers themselves,
12:16 who are ostensibly the main characters.
12:19 But pretty much everyone that isn't named Phoebe is massively underserved by this sequel.
12:24 Especially the two adult characters, played by Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd.
12:28 Coon has virtually nothing to play in this movie,
12:32 other than periodically pouting about her teenage daughter's rebelliousness.
12:37 Meanwhile, Paul Rudd is squandered yet again in this movie.
12:41 One of my biggest complaints about Afterlife is that Paul Rudd is a fantastic bit of casting.
12:47 He's the natural descendant of someone like Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd in their prime.
12:52 He is a great fit for a Ghostbusters movie.
12:55 And instead, in the last film, they decide to make him into Rick Moranis.
12:59 This time, he is actually a Ghostbuster,
13:02 and then he hardly gets to do any Ghostbusting in the movie.
13:05 He's lumbered with a very cliche subplot about getting Phoebe to accept him as being her new stepdad.
13:12 This conflict doesn't feel like something that naturally arose from the events of the last movie.
13:17 It didn't seem like she had a problem with him in Afterlife.
13:20 It mostly feels like it just exists to have a conflict for this character to give him something to do,
13:26 because there isn't anything else in the plot.
13:28 Paul Rudd actually has top billing for this movie,
13:30 but there's long stretches where his character just disappears at points.
13:34 And Finn Wolfhard as Trevor, his subplot is pretty much interacting with Slimer.
13:39 It feels like the Spanglers might have had a lot of their material left on the cutting room floor,
13:44 because it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of bits from the trailers
13:48 that didn't make it into the final cut of the movie.
13:51 And that suggests to me that there was probably a last-ditch attempt
13:55 to try and bring this movie under two hours,
13:58 as a way of trying to tame the number of different subplots that go in various different directions,
14:04 and try and bring it down to a manageable running time.
14:07 But the problem is that so many characters get reduced to almost cameo roles in the process.
14:14 They also bring back Podcast and Lucky in different roles.
14:19 Podcast is hanging out with Rey, Lucky is at the research center,
14:23 and the movie kind of has these really tenuous excuses for why these characters are now in New York.
14:29 Those characters have to kind of be around just simply for the sake of the fact
14:34 that they were in the last movie.
14:35 But again, they aren't really given much of a reason to be here in this particular outing,
14:41 and you probably could have lost them in the process.
14:44 In fact, there's one moment that makes me wonder,
14:46 how did Lucky not die in that instance?
14:50 In terms of the other new cast members,
14:52 James Acaster, who's making his feature film debut here,
14:55 actually equips himself quite well as the main techie at the research center.
15:00 It's not a huge role, but I think he has the right approach to the material.
15:04 He has that right kind of flippantness to his humor,
15:07 and there is a couple of scary moments with his character that he actually sells properly.
15:12 I think this character is someone that they could bring back for multiple installments,
15:17 and it does feel like that's the intention behind him and massively expand his personality.
15:23 But they also bring in Patton Oswalt, and I like Patton Oswalt,
15:28 but he doesn't need to be in this movie.
15:30 He plays a character in the New York library who's a massive D&D and Lovecraft fan.
15:36 He loves the mythology of monsters,
15:39 and he pops up in the middle of the film to deliver this massive expository speech
15:44 about the film's big villain.
15:46 But this character could simply be eliminated from the script.
15:49 They could merge him with someone that already exists,
15:51 like Rey or James Acaster's character.
15:54 It could have eliminated some of the film's bloat by just taking this role out.
16:00 Instead, Oswalt pops up, has a couple of little tiny funny bits,
16:05 and then just disappears for the rest of the movie.
16:07 Like, what's the point of making yet another new character in a movie
16:11 that already has too many major characters to begin with?
16:14 And I mentioned earlier that they bring back Walter Peck,
16:17 and it's great to see William Atherton playing a smarmy arsehole again,
16:20 but mostly the role exists largely for him to repeat what he did in the original 1984 film,
16:26 except this time he's now the mayor,
16:28 so there's a bit of an element of Kurt Fuller's character from Ghostbusters 2
16:33 where he's using his mayoral authority to obstruct the Ghostbusters.
