Thoughts about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

 

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.