Yeah, presumably different rules when it comes to god entities like Gozer. Different power set. 1 Proton Stream, Gozer was powerful enough to resist and grab it. 3 a bit of a struggle but with the right move, could get free. 4, can’t resist and fight back.
Definitely, part of what I found so frustrating with Afterlife is that most of it is really good, but then it has some unforced errors that…jumped out on first viewing. I need to see it a few more times, but I walked out of the theater feeling like it was missing something (that’s partially the challenge of bringing back Gozer–there’s already a benchmark to measure Gozer’s return against). It’d be great to see the script–I’m curious if the OGs weren’t in the original draft, because their appearance feels like it good have been integrated into the story better (I liked your script). I’m really glad that the majority of Ghostbusters fans got the Ghostbusters movie that they wanted, and genuinely seem to enjoy it. For me, it didn’t deliver the way I’d hoped it would regarding the story (I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the new characters–it can’t be easy introducing new characters that can hold their own into the Ghostbusters world).
I would imagine that the script would be released in a couple months, there has to be one. I still find it odd that the ATC script was never released but they have claims of it being written. But yeah, i’d love to see what changes had to be cut and if the script reads better then the final filming.
Chances are if we do see it released it will be for award consideration. That usually happens now. Around awards time for Oscar’s and Emmy’s studios release scripts for voters to read. Problem is sometime they are legit shooting scripts and other times they are nothing more than transcripts made to look like scripts(which is what happened with Force Awakens in 2015).
Jason Reitman probably has it in his contract that the studio must run a basic “For your consideration” campaign for the guild awards or Oscar’s. That’s pretty standard for filmmakers of his ilk. Time will tell. I hope so. If it happens it’ll be late December early Jan
This is very true, actually - Gozer does seem kind of louche and probably would have taken its time to get to the destructor bit in '84 if there hadn’t been a welcoming committee. What feels weird in this one is that it didn’t immediately recognise Phoebe’s uniform as a threat - if you’re going to tear apart Shandor just for existing, you’re 100% going to tear apart a representative of the one body ever to defeat you.
That may very well be the case, but it still doesn’t change the fact that a beam of energy is not solid matter and would be broken if someone managed to physically grab and try to whip it.
Are we really going to down the road of real world vs movie physics? A beam fired from a gun via a backpack energy source thats controllable like in the movie is (currently)impossible in real life, best not to go down that road as movies have their own sense of what’s possible.
I did say in my original comment that I know it is a stupid niggly thing that bothered me about it and that it is just a movie. 
From what I understood after watching the movies and reading part of mrmichaelt’s explanation, I don’t think Stay Puft would stay even if the portal closed without the explosion. He gets caught in the explosion yeah, but Stay Puft is just Gozer in a different form and Gozer is also being sucked in to it’s own dimension so even if there wasn’t an explosion Stay Puft would still disappear, BUT the Terror Dogs don’t need the portal to be on this dimension so they would stay, I think they just need something like the gargoyle looking statue on the building to appear, in Ghostbusters: Afterlife one of them got out of the engravings on the giant door. So even without the explosion Stay Puft would still disappear but the Terror Dogs would still be able to stay so they can just do the ritual again. That’s what happens on the temple in the mine, the portal is being closed without there being any explosion and the Terror Dogs are stuck in this loop appearing over and over again from the engravings and Gozer isn’t able to cross over.
I think of Stay Puft (and destructor forms) more as a golem Gozer custom makes for itself. So without Gozer present to give it life, Stay Puft would just fall apart, imo.
Well, we’re talking about 2 different channels. The first movie had the temple building and they concentrated their power into the roof cap then opened the doors. In Afterlife, I’d have to watch that part again, but do they show a similar structure? I think the channel was mainly the well of souls. The latter seems like a more full proof way, they can keep coming back like a video game with unlimited lives whereas the former was a one shot deal - once they got pulled in by the reversed particle flow, they couldn’t come back.
Not sure how much of it is trying to make this is head cannon and how much of it just seems to be served up for the audience. I mean the last time I had an inter dimensional gateway blown up on me, I had to take these huge water pills and Tylenol for a couple of weeks.