16:37 And the movie brings him back and kind of sets him up as being a major character,
16:42 potentially because he wants to shut down the Ghostbusters, obviously.
16:47 But then the character kind of pops up intermissently,
16:50 and then appears at the very, very end of the movie.
16:54 And you would think, given that him and Bill Murray are in the same frame,
16:58 there would be some fireworks there, and instead, just kind of fizzles.
17:03 It feels like a character that could have easily been eliminated in another rewrite
17:07 to bring the focus into where the movie needs to be.
17:11 It's really telling how crowded this movie is that I've spoken about it for this long,
17:15 and I haven't even discussed the main character, which is to say Phoebe.
17:19 McKenna Grace is one of the best things about Ghostbusters Afterlife.
17:23 She had those Harold Ramis qualities down in her performance,
17:27 but also crafted something new out of the character.
17:31 She was by far its most interesting new creation.
17:34 So it makes sense the filmmakers realised that she was such an asset,
17:38 and decided to place her even further at the forefront of this sequel.
17:43 When she starts out at the beginning of the movie,
17:45 she's doing her usual Ghostbusting thing,
17:48 and she's hanging out the side of a car, and she's blasting rather indiscriminately.
17:53 That gets them brought in to Walter Peck,
17:55 who rather does have a bit of a point that maybe someone who's a minor
17:59 probably shouldn't be carrying a mini nuclear accelerator on their back.
18:03 And so she ends up not being able to be a Ghostbuster anymore,
18:07 at least for the time being,
18:08 and this causes a bit of an identity crisis for her.
18:11 If she isn't a Ghostbuster, if she isn't living up to the family legacy,
18:16 what is she? Who is she, exactly?
18:19 And of course, she's 15 now, she's going through her turbulent teens,
18:24 she's got a bit of a rebellious spirit going on.
18:27 Phoebe encounters a ghost named Melody, played by Emily Allen-Lynde,
18:30 who you might remember from Doctor Sleep,
18:33 and they strike up a relationship with each other,
18:35 and that is most definitely the right word here,
18:38 because there is clearly a very thinly-veiled subtext of this entire subplot,
18:42 but it never quite fully commits to it.
18:45 But it's pretty clear that this storyline is meant to be
18:49 the emotional through-line to the entire movie,
18:51 the anchor that all these subplots are meant to hang on
18:55 and make the movie feel tangible overall,
18:59 and unfortunately, it does not work, and it collapses under that weight.
19:04 This storyline didn't work for me for several different reasons,
19:08 the first being that aforementioned coyness.
19:11 It feels very strange that the movie never fully commits
19:15 to actually being what it's trying to be about here,
19:18 and it makes me wonder if Sony themselves bulked at it
19:22 and told the filmmakers, "No, you can't do that in a Ghostbusters movie,"
19:26 and they had to rein it in.
19:28 It feels strangely scared of offending someone here,
19:32 and it so neuters the ultimate effect of this subplot,
19:37 because it never goes beyond, "Oh, they're just really good friends."
19:41 If you're gonna make it about that, make it about the thing you want it to be about.
19:46 Secondly, the movie tips its hand far too early
19:49 when it comes to Melody's true intentions,
19:51 revealing them to the audience far earlier than it does to Phoebe,
19:54 and this dramatic irony really works against the movie.
19:58 If this plotline is to work, we need to be on the same emotional wavelength as Phoebe,
20:03 who is very young and naive and trusts Melody implicitly,
20:07 but unfortunately, the movie has already told us that Melody is not to be trusted,
20:12 so not only is the ultimate betrayal at the end of it vastly diminished,
20:16 but also it makes Phoebe, who is established to be the smartest character in the entire movie,
20:22 look like a total idiot, because the audience is several steps ahead of her
20:26 and was wondering how she's not already figured it out yet,
20:30 and this would have just been easily solved by just deleting this scene
20:34 and making sure that we are revealed the same information at the same time as Phoebe.
