The trailer for the new Ghostbusters flick dropped today:
This is it. This is the movie I have waited 30 years for.
Ghostbusters, and to a lesser extent Ghostbusters 2 and The Real Ghostbusters, has been profoundly influential on me.
In second grade, my friends and I performed a Ghostbusters routine in the school talent show that I wrote (with some help from my mom). We brought the house down.
As I wrote here, that was when I first got the writing bug, which eventually led to my undergrad in English, my master’s in writing, several books, and my involvement with The Hammonton Gazette.
Because of Ghostbusters, I am a professional writer.
Shortly afterwards, The Real Ghostbusters cartoon premiered, and that held me over for five long years, until:
Ghostbusters 2. Looking back on it now, it was inferior in many ways to the original, sure. But when I was 11 years old, it was wonderful.
And then that was it.
I never got into Extreme Ghostbusters, and the comics never did much for me (except the ones written by writer pal Jim Beard).
Through the years there were rumors and rumblings of a third flick in the works, but none of them materialized.
Then, in 2014, we lost Harold Ramis. Egon Spengler. My favorite Ghostbuster.
Without Egon — without Ramis — how could there be a sequel?
Paul Feig tried to, ahem, answer the call with his 2016 reboot.
It did not do well.
It had potential, but I think its gravest flaw was that it was a remake and not a sequel, ignoring all that came before it — and that was still continuing in comic books. Had the film acknowledged its predecessors, and been about a Ghostbusters franchise team — like Venkman predicted — or about offspring or relatives of the original team, it may have fared better.
All seemed hopeless.
Then, out of absolutely nowhere, THIS hit the Internet in January of 2019:
…wait. What?!
Jason Reitman, son of the original’s director Ivan Reitman, was directing. The original Ecto-1. Original music. Could it be…?
Over the next several months, details emerged. It was, in fact, the sequel I had been waiting for. And the surviving cast members are returning in their classic roles.
I don’t care how small those roles might be. In June of 2020, I’ll be able, for one more time, to see Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett, Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz, Ernie Hudson as Winston Zeddemire, Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz, and Bill Murray as Peter Venkman.
And though Ramis is gone, it looks like Egon will be looming large over the film, which focuses on his grandchildren.
There are tons of goodies packed into the trailer — musical cues, footage from the original, Slimer, a terror dog, and a reference to Gozer-worshipper Ivo Shandor — but I won’t unpack it all here.
I will, however, say that I am excited beyond the capacity for rational thought.
They’re the best, they’re the beautiful, they’re the only Ghostbusters, and they’re back.
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