About 10 years ago, it looked like Ghostbusters 3 was actually going to happen, for the third or fourth time. I wrote in a forum about my thoughts regarding the third film in the franchise then and followed it up with a blog post that carried those thoughts further.
Here is the original post, modified with things that changed in the decade since I wrote it:
Ghostbusters 3: Thoughts and Feelings on Continuing the Series
On the New Potential Production of Ghostbusters 3
A new Ghostbusters means a film where the original team is replaced with new Ghostbusters. It will bring in a group that none of us has known for the past 35 years, and thus not really care as much about.
It’s something that we’ll all have to take into consideration, as this film is made. We’ve known the original team for 35+ years, and if a new team is assembled, we’ll have to get to know them. But it’ll never really be the same, or really fit right, unless they can capture the feel of the original films well.
We’ve got this feeling like the original team is like a part of our family. And it could feel like that part of the family is moving out and we won’t be seeing them again. And that’s hard, as change often is.
We’re probably going to get a new group that looks like some of our friends, because face it, they’re probably going to be about our age, by now. They may even be younger than many of us.
The original Ghostbusters were always older, and something we could grow up to become. The age of the new team could make it impossible to aspire to become Ghostbusters someday, in our own minds. This is one aspect that could affect whether or not each of us enjoys the new film, and it’s a natural reaction.
I’d wager that we’re all going to be very split on our own reaction to the film. For some of us, it’s going to be like an old pair of pants. They may not fit as well, but they are broken in some. They may fit just as well, and we love wearing them. For others, it’ll be like a new pair of pants, however. You know how to wear pants, but it takes a while to get used to them. And there’s a third group as well: the pants just don’t fit anymore. And that’s okay, the original films still exist.
And that’s only half of it. The other half is that a new film means new ownership by a younger generation. The new generation will claim ownership of the franchise in their world, and start treading on the well-established territory. There will be some that claim the new team is better, and probably younger and (if they go there) “hotter” than the original team. It’s going to frustrate a lot of us as fans of the original.
I just have to say, we must be prepared for anything.
Ghostbusters.net member Doctor Venkman replied to the original version of this, saying:
You make a lot of very valid, very well-though-out points. You verbalized a lot of what a lot of the community is feeling…. very torn between whether or not they want a new film and the reasons behind it.
I’m a big fan of Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid for very different reasons. I grew up watching both films hundreds of times. I know how the fans of each of the previously mentioned series feel, and claim the same type of ownership of both Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid. Case in point, I created a mock DVD cover of what they’re doing with The Karate Kid franchise: http://www.sweetpaul.com/more-karate…ain-no-thanks/
When I originally wrote this, I remarked that I was very thankful that Ghostbusters wasn’t just heading the route of a re-make, because we’d never know what might’ve been. I also wished that The Karate Kid went the same route, with Larusso teaching the kid.
What was funny about that last paragraph is that everything I had said in that paragraph was wrong. Insert Luke Skywalker here.
A Ghostbusters remake was made, The Karate Kid did go back to the original characters, and there will be a Ghostbusters 3.
After posting that, I found an article regarding The Karate Kid in which original star Ralph Macchio is quoted:
Macchio, now 47, said he expected the new version to flop. “It feels pretty good that some people are pretty angry that they’re trying to remake The Karate Kid,” he said. “It feels good that the public feels you don’t touch certain things. Some times you go back to that, and probably shouldn’t.” He added: “From my personal view, the filling the void of what Mr Miyagi was – and the magic of that character – is going to be the toughest task.”
I am very thankful that Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, and the team at Ghost Corps are looking after Ghostbusters. I think we just have to wait and see how it all turns out.
Personally, I am happy that they’re going to do a new Ghostbusters film, and excited at the potential of Dr. Venkman’s idea for Ghostbusters franchises come to fruition. Having new recruits to take the series on can help give Ghostbusters the legs to last for generations to come.
Here is a more in-depth look at various aspects that I touched on in my original post:
Based on everything that’s been happening in the film world since writing that post, I’ve seen the same response across almost every fandom. I think it’s a response that is natural and can be expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways.