20:39 But thirdly, on a fundamental level,
20:42 I think this plotline doesn't really gel with all the other stuff in the movie.
20:47 Ghostbusters is a comedy franchise, after all,
20:51 but these scenes harken closer spiritually to a lot of the stuff in Afterlife.
20:55 It has a more dramatic bent to it,
20:57 and the film devotes a lot of time to these characters for these scenes to breathe
21:02 and try and build a relationship between the two of them and with the audience,
21:06 but I think neglecting the humour in these scenes was a mistake,
21:10 because that's an easy way of getting into people's hearts, by making them laugh,
21:14 and that means that the emotional scenes later on would have hit harder.
21:19 They could have had some more sparky banter between these two characters
21:23 and still made it feel like it was in keeping with the rest of the movie,
21:26 but every time it cuts this plotline,
21:28 it feels like the movie hits the brakes really hard,
21:32 and it increases the disjointed feel that the movie has,
21:36 and this storyline's failure is so unfortunate,
21:38 because it's so pivotal to the entire movie's plot.
21:42 You can't get rid of these scenes in editing.
21:44 They're foundational to the story,
21:46 and so that means the movie is stuck with them,
21:49 despite the efforts of two performers trying their best,
21:53 but the writing is just simply not up to par here.
21:56 It wants to have this coming-of-age energy,
21:59 and it just doesn't work.
22:01 As much as I want Ghostbusters to try new things,
22:05 and this is a valiant attempt at that,
22:07 sometimes you fail at doing those new things,
22:11 and that's what's happened here.
22:13 And this tangle of plots also shortchanges the film's antagonist, Graka.
22:18 The film's opening title sequence is actually genuinely eerie,
22:21 this period sequence where firemen,
22:24 who are actually in the future Ghostbusters firehouse,
22:27 come to a scene and find everyone frozen inside.
22:31 The idea of it just uses fear to just freeze you up from the inside,
22:36 there's something genuinely quite terrifying about that,
22:39 and I think they want to put the horror elements back at the forefront here,
22:43 and periodically there are some nice little jump and boo moments.
22:48 It is a ghost house, after all.
22:50 But the movie keeps forgetting about this plot line,
22:53 because it's so distracted by other stuff,
22:56 that it doesn't give enough time for this antagonist.
22:59 Graka doesn't really come to prominence until the final act of the movie,
23:03 and that means that it's very late for him to really do anything.
23:07 The climax of the movie is meant to be this big city-wide disaster,
23:10 as everything is getting covered in ice,
23:12 but in execution it actually feels relatively small,
23:16 because much of it takes place inside the Ghostbusters firehouse,
23:20 because clearly they shot this on a studio soundstage,
23:24 and this diminishes the threat of the main villain, unfortunately,
23:28 despite the fact the movie went to some pains to set him up as being genuinely intimidating,
23:34 and actually a little bit scary.
23:37 I think the film should have focused on the central plot line more than it actually does.
23:44 Ghostbusters, to me, at present, feels like it's caught between the spectres of its past and its future.
23:50 I mean, the franchise is already in a bit of a weird space,
23:52 because it started as a comedy franchise,
23:54 and now it's being reconfigured into the modern language of the cinematic universe.
23:59 It feels like the whole franchise is trying to find its new identity,
24:03 and Frozen Empire feels like a transitionatory sequel.
24:08 It feels like it's setting up the pathways for what it could become in the future,
24:14 and there is quite a bit of new stuff introduced in this movie.
24:17 Some of it works, some of it doesn't,
24:20 but it still can't let go of the past,
24:23 and is holding it back and weighing it down at this point.
24:27 I keep saying this about Ghostbusters,
24:30 but at some point, it has to leave the original 1984 film behind.
24:35 It's 40 years ago.
24:37 If this franchise is going to have a future,
24:41 I do think that, for the most part,
24:44 it's going to have to put all that into the trap and just let it go.
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