Ghostbusters, why I love it? a film franchise spanning all the way back to 1984 until now, including several films, TV’s, songs, merchandise and even today one of the most recognisable pop culture references in history, but what makes it good? Why do we love it? let’s look at their history.
Why Ghostbusters?
Why Ghostbusters? Well for me growing up in the 80’s this was literally my era, I saw both films at a younger age and watched the animated TV series The Real Ghostbusters! Perhaps not knowing the more mature undertones in the first film when I was little, both films still hold up today. But we could have been in a very different Ghostbuster world if things were different.
Original Films
Written by Dan Aykroyd back in 1982, this was going to be a different film; he saw it as a film with him and John Belushi following on the great successful combination in the Blues Brothers, but with his unfortunate death, Dan had to go back to the beginning. His friend Harold Ramis joined the writing and with Ivan Reitman onboard to direct, the film was moving a head in its new direction.
The 1984 film starring both Dan and Harold was joined by fellow SNL and film buddy Bill Murray, all 3 were fairly known at this point, especially in America but Ghostbusters was about to take them to another level. Joined in the film by Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts and the legendary Sigourney Weaver, among others the film was a critical and commercial success, it was different that anything out there, a slight action, light horror, slight drama but a lot of subtle comedy meant this was a fantastic film.
Fast forward and a second film was here in 1989, after the first huge success and a relatively good time gap between them, with all the stars returning it was poised to do well, it did but unfortunately not quite the success of the first, and even re watching it isn’t perhaps as good. The first delivered a lot of memorable moments, and the second for me was still great, but I get for many, why it didn’t do aswell at the time. However, you could argue that time has done well for this film as it has aged well and has a lot of love till for it, with Vigo as the bad guy it was great.
As this point, it was already a well-loved commercial giant franchise, but the actors shied away from any more, the 90’s was an era of dropping anything from the past and all about the new especially with the millennium and almost dumped anything from before in pop culture, it was all about the now.
Though the Reall Ghostbusters animated series was ok at the time, capitalising on the late 80’s and early 90’s love it wasn’t a huge success and seemed like as the turn of the millennium the attention was over, with people still watching re runs a little and Halloween reminding us all..who you gonna call…with ray parkers popular song.
A New Take
However, in the early 2010’s there was talk of a sequel, a revival of the franchise, but with Harold Ramis death in 2014, one of the lead actors and writers, everything was put on hold. The love of classic pop culture was on the arise, with reboots, sequels, toys, collectors comic con’s etc.. all lending an arm to what was previously good in the last century and Ghostbusters was one of those pop cultures, so a reboot was given a green light an all female lead film was on. With similarities to the original cast, all were current and former SNL actresses, starring in films together and had a comedy timing.
With Chirs hemsworth randomly the bad guy many of what was in the first was flipped with bright lights more graphics and comedy aiming towards what actresses were know for, this is all great but you could argue this was the same time of fan from the previous ones and you were playing a huge risk, but it didn’t work, critically and commercially it didn’t do well and scraped through. Will it have more love in the future? I’m not sure, but this meant another chapter in Ghostbusters closing.
A Successful Restart
In 2019 a new film was announced, an actual sequel to the first film, now being co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, with Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman and others from the original set to produce this new film with new actors but appearances from the original cast and following on from there past. With the film centred around Harold Ramis character Egon, this was a great but emotional nod, especially in the final scenes of the film, which also saw the last thing that Ivan the original director, worked on before his death.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife was once again a critical and commercial success with popular actors like Paul Rudd starring and having that Stranger Things/ IT type teenager vibe, which has shown great success recently. It showed what direction they could take this franchise in, a bit of the old and using the history that every loves while introducing new characters to a younger generation and trying to span across several generations of audience.
In 2024, Ghosbuters Frozen Empire was released, coming off the announcements that this would be coming and all actors were returning from Afterlife, along with more new ones we continued following the Egons Family and friends with them now in New york and trying to be actual Ghostbusters much like the original film from 40 years previous. Much like Ghostbusters 2, the sequel from the newer version wasn’t as successful both from critical and commercial success, but overall it was still well received.
I enjoyed it, and much like that second film was still a good film, every film has had good and bad points, so we can be too critical of it, and ultimately, yes it was still successful with rumours of another coming and possibly a series at some point. For me, this was great to have the mix of actors but we are getting to that point where the newer cast needs to stand on their own from the original.
That’s what I’d like to see going forward with the previous generation having a real bit part involvement, if not at all now. I love them, but I think it’s that time, especially to move the franchise forward for the future, however much I love the original cast.
The Franchise Growing
But with over 40 years now of history and for many love the franchise is almost as strong as its ever been, its still one of the most recognisable franchises with so many references that people love, Marshmellow man, new york, the firehouse, the original dogs etc. it knows how to pull on those historical strings in your heart.
It’s still one of the best films to go back and watch, and still the first and second are heavily watched in reruns and streaming, the new films are also well-loved and get good play, so the future is bright and it deserves to be.
