Ghostbusters Reboot/3

Egon actually has a massive, if dry, sense of humour. He's my favourite character by far.

"My parents didn't believe in toys."

You mean the character is dry humor? Cause I only remember him making one joke in two movies.

edited 14th Jun '15 11:21:17 PM by RetroActiveLiar

It's more like him getting sardonically amused at the others' antics, in a Not So Above It All way. He also sometimes suggests blatantly crazy things or makes utterly shocking statements with a completely straight face. He's a deliberate case of The Comically Serious. Although his "EEEGOOOOONNNNNN!" joke was pretty funny, given how out-of-the-blue it is.

He has a sense of humor but he is far more often absolutely serious, and always more For Science! than the others.

• Peter: This reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your own head.
• Egon: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me!

He also seems to enjoy weirding the other guys out at times.

One of the very, very few complaints I have about the original Ghostbusters is that Janine is a great character who's sadly underused. Her unsubtle flirting with Egon is really funny.

The nice thing about Egon is that he never seems oblivious to the antics of everyone else, but he is just hyperfocused on other things.

I do feel Janine was underused, but at the same time that made her more memorable in that her scenes felt punchy rather than gimmicky. Though, even as a kid I thought it was strange about her and Louis hooking up in the second film. Maybe an unused aspect of her character was that she was something of a nympho, hiding behind the secretary look.

Louis makes me cringe so very much...

Even when I was a kid, Janine hooking up with Louis struck me as "she's kinda nerdy, right? Why not make her goofier and pair her up with the other goofy nerdy guy?" It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Though at first I thought them making out allowed Oscar to crawl out of a window and get kidnapped, which made me dislike it even more, but on rewatch I was wrong. While they were still negligent, the whole thing with Oscar apparently happened after Dana got home and had been there for a while, it's just edited in a way where that's not obvious.

edited 15th Jun '15 12:57:41 AM by KnownUnknown

Aren't there other Bluecolar antics that they could be playing up?

Possibly someone who is always looking at thing financially; such as how they could be scoring MORE money or dismally remarking that the damage they caused is coming out of their paycheck?

I watched the animated series long before the movies, so yeah, while I appreciate the movies a lot, for the most part, when I think of the Ghostbusters I think of the animated versions first. Except Ray, for some reason. Perhaps that's also why I don't hold a lot of love for Louis or Dana.

edited 15th Jun '15 10:38:25 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yeah, it was Peter, Ray, Egon and that black guy, Whatshisname.

Token Black. He later became a lawyer in South Park and had a son, whom he named after himself.

edited 15th Jun '15 11:53:35 AM by TheHandle

Winston, played by Ernie Hudson.

They've started shooting.

edited 18th Jun '15 9:45:39 AM by comicwriter

So it's a reboot. Damn.

Writing Bill Murray out of the franchise was an inevitability. Writing him out of continuity, however, is a mistake.

edited 18th Jun '15 9:49:15 AM by TobiasDrake

The origin always makes for easy storytelling, though. "Phlebotinum is REAL!?" and the associated reactions are a crowd favorite and make telling your story a lot easier than dropping the audience into an already-established universe.

Plus delayed franchise revivals haven't been doing so hot in Hollywood lately, like Tron 2, Superman Returns, or Crystal Skull, while reboots have done better.

Maybe. Origin stories for established franchises also get in the way, though. They require a lot of introduction to things most fans are already familiar with. That's why Superhero Movie 2 usually does a lot better than Superhero Movie 1; you don't have to spend half the movie introducing the concept, so there's more room for compelling narrative.

For example, nothing will ever replace that moment where we, along with Drs. Sattler and Grant, first witnessed a dinosaur stomping across an open field, rearing up to grab a bite of leaves. So Jurassic World doesn't try and skims over most of it. "There's a Dinosaur Park, you f*cking know this, we all saw the first movie, now let's get to the awesome new stuff."

edited 18th Jun '15 12:58:29 PM by TobiasDrake

Dat soundtrack, tho.

Still, kids seeing the old film might be underwhelmed... although it holds up surprisingly well. The CGI is barely obvious. The abundant use of animatronics, puppets, and physical SFX certainly helps.

Yes. The old film is dated and kids today should have an awesome new Ghostbusters, but the awesome new Ghostbusters should be an awesome new Ghostbusters. We don't need to spend half the movie justifying why the Ghostbusters can be a thing that exists. Even if kids haven't seen the original movies - I mean, they were thirty years ago - everyone knows the premise. The Ghostbusters are a pop culture icon.

Pop culture icons need no introduction. Even if you have never seen a Ghostbusters film in your life, if the new characters came out in the first five minute wearing the jumpsuits and firing particle accelerators at ghosts, there would be absolutely no question what movie we're watching. The question that the narrative needs to answer isn't, "What is this?" but rather, "What has changed since either the last movie I've seen or the general gist of the concept I'm familiar with?"

edited 18th Jun '15 1:19:23 PM by TobiasDrake

Honestly, like Jurassic Park the premise is almost as interesting as the main plot itself. The way they evolve from standard paranormal investigators into high tech exterminators. Depending on how they work it, the story could integrate their first job into the primary plot. Like how Dana was their first customer.

It already seems like they're working a different character dynamic, at any rate. I could see Wiig's character being a serious academic, but unlike Egon, a skeptic, a woman who's promising academic career got ruined by this crap. She takes Mccarthy's character's job offer not because she likes the idea, indeed she kind of hates Mccarthy for killing her career, but because she has nowhere else to go that isn't fast food and might as well give this crazy thing a whirl. If Mccarthy was the co-author of their original book on the paranormal, i could see her character as someone who stayed on the fringe, a true-believer, running the kind of paranormal shop that Ray ran in the second movie. She too will be "serious," but serious about stuff that everyone else thinks is nuts and the humor will be derived from the juxtaposition.

I like Ink Dagger's idea that one of the characters should be a businesswoman, a PT Barnum type who sorta-fits the Venkman role as someone who doesn't quite believe in this, but has a knack for self-promotion and thinks they could make a lot of money on this if they play their cards right.

The only character type that should stay the same is Winston, as a blue-collar everywoman who could just as easily have ended up a regular exterminator.

Off we go. Could we call this Saved from Development Hell in some respects?

I think Thor will be playing a Kronk-like Brainless Beauty Hunk.

edited 18th Jun '15 2:28:42 PM by TheHandle

I've always liked the idea of a Ghostbuster who took the job because he's a con artist and was under the belief that the entire business was fraudulent from the get-go, and is genuinely surprised to discover at the worst possible moment that what he assumed to be a far-fetched scam operation has very real job expectations of him.

There are shades of this in Venkman, but his focus is more in the realm of smarmy self-indulgence and he makes the jump to Real Science effortlessly. He's more like the team politician.

edited 18th Jun '15 3:18:45 PM by TobiasDrake