Watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife

[Dogbert]

That's all.

It's amazing.

It's the Ghostbusters movie I've been waiting for all this time.

I haven't liked a movie this much since Watchmen.

Disclaimer: Ghostbusters is an IP too close to my withered, putrid heart, I am rather biased.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Isn't that movie meant for people in their 50's?

[erik]

If you're picking an age to be nostalgic for Ghostbusters then 40's seems more accurate. We had the cartoon to grow up with as well.

[Prak]

Hey, I'm in my 30s and I grew up watching Ghostbusters. Initially a handful of 80s cartoon episodes on tape, then the first movie a bit older (never actually got around to the second...), then Extreme Ghostbusters when I was ten to... I don't how long it actually ran in syndication, but ~13 I'd say.

So... It's an all ages fandom, really

[Dogbert]

Isn't that movie meant for people in their 50's?

The movie is early 80s, and back then most countries didn't believe in The Nanny State, so non-US kids were allowed in movie theatres to watch PG-13 movies (and teens in NC-17 movies) as long as they came with an adult.

[Kaelik]

Isn't that movie meant for people in their 50's?

The movie is early 80s, and back then most countries didn't believe in The Nanny State, so non-US kids were allowed in movie theatres to watch PG-13 movies (and teens in NC-17 movies) as long as they came with an adult.

I mean, "It was 40 years ago and I was 8" is uh.... not that far off 50s.

[Prak]

So, I saw Ghostbuster: Afterlife.

It is very enjoyable.

But I need Hollywood to either understand that "we're making this for the real fans!" doesn't mean they need to produce some pandering bullshit where every goddamned scene has this giant wink to the original and then the original characters show up to "Save the day," or admit that that is exactly what they fucking mean when they say that.

[Dogbert]

or admit that that is exactly what they fucking mean when they say that.

Guilty as charged. We all have our comfort foods, and Ghosbusters is it for me. I guess this is what Ep 9 (which I hated) was for the SW neckbeards. Thing is, the middle ground is so far away that its light won't reach us for 10k years at least so, there's only two ways producers know to handle an old IP:

1) Pander to grandpa.
2) Get a Performative Wokeness crew to actively shit on everything grandpa loved about the IP, and then demonize him with With Me Or Against Me rhetoric when he lashes out.

That's how it's gonna be, for the rest of our days.

[Prak]

I mean, if that's true, that's even more sad, because if they had just cut the winking references down to a couple of more subtle ones, and not treated the OGs like they were the fucking calvary*, Afterlife would have been that middle ground. I mean, you've got a new team where "white cis het male" is the minority and one of the members makes an approving joke about Gozer being genderless. That's pretty fucking "woke." Literally my only problem with Afterlife is that the sheer density of "hey, remember this!?" was fucking distracting and insulting, the thing I mention in the spoiler below, and the press being all about how "that evil bad wrong SJW misandrist isn't canon!"

Despite the fact that, if you look at the comics, Answer the Call is canon.

*

It makes no fucking sense that they still had their proton packs when Ray explicitly says Egon cleaned them out and was apparently spending the last 30 years making more gear to try to deal with Gozer. Like, their suits, sure, Egon's not going to take those, but why would he leave the proton packs?
The OGs should have showed up right as the new crew was defeating Gozer having grabbed the extra packs from Egon's workshop, and passed the touch with some post-apocalypse averting aftercare

[Dogbert]

Despite the fact that, if you look at the comics, Answer the Call is canon.

The only one who can determine canon, alas, is Aykroyd (Ghostbusters is specifically his baby), and you can bet he's gonna be dodging that landmine of a question like Neo dodged bullets in his prime, so chances are we'll never know.

If you ask me, Answer the Call wasn't that bad... but the movie turned out watchable in spite of that hack Feig (the three showed their chops as SNL graduates eventhough they clearly had no direction at all. I LOVE Kate McKinnon).

[Prak]

Eh, I subscribe to death of the author, and Aykroyd can kiss my ass.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Eh, I subscribe to death of the author, and Aykroyd can kiss my ass.

A bottle or two of Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull should get rid of those pesky "thinking" problems you're having.

[Kaelik]

I guess this is what Ep 9 (which I hated) was for the SW neckbeards.

No Star Wars Neckbeard (no person? at all?) liked Episode 9.

[Omegonthesane]

I guess this is what Ep 9 (which I hated) was for the SW neckbeards.