Part of the Family for over 30 years
When most of us became fans of the Ghostbusters, it was with the original team. This is an indisputable fact. Whether it was the original movie, or The Real Ghostbusters, or Ghostbusters 2, we invited them to be a part of our lives, again and again. They have been part of our families, in a way. Often, there are great memories attached to these stories, and feelings of nostalgia heighten those emotional ties. And these bonds can be very strong.
Star Wars is a great example
If we want a clear look at nostalgia in action, we need look no further than Star Wars. In my time as a Star Wars fan, I’ve seen the original trilogy on home video, the special editions of the Star Wars movies, the release of the prequel trilogy, and the recent release of the first two sequels and two more prequels, plus an animated film leading into an even better animated series, plus two more animated series. There’s still another sequel film to be released, as of this time, plus more films in various stages of development, from Rian Johnson and some Game of Thrones producers.
Let’s put this into perspective: Every single one of these things has been divisive. Every single one. There are those that just want the original trilogy as it was released in theaters, and would be happy to have just that. (But which version? The one without the title “A New Hope” or “Episode IV” attached to the opening crawl?) The special edition versions of the films have even had multiple versions over the years. But here’s the thing about the original trilogy: for those that watched it every day as a child, it’s like a warm blanket. A place of comfort. It holds precious memories.
The same is proving out over the prequel trilogy. This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of The Phantom Menace, so we’ve also had Attack of the Clones for 17 years, and Revenge of the Sith for 14. This means that kids who were 5 when The Phantom Menace was released in theaters are now 25, and have basically lived in a world where the prequels and the original trilogy were both just about all there was, when it came to Star Wars, unless they also dove into the books, comics, and other peripheral media. Whether fans of the original trilogy like it or not, the prequels hold the same nostalgia as they have for the OT.
The sequel trilogy comes in and breathes new life into a franchise that many thought the prequel trilogy had effectively destroyed. But there’s nostalgia on a few levels. OT fans and PT fans who both have their own hopes and dreams for the future. Toss in readers of the books and you have fans from three circles in a Venn diagram of fans that are going to be very difficult to please. And you can’t please them all. But what I am about to say should be obvious. The sequel trilogy already has fans that will grow up with these films and these characters and will love them as much as those that grew up with the original trilogy, and those that grew up with the prequels and the books.
And here’s the kicker: there’s nothing wrong with that. You are not required to like every Star Wars movie that is released. Disliking a new Star Wars film is okay. If someone else likes it, it doesn’t hurt you. I’ve read many Star Wars novels, and I have not liked them all. I’ve seen all of the Star Wars movies and I have at least liked them all. My favorites have shifted over the years, and now my favorite is The Force Awakens followed by Return of the Jedi and then the rest of the original trilogy and The Last Jedi all in the same 3rd place spot (it’s my list, I can do this), followed by the prequels. Rogue One and Solo probably fit somewhere between 3 and 4. Your list is undoubtedly different, and that’s okay.
So what does all of this have to do with Ghostbusters?
Everything. Someone’s first experience of Ghostbusters was Extreme Ghostbusters or Answer the Call or (fill-in-the-blank) _________________. Someone’s first experience of Star Wars was The Last Jedi or The Clone Wars or ___________________. And for these people, it’s what lead them to become fans of the franchise. They may even be a friend of yours someday. It is okay that they became a fan while watching a version of your favorite franchise that you may have hated. They didn’t have the same experience with it as you did, just like you didn’t have the same experience with it as they did.
New Characters Replace Our Favorites
While in The Last Jedi, a lot of people listened to Kylo Ren as he kept saying “let the past die.” The character to listen to, however, was Yoda, as he said “we are what they grow beyond.” The differences seem small, but the two perspectives are a thousand miles apart. While Kylo’s perspective is a total land-grab, Yoda’s perspective is hopeful, and comes from a position of knowledge and experience, having spent nearly 900 years as a teacher.
