"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown."
Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! That's right y'all, today we're talking about the 1984 brainchild of Dan Aykroyd, and I'm super excited. I wasn't sure if I had ever seen the movie all the way through, so I decided to give it a go last night, and I'm very pleased that I did. The script is full of witty one-liners, the effects are larger-than life, and the theme song will probably be stuck in my head for the next several years after writing this.
Aykroyd's "one-line pitch" for Ghostbusters was apparently "ghost janitors in New York", and I can't think of a better way to sum up the premise of the film. The idea for the film is pretty simple, but apparently some of the movie's producers were nervous about how the audience would react to the film: after all, the idea of a giant marshmallow man terrorizing the citizens of New York is a pretty ridiculous idea on paper alone. However, according to my research, the film is very popular with critics and audiences alike. There are some issues that I and others have with the story, but we'll get into that here in a minute.
When Aykroyd was working on his concept for the film, the cast looked a lot different. For example, he had originally envisioned his fellow Blues brother, John Belushi, in the main role of Peter Venkman. Unfortunately, the untimely death of Belushi made this impossible, so Bill Murray was taken on for the project. However, Aykroyd paid tribute to Belushi in the movie with the slimy green ghost that wanders a hotel, eating food, guzzling beer, and wreaking general havoc, so that's an interesting tibit. Eddie Murphy and John Candy were also considered for roles in the film, but in the end, Aykroyd, Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson became the Ghostbusters, Sigourney Weaver was brought on as Murray's love interest that becomes possessed by a ghost-demon thing, and Rick Moranis was cast as a lovelorn nerd who also gets possessed.
One of the issues I had with the movie is an issue I apparently share with Ernie Hudson. We believe his character, Winston, should have had a more central role in the plot. Originally, Winston was supposed to have a more-fully developed backstory (which was that he was an Air Force demolitions expert), but that was apparently cut to make more screen time for Bill Murray. Hudson has stated that he has a love/hate relationship with the film, and he feels like his character is "just there", and I agree. In fact, it doesn't seem that any character in the film besides Murray has any kind of arc at all; even Akyroyd, and he came up with the idea for Ghostbusters in the first place. So I take issue with the script in that sense.
Also, there wasn't a ton of exposition at the beginning of the film. For example, it's not really explained where Egon, Peter, and Ray even met, or how they know each other.
Other than that, I think the script was well-written and funny. Like many critics before me, I find the movie endlessly quotable, and I think that's an important quality for a movie to possess if you want the film to have any type of longevity.
The effects are also commendable. They were very obviously done in the early 80s, but I read up on them, and a lot of work was put into them (and honestly, I prefer old, obvious CGI to more recent CGI that tries to look hyper-realistic). For example, there were some ghosts that had to be animated, which meant that weeks could be spent drawing the ghosts out just for them to appear onscreen for a few seconds (for example, the library ghost at the beginning of the movie was animated). Additionally, the blasts from the neutrino "throwers" were hand-drawn, with a flashbulb at the end of the instruments providing a guideline for the people drawing the blasts. Pyrotechnics were also used on the areas hit by the neutrino blasts. In addition to CGI and pyrotechnics, puppets, wires, and trap doors were used throughout the movie.
Another thing about the shooting that's sort of astounding is that a lot of the shooting was done on-location in New York- meaning that those scenes had to be shot very quickly, because the production team was shutting down and clogging up areas in a very active city....and not everybody was pleased about that.
In summary: Ghostbusters is a fun film with catchy lines and an even catchier theme song. The acting is good, though I wish some characters had more development and relative importance to the plot. The effects look a little dated at times, but are still impressive considering the age of the movie and the tight production schedule (they had a year to finalize the script, shoot the film, do post-production stuff, etc). It's a fun film.
Rating: B
As a post-script, here's a video that I watched on YouTube that totals up the sum of all the things destroyed in the movie if the destruction featured onscreen was real...
Ghostbusters - What's the Damage?
Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! That's right y'all, today we're talking about the 1984 brainchild of Dan Aykroyd, and I'm super excited. I wasn't sure if I had ever seen the movie all the way through, so I decided to give it a go last night, and I'm very pleased that I did. The script is full of witty one-liners, the effects are larger-than life, and the theme song will probably be stuck in my head for the next several years after writing this.
Aykroyd's "one-line pitch" for Ghostbusters was apparently "ghost janitors in New York", and I can't think of a better way to sum up the premise of the film. The idea for the film is pretty simple, but apparently some of the movie's producers were nervous about how the audience would react to the film: after all, the idea of a giant marshmallow man terrorizing the citizens of New York is a pretty ridiculous idea on paper alone. However, according to my research, the film is very popular with critics and audiences alike. There are some issues that I and others have with the story, but we'll get into that here in a minute.
When Aykroyd was working on his concept for the film, the cast looked a lot different. For example, he had originally envisioned his fellow Blues brother, John Belushi, in the main role of Peter Venkman. Unfortunately, the untimely death of Belushi made this impossible, so Bill Murray was taken on for the project. However, Aykroyd paid tribute to Belushi in the movie with the slimy green ghost that wanders a hotel, eating food, guzzling beer, and wreaking general havoc, so that's an interesting tibit. Eddie Murphy and John Candy were also considered for roles in the film, but in the end, Aykroyd, Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson became the Ghostbusters, Sigourney Weaver was brought on as Murray's love interest that becomes possessed by a ghost-demon thing, and Rick Moranis was cast as a lovelorn nerd who also gets possessed.
One of the issues I had with the movie is an issue I apparently share with Ernie Hudson. We believe his character, Winston, should have had a more central role in the plot. Originally, Winston was supposed to have a more-fully developed backstory (which was that he was an Air Force demolitions expert), but that was apparently cut to make more screen time for Bill Murray. Hudson has stated that he has a love/hate relationship with the film, and he feels like his character is "just there", and I agree. In fact, it doesn't seem that any character in the film besides Murray has any kind of arc at all; even Akyroyd, and he came up with the idea for Ghostbusters in the first place. So I take issue with the script in that sense.
Also, there wasn't a ton of exposition at the beginning of the film. For example, it's not really explained where Egon, Peter, and Ray even met, or how they know each other.
Other than that, I think the script was well-written and funny. Like many critics before me, I find the movie endlessly quotable, and I think that's an important quality for a movie to possess if you want the film to have any type of longevity.
The effects are also commendable. They were very obviously done in the early 80s, but I read up on them, and a lot of work was put into them (and honestly, I prefer old, obvious CGI to more recent CGI that tries to look hyper-realistic). For example, there were some ghosts that had to be animated, which meant that weeks could be spent drawing the ghosts out just for them to appear onscreen for a few seconds (for example, the library ghost at the beginning of the movie was animated). Additionally, the blasts from the neutrino "throwers" were hand-drawn, with a flashbulb at the end of the instruments providing a guideline for the people drawing the blasts. Pyrotechnics were also used on the areas hit by the neutrino blasts. In addition to CGI and pyrotechnics, puppets, wires, and trap doors were used throughout the movie.
Another thing about the shooting that's sort of astounding is that a lot of the shooting was done on-location in New York- meaning that those scenes had to be shot very quickly, because the production team was shutting down and clogging up areas in a very active city....and not everybody was pleased about that.
In summary: Ghostbusters is a fun film with catchy lines and an even catchier theme song. The acting is good, though I wish some characters had more development and relative importance to the plot. The effects look a little dated at times, but are still impressive considering the age of the movie and the tight production schedule (they had a year to finalize the script, shoot the film, do post-production stuff, etc). It's a fun film.
Rating: B
As a post-script, here's a video that I watched on YouTube that totals up the sum of all the things destroyed in the movie if the destruction featured onscreen was real...
Ghostbusters - What's the Damage?
Great review! I remember this move and loved it.
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