I do think there is a lot left lacking with respect to the plot related to Gozer though. Between the two movies, we get about 15-20 minutes of Gozer lore and candidly some of GBA seemingly retcons what we learned in GB1.
I think also something that just sticks out to me is Gozer in GB1 seems powerful. GBA builds Gozer up to
be powerful. Last time I checked there were no Ghostbusters to whip Gozer’s butt in 1945, 1908, or any of the other times listed on the wall in the temple. So what gives? Is Gozer not that big of a deal and we have been misled the entire time?
I’ve been in a minority about this since I joined this community in 1997, but Ghostbusters II presents the more coherent plot for the “bad guy” that makes sense. Taking over the world and ruling it as a despot just makes
more sense that arriving to destroy a world. Just arrive
as a meteorite in space and destroy the thing, ya know?
1945, I’ll give you. I can only think the tragedy on May 20 led to the closure of the site including stopping construction of the temple. And the remnants of the Cult of Gozer, once all was said and done with paperwork and legalities, quietly finished the temple I guess they would have to have done it after 1984 otherwise there would be a feedback issue with two temples in operation. So in 1945 and 1984, the uncompleted Summerville temple could not properly function. So the only times Gozer was successfully brought back to Earth was 1984 and 2021. Then in 1908 and before, I guess we assume there was no Gozerian temples around to channel and focus P.K.E. to open a portal to attract and bring Gozer back to Earth. Anything in the Middle East from ancient times were likely destroyed by invading/conquering forces, natural disasters, etc. but naturally worshipers kept records that Shandor discovered in his era and restarted the cult.
For you it was a tragedy, for them it may have been the most important days of his life, but for me it was a Tuesday.
If the lack of a functional temple was the reason nothing happened, how do we explain the 1908/1909 Blast? :walterpeck:
If it was supernatural, then something that was going to happen regardless of a temple existing or not at the time unrelated to Gozer. Gozer isn’t the only locus of interdimensional crossrips. Some cult could have been trying to summon their god but it went horribly wrong the energies were misused, resulting in an explosion on the scale of a nuclear blast.
And with GBII, I mean if Janosz kidnapped any other baby, Vigo would have won.
It’s 100% the fans head cannoning this to make sense of it. I appreciate mrmichaelst attempts at trying to make sense of all this but a lot of it just feels like grasping at straws to me. There was nothing in the first movie where we are wondering “wait..but why did?”. The only thing in the 2nd movie like that is the Ghostbusters in painting at the end. It’s suppose to be a joke but it leaves the audience kinda going…wait a sec. Why did that happen? It doesn’t derail the movie or anything because it’s about the only example of it and it’s right at the end. Though I do think that painting doesn’t get the laugh it needs to and so people walk out of that theatre feeling like the last joke was kinda lame, which is never something you want in a comedy.
Like…the PKE energy making the marshmallow men come to life still doesn’t make any sense. I’m sorry but…the only reason a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man being alive is a thing is because there was a cause and effect. There was a set up and pay off. We all know the real reason those little Stay Puft guys are there is because it was a thing from the first movie and they are adorable. Again…they had the easiest way to make them work built in to the movie. Egon kept samples of the mash mallow man goo and when the PKE energy starts to build or whatever then they come back to life. Appearing out of a bag of Stay Puft Marshmallows…it’s so lazy it gives me a headache.
There’s no way Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan were like “Ok. The reason we are going to have the terror dogs turn into burnt husks is (insert mrmichaelt’s explanation here) or Mr Stay Puft is back in tiny form because(insert his explanation here) but we won’t bother giving the audience any of that information because it’s better for the audience to figure things out for themselves…in a Ghostbusters movie”
The reason why Ghostbusters works so wonderfully is that every feels plausible and like it’s been thought out(even though behind the scenes a lot of it was done on the fly). The foundation feels rock solid.
Now the average audience member isn’t going to notice most of these plot logic contrivances. But the more the movie sits with me, the more the cracks in the foundation start to appear. I really think they were more concerned with the references than the reason for those references.
