I’ve been thinking. What if this reboot is actually a sequel?
Follow me on this. We know that the original cast for the most part are taking on small roles in cameo appearances. This makes absolutely no sense to me unless…
The Ghostbusters find themselves being hurled through time and space by a demon (precedent set in Displaced Aggression and the crossover books like tmnt). They unfortunately lose egon on the process, and are forced to blend in. Now crap starts to hit the fan, Peter steps in (ala Walter Peck) to test the new team. Next sequel, bam. The original team pairs up with the new team to find a way home.
The logic of having the various cast members back in a film where they aren’t the lead characters varies from motion picture project to motion picture project. In the 2002 remake of The Time Machine, Alan Young (who played Filby in the 1960 movie) had a cameo appearance as a shop worker who briefly interacted with the newer film’s time traveller. In the 1998 Lost in Space movie, June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen (members of the cast of the original television series) played a variety of cameo roles in the film, whilst Dick Tufeld reprised his role as the Robot. Usually cameo appearances are designed to evoke nostalgia (and it should be acknowledged, sooth nerves with fans of the original who may still be on the fence) and be a fun bit of content that viewers in the know will recognise.
You’re not the first to speculate on whether the cameos will be intended to establish something more significant. I suspect however that we’ll find that when the movie is released, the cameos by Ernie, Dan, Bill, Sigourney and Annie will be that of everyday New Yorkers, and their experiences with the new team of Ghostbusters.
If anything, the idea they probably came up with to merge all the timelines is some kind of time travel plot.
Gozarian followers (or some super ghost) from the future travel back and alter the timeline of the original universe preventing the original team from forming and causing an alternate dimension. Cue some plot device that detects the other dimensions and cross over. It’s been done so many times.
That sounds great, but if you tried to pitch that to a deep-pocket producer, their head would tilt like a well-trained dog and you would be showered with a barrage of ‘better’ suggestions.
Deep continuity confuses the dumb. They don’t want to hear anything about a movie their grandfather helped finance 30 years ago. They only care about how to expose the brand and spend the least amount of money doing so.
The '84 and '16 crew both start a Ghostbusting business in two parallel dimensions (separated by a few years). In the 2016 dimension there were no GB’s in 1984 and vice versa. The characters existed but they never met / started a Ghostbusting business in the other dimension.
The one thing linking the dimensions ('84 and '16) is the no ghost logo. Seeing as ghost entities exist in all dimensions simultaneously, the captured ghosts have the no ghost logo as a final distressing memory before being captured / contained. The '16 GB’s become aware of the appearance of the NGL in the visual ectoplasmic neuron feed of contained ghosts in '16.
The no ghost logo is like a frightening urban legend among ghosts (see IDW comics) and the '16 Gb’s adopt it as such, not knowing its true origin.
To be honest this is the only practical canon explanation I can come up with why both movies would use the same logo. (Apart from the ACTUAL Sony studio reason for milking the franchise assets obviously.)
We all can come up with fun theories that would make sense, but unfortunately Paul Feig wasn’t able to wrap his head around anything that would connect/continue the original movies and wanted to keep it simple.
I still have hope that our original Ghostbusters movies exist in this movie as films, and the new team lifts the concept into real life (since word on the interwebs and marketing says that Stay-Puft appears in cartoon/TV form). At least I’d be content with that. But alas, I think we’re getting a full-on “Poltergeist 2015” treatment.
I think Feig’s will be a stand alone movie. Ghost Corps will produce every future movie. given how Reitman was “betrayed” by Feig, I don’t think that they’ll feature anything from this first reboot.