No Star Wars Neckbeard (no person? at all?) liked Episode 9.

This doesn't contradict that SW9 was made "for" SW neckbeards, in that it wasted half its runtime repudiating the previous film because neckbeards didn't like said previous film.

[Kaelik]

I guess this is what Ep 9 (which I hated) was for the SW neckbeards.

No Star Wars Neckbeard (no person? at all?) liked Episode 9.

This doesn't contradict that SW9 was made "for" SW neckbeards, in that it wasted half its runtime repudiating the previous film because neckbeards didn't like said previous film.

I don't think it was Star Wars Neckbeards that were (uniquely) mad about Last Jedi. As far as I can tell, Star Wars Neckbeards were equally upset about all the movies, or most upset by the first one, because that's the one that destroyed all the precious continuity.

I think it's just normal people who had no specific neckbeardness for Star Wars who were also mad, or possibly literally just JJ Abrams. But I could be wrong.

[Omegonthesane]

No Star Wars Neckbeard (no person? at all?) liked Episode 9.

This doesn't contradict that SW9 was made "for" SW neckbeards, in that it wasted half its runtime repudiating the previous film because neckbeards didn't like said previous film.

I don't think it was Star Wars Neckbeards that were (uniquely) mad about Last Jedi. As far as I can tell, Star Wars Neckbeards were equally upset about all the movies, or most upset by the first one, because that's the one that destroyed all the precious continuity.

I think it's just normal people who had no specific neckbeardness for Star Wars who were also mad, or possibly literally just JJ Abrams. But I could be wrong.

The neckbeard upsetness that I was primarily aware of was around the perception that TLJ was "SJW bullshit" because it had a purple haired character and a prominent WOC secondary protagonist, and secondarily that it explicitly rejected the implied importance of the Skywalker bloodline and (there's probably a bitter argument somewhere on the site about the Holdo Maneuver but I'm not digging it up.)

[pragma]

I also heard some grumping about breaks from canon enthusiasts suggesting the story mischaracterized of Luke, that Leia should not have exhibited explicit force powers, and about Po's storyline falling out of some fairly contrived conflicts in the rebel command structure. The lattermost gets conflated with complaints about purple hair sometimes.

[Prak]

Eh, I subscribe to death of the author, and Aykroyd can kiss my ass.

A bottle or two of Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull should get rid of those pesky "thinking" problems you're having.

No thanks, I'm avoiding alcohol out of an abundance of caution while on a ritalin generic because I don't want to end up in another heavy depressive episode.

-----

On SW: I think it's fair to say Ep9 was made "For the (neckbeard) fans," but also that ...someone involved in that process (Abrams?) had no idea how to do that, and so it failed to even satisfy those fans on a "we're making this for you!" level. It had similar problems to what I site with Afterlife, in that it was heavily overdosed on "Remember this!?" tidbits. It also was a "course correction" after a director had a genuinely interesting story to tell that said neckbeards weren't interested in, which was itself hampered by the general executive meddling of corporate that won't allow non-cishet white protagonists to do anything meaningful, or even be full protagonists or even just de-protagonized love interests for the cishet white heros.

God forbid the black ex-stormtrooper be a love interest for our white heroine, let alone a full "graced by God" hero in his own right, in our good Christian movie, and all that.

The fact that it's way more acceptable for the Good White Heroine to have a romantic subplot with the LITERAL NAZI MANCHILD than the black man who was a victim of said nazi's regime is just... it says a hell of a lot right there.

[Kaelik]

This doesn't contradict that SW9 was made "for" SW neckbeards, in that it wasted half its runtime repudiating the previous film because neckbeards didn't like said previous film.

I don't think it was Star Wars Neckbeards that were (uniquely) mad about Last Jedi. As far as I can tell, Star Wars Neckbeards were equally upset about all the movies, or most upset by the first one, because that's the one that destroyed all the precious continuity.

I think it's just normal people who had no specific neckbeardness for Star Wars who were also mad, or possibly literally just JJ Abrams. But I could be wrong.

The neckbeard upsetness that I was primarily aware of was around the perception that TLJ was "SJW bullshit" because it had a purple haired character and a prominent WOC secondary protagonist, and secondarily that it explicitly rejected the implied importance of the Skywalker bloodline and (there's probably a bitter argument somewhere on the site about the Holdo Maneuver but I'm not digging it up.)