I’d love to ask Jason why little Stay Puft Men exist in this movie. We know the logic behind the characters involvement in the original film. What’s the purpose here?
I’d love to ask him why and what Gozer’s plan was and why was it not the same as in 1984? Was this stuff they thought about and reasoned out?
Somehow I feel MrmichaelT has thought about this time more than they did.
Think of how the kids come across Muncher. It feels random to me. But all they would’ve had to do is this: The Ecto 1 has an internal PKE meter (like a GPS system but for PKE) and Trevor is just following where it points. Boom. Problem solved AND we get the added bonus of having some cool new Ecto 1 mythology.
That’s the other problem. Some of these are just easy fixes.
I guess I’ll sum this up by saying 2/3rds of this movie is really, really good. Then the final 3rd is like…WOW awesome! Ooh ok..huh? Oh wow awesome again! Wait..but that isn’t so…Oh wow look! sweet! Geez dial it down Dan…WOW did they just?? Awesome! But wait..now how & why did?..Oh my god hand me the Kleenex. Bravo. Bravo.
The movie has incredible highs but also some really low lows. I hate agreeing with a lot of the critics, because I’m not against fan service or nostalgia. But I am against using it in the wrong way. Sometimes they nailed it here. Most times they did. But then a few times it feels like they put no thought into beyond “the fans will love this! Look! Adorable Mr Stay Pufts! We are going to make a fortune in merchandise!”
Ha ha, well I hope I at least gave you some good food for thought that you never considered before, RichardLess. 
You 100% did. In fact you got me totally re thinking how the climax of the first movie works with the explosion.
I’m curious. Can you put that massive GB knowledge to work on how the GB’s ended up in the painting at the end of GB2? I have my own theories on how it works but based on the stuff you came up with here, I’m thinking you can make it work a little better lol
That’s another thing I’ve already brooded about as well, ha ha.
By New Years Eve, Vigo had drawn enough power from the negatively charged psychomagnotheric ectoplasm to take a semi corporeal form, leave the painting in a limited range (i.e. the museum room), and exhibit abilities exceeding a Class 4 and mirroring a Class 7. Bonding to the psychomagnotheric ectoplasm was a double edged sword that made him weak against an equally positive psychomagnotheric charge. The singing from the people outside coincidentally provides the sufficient equally positive charge to temporarily neutralize the bond so as a result, it discorporates him, forcing him to take refuge in the painting again. His standard ghost form is apparently the floating Vigo head. He tries to possess Ray and transmogrifies him like he tried with Oscar but the singing and Winston’s positively charged psychomagnotheric slime ejects him. Now drenched in the slime, the two proton streams force him back into the painting because he’s still anchored to the painting, by whatever spell he cast before he died, otherwise he would have been wrangled and trapped like any other ghost. Vigo drenched in positively charged psychomagnotheric slime forcefully shoved by positive proton streams into a painting infused with negatively charged psychomagnotheric energy and probably black magic is like a match tossed onto a tanker truck of gasoline. The explosion in the painting is a physical manifestation of the dispersal of all the psychomagnotheric energy Vigo absorbed and his hold on the river and slime wall (hence why the latter dissipates simultaneously). The manifestation of Ghostbusters and Oscar is in the painting is a physical sign it was flipped to a dominant positive charge and in a way, psychic imprinting. As they fired into Vigo in the painting, there was a brief mental link forged with them and their essences were imprinted on the painting. Whereas, Vigo is so weakened, he is reduced to a non-visible form like a Class 1 or 2 echo incapable of interaction on the physical plane and thus, a non-threat.
Janosh isn’t a bad guy. He’s a pawn much like Louis/Dana in GB1. He gets saved by the Ghostbusters and covered in positively charged mood slime at the same time as a painting gets covered in positively charged mold slime.
The painting winds up being of the people who saved him in the style of art he is most knowledgeable in — not sure that is the takeaway we were supposed to get, but it’s what always stuck with me.
Add to that all the New Yorkers outside who were psychic imaging the GB’s.
Though I suppose by 1991, if the game is cannon, those positive vibes are kaput.