We’ve had a film that ignored our childhood heroes completely, in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. And yet, it brought about some heroes for a new audience, bringing more people into the fandom.
And now we’re getting a film that will very likely be a passing of the torch to a new generation. It’s what the film was always going to be, but it’s still going to be hard to watch. It’s still going to be a similar feel as watching the new Star Wars films handing the reigns over to a new generation. It’s also very similar to what’s happening with the Karate Kid trilogy’s sequel series Cobra Kai. The lead characters in that are still very much the leads from The Karate Kid, but there are others that seem to be moving into leading roles.
We don’t really know what is going to happen in the third Ghostbusters film in the trilogy. All we know is that it is set in the same universe as the original two movies. And that means it’s going to very likely pull on the same nostalgia strings as the new Star Wars films, as Cobra Kai, and other sequels that are being made these days. (How about a true TMNT 4?)
We know that new characters are going to be introduced that will pick up the reigns, and we don’t currently know anything about them. We don’t know who they are, and we don’t know what the story of the film is going to be. We know that the movie is set in the modern day, in real-time, and I kind of hope it starts out with the words “31 years later” at the beginning.
But how will we know if we like these new characters or not? We will only know when the movie is released and we’re watching the credits roll at the end of the movie. We have a long time to wait before we even meet these new characters, and this should be obvious, but let’s please give it the benefit of the doubt.
But it won’t… it will…
It’s going to be a long time before any of us gets to see the finished film in theaters. So nearly any sentence that is directly about the quality of the film that is made today is entirely out of line. We don’t know what the quality of the film will be, right now. We don’t even know who is in it. We do know that they cannot get all of our favorite characters in, and that is the bittersweet truth of the film that we are going to face when the movie is released.
They have to toe the line between fan-service and story-service. Do they make something that caters to all of the fans greatest hopes and dreams? Or do they make something that tells the best story that they can come up with, moving the story forward, while missing out of bringing everything that we could want? I think there is a balance to making this work. It doesn’t have to sacrifice a great story to get all of our favorite characters back, but it also doesn’t have to bring all of our favorite characters back to be a great film. (I would rather they focus on making a fantastic film that I can enjoy for years to come, instead of trying to shoehorn characters in by having them just “happen to be there.”)
Who Owns Our Childhood Heroes?
With a new movie in a series that we love, there is a feeling of losing ownership of our childhood heroes. New fans will come in, and get new heroes that they will love. And they may like the new characters better than our favorite characters in the movies we grew up with.
And we’re worried that our favorite characters will be forgotten or deleted. And we’re worried that some of our favorite characters are going to die.
With the original movies, the characters lived at the end, and that always meant that, somewhere out there, in our dreams, in other stories, the characters are off on adventures, busting some ghosts. And that is a very comforting thought. But if the characters retire from the job, their adventures are over. The only thing that is left to do is fill in the time between adventures.
To answer the question of ownership, though, do we own the original characters, or do the new fans? The answer is probably two-fold. We all do, and none of us do. We do because they’ve been our friends and family for many years and new fans do because we have likely passed on our love of the characters to our kids. We don’t because they are characters that can and likely will be shepherded by writers and artists that are not all of us, for years to come.
We’ll always have the OGB
The Original Ghostbusters (OGB) are not going anywhere. I, personally, have multiple copies on Blu-ray and DVD, and even VHS, both Widescreen and Pan & Scan (and recorded off of TV when I was a kid, which used to be the only version I knew).
Whatever happens with the new movie, I am excited that there is new life in one of the franchises that I love. I am always ready for more content in this universe, and can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.
Whatever the movie turns out to be, I have a feeling that it’s going to be an emotional journey for those of us that grew up with the originals. And I know that I can always go back and watch those movies. And nothing that this new movie does can take those movies away from me. But it can make an afternoon of watching those movies feel more complete.
Watching Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 on a Saturday afternoon has always left me wanting more. Wanting some form of closure to the story. And now we’re getting that film. And I look forward to unwrapping this gift with a mix of excitement and
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