Spoilers Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire grade and discussion thread

Quite possibly. Like with him driving the car at the end, which seemed random. And btw, is it just me or did the Engineering guy give anyone else strong Egon vibes? I'm not sure if that's what the intent with him, but the hairstyle they gave him immediately hit me as 'Egon replacement', which is weird given you have Egon's entire family.

 

Yes and no. I think Engineering Dude was there to fill the void of having someone who actually understands the technology. You have Egon's family... but you don't actually have an Egon. Phoebe is smart, but she just doesn't have anything approaching the education or experience to understand how a nuclear accelerator works...

In (hopefully) future entries, you probably won't have the old guys there to deal with the tech. None of the new characters are really direct archetypes of the old ones. Cassie is sort of the old Winston, being the "everyman" sort. Gary is kind of the Ray, Phoebe is kind of the Egon. I think Trevor was supposed to be the Venkman but... only Bill Murray can be Bill Murray.

 

Trevor is as much a part of the movie as his sister and mom are; Callie is needed because she's the Earth momma who grounds them all; Gary's great as Phoebe's dad (who she even called 'Dad' at the end), Podcast is a lot like Ray, and Lucky's the other smart gal (and another person of color, who if she's gotten rid of will cause an outcry from black people [particularly black women who don't like to see black characters be sidelined.])

Who should be given the good-bye, or at least a brief cameo in another movie? Peter and Ray; Winston, being the guy who bankrolls Ghostbusters, can stay as the overall boss. The tech guy can stay as the one who helps keep the Ghostbusters' equipment functioning and be the resident scientist. It's time for the younger ones to take center stage.

 

Yeah, I'm not debating they they weren't as much a part of it, but that rather their parts could have been maybe more efficiently managed. It actually reminds me of the Fantastic Beasts movies, where by the second movie they had so many characters they couldn't effectively develop them and it became this busy mess of plotlines and characters that were half-developed. Newt had been sidelined in his his own series at this point. Perhaps the next GB movie will fix this, because some of these characters need more development and screen time beyond bit roles.

 

As I've said a few times before here (and in other cyber-aliases in other parts of the Internet), it's time for the roadshow theatrical release to come back that would allow for a longer cut of the movie to play; this would allow for a lot of a particular story to be told featuring all of the characters instead of some, and for things to flow a lot better in an event movie like this one (a roadshow theatrical cut would've been great for Dune One and Dune Two, as an example, and for this movie in particular.)

 

I would agree with that... for the next movie, but they kind of botched characters in this one.

I think we should keep the old guys around as long as they would be willing to do it, but definitely in future installments keep them as mostly cameos. That being said, there is significant cast bloat and I still feel like some of the new crew needs to get the axe. There are just too many characters for a movie. If this was a TV series, a ton of characters is fine, but it's not and there's really not room for everyone.

I think the next one needs to focus on the "core four" of Callie, Gary, Phoebe and Trevor. If we absolutely need to include Podcast and Lucky, stick them in for a quick background cameo. They're both just unnecessary. I think they made a huge mistake by not developing one of them into the tech person, because now we sort of need somebody else on the roster as well for that purpose (sort of. Although there are certainly ways to do the story where we don't actually need one.)

It's not impossible to do a movie with a large cast... but it becomes WAY more difficult when there is a clear main character. If these movies were always presented as a true ensemble piece, it works. But they're not, Phoebe is the center of the story, and that demands much more time be devoted to her. That's totally fine, but you can't really do a main character along with a slew of of other characters .

 

To be honest, I'm not sure this is something that would be fixed with a longer movie. It's more down to the writing of the characters themselves and how efficiently they manage them in the runtime they have. Most of the new characters were simple archetypes without much depth. Modern movies are bloated enough as they are without adding to their runtime as it is. Asking people to sit through 3 and a half hour movies, and without intermissions, is just too much.