What if the painting wasn’t actually made by Vigo, but instead whoever defeats the last person in the painting gets to live on in the painting?
These two quotes deserve to be framed and/or put into some kind of fan-based Ghostbusters lore and philosophy guide.
Which two quotes?
Haha. That was amazing. Well done. That’s the most Dan Aykroyd style paragraph ever written by someone who isn’t Dan Aykroyd.
Wait…unless….mrmichaelt IS Dan Aykroyd. No that can’t be. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention Vodka once.
I don’t know what I would’ve done to fix the actual climax of the movie beyond the stuff I’ve outlined in the reaction thread, which is all about the emotional component rather than the plot component.
But the first thing I would’ve done would be give Callie and Grooberson a full role in the climax by having Podcast blow the Aztec Death Whistle and have it knock the Terror Dogs out of them. Maybe this happens in conjunction with the proton beams holding down the ghost well being deactivated (I don’t remember the movie’s exact sequence of events), and the Terror Dogs could then use the loose spiritual energy to turn into the sentinel-style versions from the toys, although if I were rewriting the script, I would not only do something different than Gozer, I would do something different than Terror Dogs.
It’s interesting to note that, of a small group of people I’ve talked to about the movie, the ones who seem to have the least problem are the ones who had no knowledge of the OGBs actually showing up in the movie, and that the surprise of that enhanced their experience.
You’re right. Peter is definitely stalling, but I suspect for a slightly different reason. Something I noticed watching the film in IMAX tonight…
Gozer uncrosses the stream and throws the OG’s against the Ecto-1. There’s an overhead shot where you can see Winston’s pack from above. The red lights on the cyclotron are static, and the blue lights on the power cell are running the power up sequence. It literally looks like they used a GBfans light kit in that pack.
Their packs were momentarily dead in the water, and Winston was the first one to get his pack back online (which Peter could probably hear) in order to take a shot.
Totally agree, because what else could they do? Ray said Egon took all of the traps. I imagine time was of the essence, so they had to use their old power move and hope to blow something up “real good.”
Yeah I can’t help but be let down by not seeing something new. I don’t mind the connections to the original film like Ivo Shandor but I think the big bad ghost should’ve been Gozer’s boss. Since it’s said Gozer was a demigod. Well how about having the thing Gozer was trying to maybe get away from. Or Gozer’s role is to conquer realms for its master. Now the master is coming to collect the realm that defied him.
It wouldve been neat to see this being depicted in art a few times in the movie. It’s truly terrifying, hideous. They tease that the masters form is said to be so horrific one glance causes your heart to stop from the fear.
So the finale comes. Maybe the GB’s aren’t even there at the mine at this point. It’s the army/police that are there and the GB’s are watching on a TV in the local jail. The portal opens. Here it comes. We are going to get a glimpse of the big bad in all it’s gnarly evil glory. But…
We pull a Monty Python & the Holy Grail and what comes out is the most adorable innocent looking creature ever. This thing makes Baby Yoda look ugly. It’s adorable and it’s tiny and when it speaks it speaks with this adorable squeaky chipmunk like voice. And suddenly the scene turns horrific as we cut to the GB’s watching the events unfold on TV. There’s screaming, bodies thrown left and right. Gun fire and chaos with Cries of “Help us! Oh god help us!” and then the camera cuts off…
But yeah seeing Gozer again…I feel it undoes the first film a little. I don’t know. Having a new baddie would’ve been better I think.
So many good points here.
Yes as fans were gonna have to come up with our own canons and reasons for it. LFL has a whole story group and continuity tracker for Star Wars…I mean they should all be sacked due to the gross contradictions I’ve seen from project to project but they have a group. There isn’t one of these for GB even though between IDW, the Crossrip, Folks here, GB News it would be more then easy to contract a fan to get these ducks in a row and rather then make a movie for fans that is still made for general movie fans they could take a page from the director or Blade Runner 2049 and Dune. Those films are made for fans of the material. Not general cinema goers. Maybe another book by Dan Wallace can help answer some of these but the focus by Sony will be to get a new film or project out as Afterlife was delayed so long but we can hope perhaps the story is a bit more original and perhaps a bit more thought out with these questions…or they ask someone to read it and pose these questions first.
I used to think that too, until I remembered a particular scene from GB2. When they catch the Scoleri brothers, they ensnare one of the ghosts, who then grabs the beams and tries to wrangle himself out, as if they were ropes.
So Gozer being able to use the beams as whips doesn’t flow (pun intended) with how a proton beam would work in real life, but it it consistent with how it works in the movies.
There’s a lot of good points here and I really like the explanations people have come up with. It does seem like not enough thought was put into certain things but maybe they were to a certain point. Either way it adds to it and it’s fun coming up with stuff.
Correct me if my wrong but I’ve always thought Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was a separate entity created by Gozer not actually Gozer itself. I’ve looked it up and I guess I am wrong. The cartoon probably influenced this but have not seen it in many years.
The mini pufts are pretty much portrayed as separate characters and I’ve just explained them as the spirit of Stay Puft returning along with the terror dog because it he was part of Gozer but the Video Game reason works too. I’ve played it.
I’ve always loved Stay Puft. I thought their reaction to the OGB was so cute cause they remember them. Made me think his personality could be split and some were friendly but maybe they were glad they showed up because they wanted revenge?! Haha.
If the proton streams cause recoil and exert momentum on the wand when wrangling ghosts, that works both ways. It means the person wielding the wand can be knocked back by a force coming from the opposite direction.