I remember the Luke's Bloodline thing, but that's the normal thing I think lots of people didn't like (I liked it fine, but whatever).

I don't know that The "SJW!" Which is of course now called woke because they keep inventing new words for the same thing, was a star wars neckbeard thing. I think that was just the bigots getting mad at big movies thing that has also applied to every single Marvel movie over the same time period.

[Dogbert]

The neckbeards on your neck of the woods must be very different from mine, because all the SW neckbeards on my end of things loved ep. 9.

[Kaelik]

The neckbeards on your neck of the woods must be very different from mine, because all the SW neckbeards on my end of things loved ep. 9.

LMAO. Yeah very different. I'm in the discord for a 90 episode podcast about the Old Republic and when everyone ranked Star Wars movies they all put 9 last. I certainly don't think it's star wars grognardia that gets you the ability to see that it sucks, it seemed to be a universal conclusion, since despite beating all the first day and opening weekend records compared to awakens and last jedi it had lower total gross then Last Jedi and awakens. (and also Rogue One.)

[Thaluikhain]

Watching the sequels again, I like TLJ more. Sure, it failed, but it tried (somewhat) and failed. ROS failed without any trying to do anything other than be a failure.

[Krusk]

I'm a big star wars fan, and liked episode 9. I also don't care about online Star Wars arguments (preferring online RPG arguments). Ep 9 could have been better, but I'd take it over the prequels (which I still enjoyed). I would have liked them to do more with Finn and Rose both. Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter is dumb (I'd have preferred Luke's secret daughter, or actually no one), and in the end it didn't really mean anything anyway. Was just a weird "I am your father" mirror that wasn't actually important. . Snoke was under used and/or being a half clone was dumb and/or should have been a bigger thing. A secret army of star destroyers is implausible.

5,6,4,8,7,9,3,2,1

The elements of a great one are there, they just didn't put the pieces together.
-The biggest change is to 8, but it echos into a reworked 9. In the sweet red guard fight scene, we should have Rey fall to the dark side. Snoke can still die, but so does Kylo. Kylo tries to talk her down and defends snoke before she takes him out (yell/crying in star wars fashion about being betrayed). Then she takes out snoke, and Snoke was a clone, and we should have relatively quickly had another clone body walk in and explain that killing him was part of the plan for her to become his apprentice, he can talk about killing him being pointless, and she gives up realizing she killed Kylo for no reason. Rey and Kylo are a messy/abusive romance and this is the end of it. Kylo and/or Ben can come back as force ghosts later, depending on how you want to play it. Kylo if he is irredeemable, or Ben if before his death you have him get his act together (like vader).
-Finn should have been a jedi and risen to be the new hero as Rey falls to the dark, bringing her back at the end through the power of friendship.
-Rose should have become some sort of Han/best friend to Finn's Luke. She didn't have much to do, and a weird suicide run wasn't much to go off. Our core characters for 9 are Finn, Rose and Poe (who also didn't actually do a ton). Then we occasionally flash to Rey falling to the dark side and brooding with Palpatine.
-Rey is Luke's daughter. He can even think she died during Ben's attack on the fortress (more reason to go into exile). Palpatine's obsessed with the skywalker bloodline, this is just more of that. He can do exposition to her about who she is and fill the audience in on some lore gaps. Maybe even some that Luke didn't know about, or tie it into the OT or PT since he's been trying this for like 100 years.
-9 can reveal that snoke is an alias used by Palpatine as he brings Rey into some portions of his plan.
-The secret star destroyer fleet is just the first order's, which was under Palpatine's command the whole time.
On Exegol, we get to see Finn seige the planet, and battle the Knights of Ren, now led by Rey. The throne room fight plays out like in ep 6, with Rey in a Vader role, and Finn as Luke. Palpatine is doing the same thing, but this time Rey doesn't die and they defeat him together.

You don't even really have to change the set pieces or the story beats all that much. Had they just had the same person write the plot, and not get into a weird chess match of trying to undo/redo one another's efforts, it would have been phenominal.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

If I had a nickle for every time someone fixed the new Star Wars trilogy... I could probably start an RPG writing business with the money.

[Kaelik]

Regardless of how bad or how it could be fixed, episode 9 was always going to be a failure made the way it was, because by all accounts they couldn't figure out what they wanted to do for a really long time and then eventually just realized there was a deadline and shat out a movie on rush mode.