Ghostbusters: Afterlife
At last, a nostalgic film that lives up to its legacy.
So, the new Ghostbusters film…
I am incredibly cynical when it comes to Nostalgia Films.
You know what I mean, those films where directors and writers pick up an intellectual property from their childhood and bring it back to "pay homage" in some way.
We've had quite a few in recent years. Films such as Bill and Ted Face the Music, Power Rangers, the 2016 Ghostbusters, and even the last Star Wars trilogy. And here's the thing: they're never that bad, exactly. They all come from a good place. The filmmakers always clearly love the original and want to create something just as good. They just never manage to achieve this. They either simply repeat the same story (looking at you, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), stuff in nostalgic beats but have an underwhelming story (Sorry, Bill and Ted Face the Music and Ghostbusters (2016)) or simply don't work in a modern format (Power Rangers). This leaves them fun for the fans but little more than a distraction that leaves you missing the quality of the originals.
But now there is Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Finally, we have a movie that manages to hit all the wonderful nostalgic notes while also being a great movie on its own. That carried on the original's world, story, and characters without feeling like its pandering.
Don't get me wrong, the nostalgia was strong. The smile on my face when I heard the sounds of Ecto 1's siren or the beams from the Proton Packs threatened to take the top of my head off.
It probably helps that the director is the original director's son. He has a connection to the original and clearly wanted to do right by his father rather than throw something out for the sake of it. And perhaps it helps that you couldn't do this without the surviving original actors in at least some capacity, and Bill Murrey has always made it clear he would never do a third film until the script was worth it. But the result is Ghostbusters: Afterlife doesn't feel like someone remembered an old IP and decided to greenlight a new sequel to make a buck. It felt like it was the sequel the original writers always had planned but had only now got around to making.
And that's what a nostalgia movie should be. We should feel like it would have got made anyway, even if it didn't have a guaranteed audience.
