This was an idea I had a little while back when I played the Ghostbusters Xbox video game. I know Bill Murray said he would only do it if they killed him off in the first reel. So I came up with a main script idea (loose idea) where he does. Jokes on him though, because this is GHOSTbusters, so he ends up being in the rest of the movie!
There would be two main story arcs, one involving the main antagonist, who is a super powerful supernatural entity that feeds off of other ghosts, some kind of oblivion monster that claims that when he consumes ghosts, they simply go to oblivion and no longer exist.
The second story arc deals with the fact that the ghostbusters realize that just storing more and more ghosts in a containment unit is not a viable solution to the super natural problem. Like just dumping garbage in dumps, eventually you run out of space. A rookie could make a smart ass remark about this and peter could shoot him down.
Durring a routine call, the ghost busters end up fighting a powerful super natural being, tied to main antagonist. There would be rookies learning from peter, he would be fairly cocky. Something scary and dangerous, doesn’t matter too much, I was thinking some sort of building that inside is turned to all ice, and there are ice golems all over the place. It would be pitch black, and they would just have flash lights. at first its dangerous, but then they get the hang of it and stop smaller golems with fire. And just as peter feels good about the position, a HUGE T-REX style golem that their previous strategies would not work on appears. he would be alone.
The scene would cut to the others fighting a losing battle. But just as things look bad, a catholic priest appears and starts chanting hail marys or whatever, and exercises the ghost. When things cool down, ray goes looking for peter (who was the psychologist) to excitedly tell him what just happened, but finds that he was crushed by this large creature. The priest would say something about how he knew the poltergeist, and what he did, and basically did some ghost therapy to have him move on to the next world. Perhaps they meet the main antagonist, and learn that he plans to hit the containment unit to consume all captured ghosts and become god like powerful.
Now that peter is dead, ray and the other ghost busters start having existential crisises about their own passing, and what it means to be a ghost and dead for that matter. In the mean time, they realize that sending ghosts to the “next world” is a better solution than keeping them in a containment unit. So they build a unit that allows catholic priests to help ghosts move to the next world. Like a row of booths that contains ghosts in a box so the priest can see them and work with them. The scene would have them all lined up chanting catholic words.
Later ray, egon, and others start discussing that this is working for a percentage of the ghosts, but some don’t respond at all. At this time peter’s ghost would make an appearance, and remind them that not all people die a catholic. He would disappear, and they would do some research on one of the ghosts that wasn’t responding to find out he was jewish. So they bring in a rabbi, and bingo! It would work. Then they would look at each other, and next scene would have each booth have a priest from each world religion. Hare Krishnea would be singing their tune in one booth, rabbis would be chanting, this could be a fairly comical scene where they use stereotypical charactures of each religion.
This would get most ghosts to move on, but one will still stay even though they tried every priest. This whole revelation would leave ray, who is like a child sometimes, confused about “if religion is right, which one is right?” and where do people go after they die and stop being a ghost? Egon would suggest that maybe the ghost that wasn’t leaving was an atheist. Then they would get confused about what to do with him.
In the mean time, they are only exorcising ghosts only so fast, and the main antagonist who wants to consume the rest of the ghosts would be making advances on the containment unit. Peter would be helping them figure out the main antagonists plans at the risk of being consumed into oblivion. peter, being of no particular religion, doesn’t seem to care that much, and just keeps his mission as a ghost buster. I haven’t though of how he could be defeated, but it could have something to do with the idea that your next existence becomes whatever your consciousness was at the time of death. So this antagonist would be spreading the idea that life ends with oblivion so that people who die go to him and give him power, but they don’t have to. So sending ghosts off to a heaven like existence is part of the solution, but they end up confronting them because they didn’t move them on fast enough. He could be a human like being on TV using propaganda to spread that once you die, you go to oblivion. That would be interesting. He would be starting a cult on the tv networks where people stop caring about morality, do whatever they want, because when they die they just go to oblivion anyway, so why not? But really they only go to oblivion (the main antagonist, the busters could as the question “is he oblivion himself???”) because this antagonist convinced them of that while they were alive.
Once the final confrontation with the main antagonist ends, things settle down and peter meets with the team again. He tells them that its time for him to move on, because he has found his next purpose. Everyone is sad but understands. Ray sees this as an opportunity to find out what happens after you die and stop being a ghost. He says, “wow, so peter, you have figure out what happens after death? Is it what religion says? I mean, which one is ‘right’?” Peter will just smile at ray and say “They all are” he would disappear, and that would be his final line. After seeing him dissapear, you would see the ghost that wasnt responding to any priest become happy (he was listening in), and dissapear himself. He would be looking depressed and not responsive to any priest the whole movie. Ray then would talk with egon, and he would say that’s a logical impossibility.
Obviously egon’s actor passed recently, so unfortunately that hurts some of the dialog where he plays the rational role. I thought this concept would have a nice mix of action, comedy and have a touching message at the end, which would make it appeal to many people, if the scenes are scripted well. The baby boomer generation that saw the first ghostbusters is approaching this passing to the next world themselves, and might vib with them. Most movies like Rambo, rocky and such are taking this angle with them being old and facing old age.
I also like that in a time that the world is becoming more divided all religions come together to solve a similar goal of stopping this main antagonist.
Any thoughts? feed back? I know this is very rough, but just wanted to see what people thought of this.
