I’ve been pondering the modern era of Ghostbusters a lot since the faux-Marvel blandness of Frozen Empire failed to make much of an impression when it hit theaters in March. This little sequel duology, which includes 2021’s Afterlife as well, is overly reverential of the original Ghostbusters movie–but this pair of flicks doesn’t give you a movie-watching experience that’s anything like what you’d get from that comedy classic. Like so many franchise revivals and reboots, Frozen Empire and Afterlife are just new things with an old name on them.
What’s funny about that, however, is that there absolutely is a recent Ghostbusters movie that functions as a true modern version of Ghostbusters: Paul Feig’s 2016 remake, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, and Chris Hemsworth. That movie’s been left in a weird limbo after being caught in the middle of the culture war–misogynists everywhere cried out in agony the moment the movie was announced, and the discussion about the film was never able to leave that behind.
But, to be blunt, Ghostbusters 2016 is a movie that understands that Ghostbusters is a comedy franchise–something Afterlife and Frozen Empire really struggle with. But even more than that, Feig, Wiig, and McCarthy–who were already great together on Bridesmaids, which Feig also directed–have a collective tendency toward dry and ironic humor that gives the film the right tone to match the originals. It’s still a more modern take, in that the pace of the jokes is much faster, but they’re all in the right vein.
Is it a perfect movie? Absolutely not. Some of the jokes miss (McKinnon is a bit too much, frankly) and the overly expensive, CGI-heavy climax probably wasn’t necessary–though even then it’s got the decency to be bright and colorful, unlike the dreary-looking Frozen Empire. But its biggest sin, in hindsight, is just that it’s a remake instead of a sequel. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and Sigourney Weaver all make cameos in new roles, which is a little disorienting. If it had been a sequel instead, with similarly sized appearances from the old cast, maybe it would have gone down differently.
That’s probably wishful thinking. 2016 was a cesspool of a year in the USA, with the culture war reaching a new peak thanks to Donald Trump’s successful presidential run. Realistically, that was the worst possible time for that movie to come out–that was just too much cultural baggage for the Lady Ghostbusters to overcome. Everything that gets roped into The Discourse like that ends up with a bad taste as a result, even though it’s not really the movie’s own fault.
But even with that residual bad mojo, any 10-minute segment of Ghostbusters 2016 you choose packs more entertainment than all of Afterlife and Frozen Empire combined. Those movies are much too reverential of the franchise that they’re a part of to forge ahead in a way that makes any sense. Afterlife’s near-complete lack of humor, for example, is a much more egregious sin than anything the 2016 remake did, and Frozen Empire plays like a cookie-cutter Marvel-type story that’s been overloaded with Ghostbusters references.
So while we wait to see what Sony does with the Ghostbusters franchise next, it’s worth remembering all the things the 2016 flick did right–because it came much closer to hitting the spot than the more recent ones have.
