Which is funny since I’m guessing they were meant to be early review copies. Now it’s just embargoed old news. TBH, I REALLY missed the buzz and conversation from the GB outlets I frequent. The opposite of what I’m guessing was supposed to happen.
I ABSOLUTELY look forward to hearing your thoughts on the material, though! …and Mr. Less! :love:
I’ve come to terms with my regular GB/GB2 home media purchase, as long as they keep giving us fresh material. There’s sooooooooooooooo much unseen stuff that still exists. I don’t believe any of it is lost. The GB2 score was once thought lost. Detmerring was thought lost. Things will keep surfacing. Maybe in other box sets, maybe in documentaries, fan collections, crew archives, etc.
I welcome any new material with open arms and warm fanboy heart! I really don’t get the brouhaha with the packaging. Send it in a blank cardboard sleeve for all I care, just give me new peeks behind the curtain.
Great point-- I don’t think there was an actual impact/fender bender, despite it being in the script. The “Winston grabs the wheel” bit is obviously shot outside of the firehouse in NYC-- no trees. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be in front of HQ in the movie. Perhaps an actual prop tree and greens were brought in for the scene? The 1A is still in good cosmetic shape in the museum scenes at the end of the movie, which was shot around the same time as the firehouse bits.
Insert shots inside the car were filmed in LA, around the area of the LA23 firehouse, and on Burbank streets near the soundstages.
Brain ■■■■-- with Jason mentioning the 1A in press, having ideas or whatever, perhaps all 1A scenes were intentionally held back? That would explain the randomly missing second Sherman scene. There was apparently an interior reverse shot at the firehouse with Louis chasing after the 1A (montage). Who knows what other B-Roll gold was shot with the car. My favorite shot in the movie is in the end credits bit with Janine holding the traps. A gorgeous wide shot!
This clears it up for me. Actually wrecking the car is an expensive stunt, and for there to be no photographic evidence of the damaged/destroyed car always made me think it must not have been shot. I knew the in-car inserts of the red light and Venkman looking panicked were taken from the scene and put in the montage, but it wouldn’t have shocked me (when I thought there was still a crash at the end) that they shot the inserts inside the car, but not the actual out-of-control car and crash (I admit the car racing around the corner, that just seems like something they might have shot for the montage anyway, but they are going fast enough that it makes sense as part of the scene).
I wonder if they’d planned to have Ray go psycho just as Ecto-1A was nearing the Firehouse, and then film the tree impact at the Bowling Green standing in for a park? Seeing as they already had units in that area for the museum exterior filming.
It’d be an old Hollywood trick to frame the camera angle to make it look like the car hit the tree without it actually physically hitting it (naturally they wouldn’t really crash it seeing as they couldn’t fall back on the original Ecto-1 prop because of it’s unreliability)… And any “damage” could be repaired by Ray off-camera.
It looks like the majority if not all the possessed Ray driving was done in NY. Paul Rudoff and Devilmanozzy pieced it together from the shots in the montage, the Coca-Cola commercial, a B&W photo in the press kit, and a color photo that showed up in the Ectomobile book. Ecto-1a headed north on Hudson Street, turning west onto Barrow Street (roughly 460 Hudson Street / 93 Barrow Street) in New York City. The phrasing in the script was skidding into a tree. Idk, maybe they brought in a tree or were near enough to Washington Square Park?
From the sounds of it the best look at GB2 we are ever likely to get is going to be the Bueno’s documentary.
The biggest mystery for me is all the finished ILM stuff that got cut. That Slimer stuff is all done & composited. They even cut it into the movie for a screen test. Where is that footage I wonder? Part of me wonders if they aren’t releasing scenes with completed FX because fans might cut it into the movie and make a fan edit. I don’t know.
What’s funny is when all those deleted scenes were announced I thought “no way ray possessed isn’t included”. But…
That’s why I wish we could get someone from Ghostcorp to agree to an AMA and gets answers on these questions.
I’m trying to think of all the releases we’ve had where a new special feature was added, a new master or new format. There was the 1999 DVD(both films), the 2005 green slime covered box set, the 2009 blu ray(GB1 only), and then the remastered blu ray a couple years later(GB1 only), then GB 1&2 got a blu ray release in 2014-First time we get deleted scenes for GB2. Then we get GB 1 & 2 in 4K UHD, then we get that expensive steel book with the GB2 commentary, Oprah Winfrey special. And now we get the Ultimate 4K. That’s 8 releases not including the random bundles with GB16.
