So, I watched Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which is a
totally fine movie, with a few too many “look at us call back to older movies
haha” moments, but still hangs together as workable family movie. It’s looks
fine. The actors, especially Mckenna Grace, Dan Aykroyd and Paul Rudd, sell all
the plot points and make the moments work. Again, I am here to say the movie is
fine. It’s a perfectly serviceable Ghostbusters movie, and I’d be down for
another adventure with this crew.
However, there was a thought that occurred to me later in
the movie, and this is where I will venture a bit into spoiler territory, but
probably nothing you couldn’t find out from the trailer, and mostly just has to
do with the number of characters, not their specific actions within the movie,
so just beware.
There are too many damn characters in this movie, and this
is a bigger problem within modern franchise filmmaker, and I’ve seen this
happen a lot in anime, so I want to draw some connections. As Frozen Empire
reaches it’s third act, the team comes together to face off against the big
villain of the movie, and at that point the team includes 4 members from the
original movies (played by Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, Aykroyd, and Bill Murray)
and then 6 members from the previous movie (as played by Rudd, Grace, Finn
Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Logan Kim and Celeste O’Conner) as well as two new
characters played by Kumail Nanjiani and James Acaster. So there’s 10
characters running around in the finale, all of them trying to find time to do
something, and in the end it comes down to two characters.
Now, I’ve seen this before a lot in anime, and I usually
call it character bloat. This is in long running series like Dragon Ball,
Naruto, One Piece, and similar shows where the number of characters grows and
grows to a point where it can be tough to keep track or care about everyone. And
this is where the current state of Ghostbusters stands. Too afraid to cut away
from the past, unable to move forward with a full reboot or just advance the
newer characters by themselves. So instead we get a bloated movie with not
enough time for any of the characters.
Poor Finn Wolfhard gets to spend most of the movie not doing
much of anything except setting up a resolution for one plot point and because
his contract stipulates he has to appear. Outside of that, he may as well be
the Ghostbuster not appearing in this picture. It felt like there’s a
director’s cut out there where he has an actual presence in the movie, but as
it exists now, he could have been written off to college. It’s a weird element.
Part of me wishes they would have included the ladies from
Answer the Call, if only to piss off a certain brand of “fan.” But I don’t know
where they would go in the already overstuffed script. I have to assume at some
point they’ll find a way to call back to them if they make another movie in
this particular series of Ghostbusters, because I’m sure they’d like to stuff
more characters.
I did appreciate the mentions of Ghostbusters 2, because
just between you and me, I like Ghostbusters 2. Or at least I Like Peter
MacNicol in Ghostbusters 2.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent about Ghostbusters 5, a
decent enough movie if you’re looking to get out. Sorry if I don’t have a more fiery
take on it, but it’s just kind of an okay movie, as a lot of movies are.
