Ghostbusters II (1989) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction
Added 2024-10-05 16:46:45 +0000 UTCAnd we continue with the bustin' shenanigans... Enjoy! I'm looking forward to your comments. [Direct link here.]
✦ KL
Comments
The number one thing that I imagine most people can agree with as a mistake that Ghostbusters II does is that it completely repeats the plot structure of the original by turning the Ghostbusters into underdogs again. I wouldn't say the movie's in-universe reasoning for this makes no sense, but it's hard to deny that the movie isn't treading water in that regard. My other major reservation about it is the whole ending after they use Lady Liberty to smash the rooftop and drop in on Vigo. The original movie ends in spectacular fashion on this great-looking rooftop set and the movie has laid out story beats that make basic sense. In comparison, the battle against Vigo takes place in what partially looks like a storage area and there are no rules whatsoever to how Vigo functions. If he needs the baby, why can he just leave the painting? Same question if he can possess Ray. Honestly, it seems like possessing a baby is riskier than possessing an adult. The Ghostbusters later defeat Vigo in part by blasting the corners of the painting with the proton packs, but there's no explanation as to why they do this as opposed to soaking the big head in positive slime and then sucking him into a trap. There's a lot of handwaving that goes on in the last 15 minutes. I can also see why people may not have liked the sense that the movie was somewhat kiddie-fied compared to the original. That said, I think it's certainly better than its reputation all of these years, and I agree that, love them or hate them, the three 21st century movies have allowed for a bit of a reassessment of it.
Tyler Foster
2024-10-18 22:44:07 +0000 UTCI’ve always been bewildered by the negativity hurled at GHOSTBUSTERS 2 for most of its existence. I feel like maybe that tide has started to turn in the last few years though, as the modern Ghostcorps movies have come out and people revisit this first sequel. https://boxd.it/4qoskH
Jason Chirevas
2024-10-11 08:35:04 +0000 UTCIt'd be hilarious if "pure, concentrated evil" was right outside the courthouse or the mayor's office instead of the museum but obvs it had to be where the painting was.
Nathan Jasper, the Artist Formerly Known as Primary
2024-10-10 22:54:13 +0000 UTCIt is recycled, but still enjoyable! And agreed on your last point too. I like watching movies that were shot on film.
kaiielle
2024-10-06 19:09:21 +0000 UTCInteresting!
kaiielle
2024-10-06 19:08:39 +0000 UTCThis was so much fun. Me and my siblings would watch this movie growing up all the time and cry from laughter lol. We would catch something new every time, ahh the good ole days. Love that you loved it, great reaction!
David Martin
2024-10-06 05:01:26 +0000 UTCI love this movie. Rick Moranis is forever connected to my funny bone.
RichieRich
2024-10-06 01:59:13 +0000 UTCAnd Happy early Birthday to you too! Unless it already passed. In which case Happy belated Birthday!
BubblyRainbows
2024-10-06 00:45:29 +0000 UTCIt's my birthday month too! I love October so much. Fab month. Happy early birthday to you!
kaiielle
2024-10-05 22:39:09 +0000 UTCThis was a nice way to spend the early afternoon! It's been way longer since I've seen this movie than the first one, and I forgot a lot of the little details in it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to rewatching the next one with you, and to my first viewing of the most recent two movies along with you. I've been saving them to watch along. Hope your October is off to a fine start. It's the best month of the year, after all. And I'm totally not biased by the fact that it's my birthday month. Really! ✌️🤓
BubblyRainbows
2024-10-05 21:57:06 +0000 UTCI was debating whether or not to explain this in advance but I decided against it. Looks like I didn't need to worry about it...