This is still a great set tho. Sure some of the GB2 deleted scenes we all want to see aren’t there but not many companies will release preview cuts and raw dailies. Apparently Sony has been really upping its game when it comes to Home video sets.
Here’s my recollection of the home video releases on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, and my basic opinion of them:
Ghostbusters - Collector’s Series DVD and Ghostbusters II DVD (June 29th, 1999) - Initial DVD releases. Easily the best of the DVDs for the original movie. Movies are also available as a double feature set.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II Double Feature DVD (August 2nd, 2005) - Introduces bad blown-out PQ for the original, and drops a bunch of the extras from the original DVD. Adds 2 episodes of the cartoon, and a book. Packaging is arguably more attractive, but this is a downgrade.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II DVDs (March 14th, 2006) - Individual versions of the double feature editions. Double-dip and downgrade all in one.
Ghostbusters Blu-ray (June 16th, 2009) - Initial Blu-ray release. Still plagued by underwhelming PQ, and not all of the original DVD extras are restored (although a couple of new ones have been added). As a fan, one can only really say “pass on this” in retrospect since it was the first edition on the format, but this is not a great disc.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II Double Feature DVD gift set (October 6th, 2009) - The same DVD set, with a collectible Stay-Puft statue. Double-dip.
Ghostbusters Mastered in 4K Blu-ray (May 14th, 2013) - Finally, a beautiful and proper transfer. Big downside is that Sony is essentially reviving its Superbit line here and there are no extras. Another one that I would’ve said was worth buying at the time for the remastered picture, but which was skippable in the big picture.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II 30th Anniversary Blu-ray Digibook (September 16th, 2014) - This was the definitive release of the films on regular Blu-ray. The 4K transfer, with most of the extras (I think a couple of the missing ones were restored), plus the premiere of Ghostbusters II on Blu-ray, which also receives its own extras for the first time on home video. Both movies look great and the book is nice. Also available, a version with a Slimer statue.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II 4K UHDs (June 7th, 2016) - Premiere of both films on 4K UHD. No serious complaints, except the cover art sucks.
Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II 35th Anniversary 4K UHD Steelbook (June 11th, 2019) - As I said elsewhere in the thread, I have a hard time looking back at this and not thinking this was the big double-dip of the 4K era so far. Sony drummed up a ton of good stuff for this set, and in and of itself, I think it’s a nice package, but it seems impossible to believe that Sony did not already know they would be producing a new edition to promote Ghostbusters: Afterlife on home video. Had the movie not been delayed for almost two years, we might have gotten the new box set releasing this week at the end of 2020. Frankly, I can’t help but think there’s an explanation there for why the Steelbook went out of print almost immediately and didn’t return – the people who missed out would’ve been rewarded with the new box set. It’s also kind of a bummer because it does a disservice to both sets of new extras produced for both films, in a way. If we’d gotten the entire range of new extras that appear on both sets at once, this new one would be even more of a slam dunk.
Ghostbusters Ultimate Collection 4K UHD (February 1st, 2022) - I don’t have mine yet, but I’d say this is really worthwhile upgrade over the initial 4K UHDs and a reasonably worthwhile upgrade over the previous 4K UHDs, given the new Dolby Vision pass on the original two films, the new extras, and especially the OOP book.
I’d imagine an updated and expanded Afterlife will come around the same time as the inevitable 4th film. One deleted scene on the Blu Ray? They’re holding stuff back. There were things on the trailers and mentioned by cast that weren’t in the film.
Afterlife hasn’t opened in Japan yet (4th February) or Slovakia (24 February) - not that I imagine the latter would make a huge difference, but Japan may help raise a decent chunk of change.
Sony has been ramping up the marketing out there with participation of cast members from Shaman King who have provided voices for the Japanese dub of the movie.
I think it’s a given the next set after this one will be in 2024 for the 40th anniversary and we’ll see more Afterlife bonus material then like, knock wood, more of the deleted scenes.