As for Gozer, I think they should have used Tiamat instead. Tiamat is an actual goddess from ancient Sumerian religion. Tiamat was also in GBTVG where it was said that Tiamat and her followers banished Gozer from Earth. So GBTVG actually connected the real Sumerian afterlife /underworld and religion with the fantasy version in Ghostbusters.
Gozer is completely made up in terms of a Sumerian God. The name Gozer is of Germanic origin (similar to the words Geezer in English, Gozer in Dutch and in Yiddish, basically meaning old man or man). Vinz Clortho and Zuul are also not Sumerian. Vinz is just short for Vincent and has nothing to do with Sumerian or Mesopotamian myths. Why you would call a 5000 year old Middle Eastern hell hound Vincent is anyone’s guess. Most of these words (Vinz, Clortho, etc) just sound Yiddish or German which makes sense as both Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis are Jewish. So these “Sumerian” entities are just names made up in 1983 by 2 Jewish people in a language that is probably the most “foreign” to them: German or Yiddish.
In actual Sumerian afterlife myths the God that comes closest to how Gozer appears in GB is maybe EREŠ.KI.GAL (Queen.Earth Goddess.The Great) Queen of the the Sumerian underworld.
Using Tiamat (actual Sumerian Goddess of primordial chaos) would have expanded the Ghostbusters universe with things that are based in actual reality and have allowed fans a goldmine of real world knowledge to dive into. Also seeing as Tiamat was in both Ghostbusters the video Game (as an opponent of “Gozer”) and in Real Ghostbusters it would have been not far fetched at all. Also it would have opened up creativity for future movies featuring perhaps Enlil or even higher Gods in the Sumerian Annukani (pantheon).
But using Gozer (again) in Afterlife was pretty childish / boring in my opinion and showed a lack of creativity. Now when we think of when the Ghostbusters defeated Gozer we have to say when? In the middle of Manhattan blowing off the top floors of a highrise with the world watching or that one time in the midwest on that 50 square yards of dirt when no one was there?
I think the faults really stem from Jasons initial vision of before he wanted to make this movie. “A little ■■■■■■■ a farm with a proton pack”. That’s the mental image in Jasons head that started this movie and I think it was a faulty start. It just leads everyone down a boring path with too many “fixes” required in terms of mental leaps. (How do the OGB’s get there? How can we make this dirt farm final scene look epic? How do we explain why Egon robbed the Ghostbusters (???)) Just none of it makes sense if you set it on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Just because of Jason’s original mental image.
In my view it should have been in NYC with the “unexplained sudden Earthquakes” being “unexplained sudden fluctuations in physical constants” observed by students (Phoebe and Oscar) during their physics lab classes. Ray being Grooberson, Egon could have died by committing Suthanasia (suicide euthanasia) on purpose as one of his experiments, etc.
Just by killing the dirt farm in the midwest idea a whole lot could have been fixed. So many more avenues would have opened up creatively.
Tiamats been done bro. RGB & comics.
Jason & Gil did a phenomenal job.
I don’t agree with it 100% and I’m waiting to pass judgement until their next GB outing.
But don’t forget, the original version of GB 2 had the guys latching into the power grid to stop the baddie and Medjuck & Gross said - “You can’t do this, the cartoon already did”
So they’ve got that going for them; 30 plus years of GB stories fans are familiar with - not to mention head cannon.
Tiamat was in RGB?
Where is your source in them changing the ending of GB2 because the RGB writers wouldn’t let them use it?
RGB has an episode where Egon turns into a ghost (literally called -Egon’s Ghost-). That didn’t stop them doing the same thing in Afterlife.
So something having been done in a cartoon is no reason that it can’t be repeated or continued in a movie. That makes no sense either. That’s like saying Gozer was in the first movie, we are legally not allowed to put him in Afterlife. All of this IP is owned by Sony, they can do what they want.
I don’t think Jason’s idea of a girl or setting it on a farm was a problem. Certain things just needed to be explained a little more.
I’m fine with Gozer again. I would have preferred a new villain but I understand they did not want anything to overshadow Egon and the ending.
I’m very happy it was not set in NY again. The supernatural can occur anywhere. It needed a different location. It was a nice change whatever the story was.
I agree the OGB showing up was too convenient but I can believe they knew were Egon lived and had their own personal gear they kept. They just should have been built up a more like some of the ideas here.
I think they could have come up with better reasoning for why the original team broke up. It’s hard to swallow imo. I think it half works.
Egon robbed the Ghostbusters
because
Ray stopped believing supernatural threats were real.
Those two facts are at the heart of Afterlife’s story.
How stupid would those two central (fundamental) concepts to a Ghostbusters movie have sounded to us in 2018?
I think it goes to show Jason is more of a drama director than someone that really knows a lot about in depth Ghostbusters. I remember him confusing a Gigameter with a PKE meter in an interview once which was surprising.
That’s funny I thought the Gigameter was an updated PKE meter when I was kid. It totally looks that way. Especially if you’ve never seen a Gigameter.
Anyway we don’t know if it was just him that came up with it but now I want them to give Ray a plausible reason for him not believing Gozer was coming back. Just to give some credibility. He still believed just not that…but why?
Does he say why in phone call? I can’t remember everything he said now.
No, he just puts on a silly voice making fun of Egon.
There is no other reason than the script requiring Egon to be alone + Rian Johnson / lightsaber / throw over shoulder.
Just something to shock the audience without needing to spend any writing time or creative energy thinking about it.
Like showing Winston take a ■■■■ and a dump on Ecto-1 but slightly less extreme.