Written by Dr. Mike ~ Guest Writer
Photo from Ghostbusters: Afterlife retrieved from imdb.com.
When we finally got around to seeing Ghostbusters: Afterlife this weekend, my son kept asking “Why did we not see this when it came out?” I had no definitive answer. The movie itself was released on August 23, 2021. For my family, that time of the year is often consumed by the beginning of school. We probably just had too much going on to get to the theater. That’s the theory I’m going with anyway.
The three-year gap is a bit harder to explain. In fact, it’s really only the possibility that the family might want to see the upcoming Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire that finally forced us to watch. Somehow, until this past weekend, seeing Afterlife just did not feel necessary at all.
That’s a very strange reaction to have, especially given that the franchise will celebrate its fortieth anniversary this year. Back in 1984, Ghostbusters felt essential. Not only did the action-horror-comedy revolutionize how we thought about ghosts (bye bye you tiresome Casper the Friendly Ghost-looking white sheet apparitions, hello you colorful, grotesque, and weird Slimer types), the film also became one of those highly quotable popular culture texts.
In fact, Ghostbusters was at the center of two of my favorite movie experiences. The first was when the movie was released. It came out on a Friday. A few of my friends saw it without me (forty years later, I formally forgive them). The next day they were just talking about the film and telling me I needed to see it. All of the sudden, I had this really amazing reaction. I was sixteen. I had a driver’s license. I had a car. I had money. So, we just decided right then and there to go see Ghostbusters.
It’s hard to explain. The whole thing felt like freedom. It was a taste of adult life—just get in the car and go. That context somehow made the movie even more exciting.
The second came a bit later. On Christmas Eve, 1985, HBO announced that it was giving us a surprise gift. Nothing specific was listed in the schedule. We just knew that we were getting the “HBO Christmas Present” at 11:30pm. When my mother and I tuned in, the present was Ghostbusters. We went nuts, shouting and yelling. We were so loud that my father, whose bedtime ritual started punctually at 11:00pm, thought something had gone wrong and actually checked on us.
Again, this glee is a bit tricky to explain. Back then, it took a while for movies to get onto cable services. Although the film just came out on video cassette in October 1985, we were a bit too cheap to both pay for HBO and buy a lot of movies on VHS. Seeing Ghostbusters on cable just a year and a half after it was out in theaters seemed like an amazing present to us.
Dad went back to bed. Mom and I stayed up into the night watching the movie.
I’d watch Ghostbusters time and time again for the next forty years. It’s the perfect “drop-in” movie, something you can enjoy on television any time you chance upon it. And I’ve shown it in my film class too (how could I not?)
Maybe that nostalgia is the root of the problem.
The Ghostbusters franchise never really did reach that height again for me. The Real Ghostbusters, a cartoon version (with a different title for trademark reasons too complicated to explain here), was a lot of fun. The sequel, Ghostbusters II (1989), was a bit lackluster. I never saw the 2016 reboot movie. I know that movie was on the receiving end of some seriously toxic gender related backlash. Maybe I should have supported it more. Nothing about that trailer excited me though and I already wasn’t interested in watching that cast on Saturday Night Live. Without spoiling the plot, I felt that Afterlife played into my nostalgia for the original film. In fact, it might have pulled in too many plot points from the classic film. Now it just remains to be seen if the new jump suited cast can stand on their own while carrying the proton packs.