Tyler Foster
2024-10-05 21:51:04 +0000 UTCI honestly love this movie, not as much as the first one but it’s still a really solid sequel. Love the Louis recognition in this one. Just a little reminder, the next movie (ghostbusters 2016) is the only movie which is in a separate canon/universe to the main continuity. It becomes pretty apparent when you watch but it’s just a reminder (:
Sean H
2024-10-05 21:36:25 +0000 UTCI haven't watched the reaction yet, so I might be repeating things you've already observed. But I remember being somewhat disappointed with Ghostbusters 2 when it came out. --For one (and this is something that is still glaring to me now)--it's inexplicable how many of the tropes and beats from the first movie it recycles. The cartoon "The Real Ghostbusters" had already amply proven there were so many ideas and storylines and directions they could've gone in. Instead, we get... The Ghostbusters start from nothing and have to rise to fame once again--all made possible with them dealing with the ghosts in a very public way (the hotel/courtroom). Venkman has to win Dana over. The Ghostbusters theme/montage to signal their rise to success. Dana is harassed by an annoying, diminutive man, who later becomes a possessed agent of the main villain. The main villain doesn't make their full appearance until the very end. The climax involves a giant of some sort (Marshmallow Man/Statue of Liberty) walking the streets of New York. The Ghostbusters have to enter a big building to have the final showdown. There is a jerk in a position of influence (William Atherton/Kurt Fuller) who tries to convince the mayor that the Ghostbusters are crazy. The Ghostbusters are initially not believed, and are sent away to a jail/asylum. We get a SECOND montage before the climax to show that things are out of control. Etc. Also, it's a real shame just how much they sidelined Ernie Hudson in the sequel. Even though in the first movie, he enters the action relatively late, I feel like he was given more moments to shine than in the entirety of the sequel. If you've ever seen him in other movies, he's clearly a very charismatic actor who can deliver a line. (Weirdly, he also doesn't have a mustache in the sequel.) --All that said there is one thing that initially bothered me about Ghostbusters 2 that I'm fine with now: the massive aesthetic change. I chalk this up mainly to the trajectory of director Ivan Reitman's career. All his early movies had a grainy, almost sleazy feel to them, and Ghostbusters fit right in there. ... But Ghostbusters 2 has a more polished, more comforting look, right in line with the other Reitman movies around this period such as "Twins" and "Dave." (Strangely, Reitman was working with all kinds of different cinematographers throughout this stretch of his career, so the similar aesthetic must really be a reflection of Reitman's intent.) Along these same lines, Elmer Bernstein's music score from the first Ghostbusters was replaced with the much more lush and cutesy orchestrations by Randy Edelman. I initially really disliked this change, but when I watch the movie today, I think Edelman's score is lovely, and I feel its absence in the music-less scenes. --Anyway, it may not seem like it from everything I just typed out, but Ghostbusters 2 is still my favorite of the sequels. As I said, I enjoy its aesthetic now. Also, because of the era it was made, it feels like a "real movie" to me. It was shot on film, and it just has that old fashioned quality to it. Movies never really look or sound like this anymore.
WastedPo
2024-10-05 21:06:20 +0000 UTCThanks for all the info, as always! And to your last sentence, I enjoy the first one more overall.
kaiielle
2024-10-05 19:47:20 +0000 UTCThe tonal switch is sort of the inverse of what you hypothesized. Ghostbusters was so popular with kids that in 1986 Columbia put out the cartoon mentioned in the Patreon comments for the original, called "The Real Ghostbusters." It was titled oddly because there was actually a live-action TV show from the 1970s with actors Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker (who I mention because you're surely never going to see anything with them) -- as well as a gorilla named Tracy -- called "The Ghost Busters." After the massive success of the first movie, the animation company Filmation launched a cartoon adaptation of this obscure other thing trying to cash in on the mainstream success of this movie that happened to have the same name. Bill Murray's deal for Ghostbusters was contingent on a "one for you, one for me" sort of agreement: Murray would star in the movie, as long as they bankrolled his passion project, an adaptation of a serious 1944 novel called The Razor's Edge. Columbia held up their end of the bargain, but the movie received mixed-negative reviews and was a commercial failure. He then moved to Europe and only appeared in two things between 1984 and 1988: a cameo in a movie and an appearance in a music video. Two years before Ghostbusters was made, Columbia Pictures was acquired by Coca-Cola, and by the time Murray returned to the movie industry, they were desperate for a Ghostbusters sequel. Murray was resistant, believing they could not capture lightning in a bottle twice, but he agreed to meet with Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis to talk about it. After they met, he had so much fun, he had caved and agreed to do it, but an incredible stipulation was drawn up in the contracts: no further Ghostbusters movies could ever be made without approval from Ivan Reitman, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis -- even if one or all of them was declining to be involved in the movie, they still had to give permission -- and Reitman had to be the first person offered the director's chair. When Ghostbusters was made in 1984, the PG-13 rating did not exist. It was actually two other movies from 1984 that changed that: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins both came out and were noted as being fairly intense for the family audiences that went to see them. Steven Spielberg directed the former and produced the latter, and so he himself went to the MPAA and suggested there be a rating between PG and R that was more appropriate for slightly older kids, and thus the PG-13 was invented. It was first given to the movie The Flamingo Kid in 1984, but the film Red Dawn ended up being the first one to actually be released. Between the cartoon and the new existence of the PG-13 rating, I think there was probably some massaging going on during the script process to make sure the story was softened enough that it could get a PG like the original movie. The movie opened in one of the biggest blockbuster summers in movie history, 1989. The big winner was Tim Burton's first Batman movie, which catapulted the character into the mainstream spotlight for the first time and was a major cultural phenomenon. Ghostbusters II ended up coming in behind its sequel competition, Lethal Weapon 2 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as unexpected mega-smash Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to be the fifth-highest grossing movie of the summer. Not bad, of course, but a far cry from the runaway success of the first, and there was a general perception that Ghostbusters II was not nearly as good as the first movie, cooling off talks for a third movie. And then: that contract. Talk of a Ghostbusters III would crop up for the next 15 years, but Bill Murray would remain elusive. Murray is famous for not having an agent or a manager; those who want to cast him in something can call a voicemail that he checks occasionally, and cross their fingers with the hope that he gets back to them. Murray was one of the people who wasn't convinced the sequel was up to snuff, and remained a holdout for a long time, while Dan Aykroyd (with some help from Ramis) developed a script called Ghostbusters: Hellbent. A third movie maybe came closest to being made in 1999, when Hellbent was pitched at a budget of $150m, which Columbia, now owned by Sony, balked at. Aykroyd packed up his offices at Columbia when they declined to greenlight the movie, and that was that...for the time being, anyway. A couple of fun facts: when Ray and Winston go to the birthday party, a kid confronts him and says "My dad says you're full of crap and that's why you went out of business." The kid is played by Ivan Reitman's son Jason Reitman, who would go onto co-write and direct Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021 and co-write and produce Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in 2024. Ivan's daughter Catherine Reitman also appears as the girl being given a puppy in Egon's mood experiment. The song that plays over the footage during the credits after the "Ghostbusters" theme song is "On Our Own" by Bobby Brown, who plays the guy who asks Egon if they have a proton pack for his kid brother, and the doctor who talks to the Ghostbusters at the psychiatric hospital is Brian Doyle-Murray, Bill Murray's brother and one of the writers of Caddyshack. Last but not least, someone you can't see in the movie: Eugene Levy had a cameo as Louis' brother Sherman Tully. For decades, the only evidence that existed of his role was a single photograph of him next to the car, but in 2022, Sony unearthed a bunch of the deleted scenes with Levy and put them on a 4K/Blu-ray box set. There used to be more of the subplot where Ray gets possessed, including him destroying the ECTO-1. During the montage of busting after they go back in business, there's a quick shot of them running a red light and Peter looking concerned. That used to take place after the museum scene where Ray first becomes transfixed by the painting. He crashes the car into a tree, almost killing everyone. The car with the Ghostbusters II logo and caution stripes is technically called the ECTO-1A; it was probably designated as such because the original gets wrecked. The part seen during the credits of the Ghostbusters on Liberty Island receiving a key to the city and a little celebration after returning the statue was also a full scene that got deleted. I will be interested to see what you think of the movies that come after, which as you can tell from this comment, were made decades later in the 21st century. I personally think the original is best and have all sorts of opinions on the four movies they've made since (although as a devotee I must admit I'm a sucker and that I like all of them). I wasn't sure how you were going to take this one, but I think you enjoying it seemingly as much as the original (or maybe even slightly more?) makes for interesting fodder to chew on for another seemingly endless week...
Tyler Foster
2024-10-05 19:17:51 +0000 UTCGreat stuff, KL. You mentioned the change in humor, and you're right. The Real Ghostbusters (1986) cartoon became wildly popular with kids between the first two films, so the overall change in tone reflects that new audience target. That also explains the shift in Janine's overall look and the reappearance of Slimer (because he was the BEST cartoon character!).
Crimson Ace
2024-10-05 18:59:42 +0000 UTC
