Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Gatts
Jan 2, 2001

Goodnight Moon

Nap Ghost
Chris Hemsworrh seems like legit good people and has it all. I hope it really is.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
This reminds me I want to read the crossover comic. There’s apparently explanations for how the GB2016 equipment functions the way it does. Like, why have a ghost trap at all if you can just throw a grenade or run them through a shredder?

Gatts
Jan 2, 2001

Goodnight Moon

Nap Ghost
Because a trap allows them to live and contain them and send them to jail vs kill them.

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Squashing Machine posted:

It's a shotgun approach to joke-writing that speaks less to crafting specific jokes that you know will land and more to just throwing poo poo out there and hoping something works.

My only argument with this is that it doesn't work on the level of a joke-a-second movie like Airplane! or Kentucky Fried Movie, either.

Samuel Clemens
Oct 4, 2013

I think we should call the Avengers.

Squashing Machine posted:

The Ghostbusters are role models, if the roles you potentially wanted to play in your life are pervert conman, oblivious obsessive, regular joe, or buffoon.

To be fair, "pervert conman" describes almost every protagonist from a 1980s US comedy. That whole decade was sleazy as hell.

Tart Kitty
Dec 17, 2016

Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Timby posted:

Aykroyd was the most willing of the principals to make a sequel, but that's because he's bugnuts crazy. It wasn't until Columbia left dump trucks full of money on the doors of Murray, Ramis, Aykroyd and Reitman that everyone finally sighed and said, "Okay, Danny, what have you got for ideas?" (That's also why they banded together with Michael Ovitz, who had the infamous "no further Ghostbusters movie can be made unless all of us sign off on it" clause written into their GB2 deals.)

Ever since then, he's been trying to get his god-loving-awful Hellbent script made.

But Blues Brothers 2000 and motherfucking Year One should have been enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that Aykroyd or Ramis had anything left in the tank.

I don’t know how Akroyd ever came back from Nothing But Trouble, and I love Nothing But Trouble for the gonzo, mean little movie that it is. But that feels like a movie someone makes when they want to be banned from Hollywood forever.

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

sean10mm posted:

Has anyone done a post-mortem on what went wrong with Ghostbusters 2016? I don't mean garbage written by chuds mad that they let girls in the treehouse, but how it ended up being a mediocre movie that kind of just tanked at the box office in spite of seemingly being set up for success in a lot of ways.

One of the biggest problems with GB2016, to me at least, was the endless callbacks and cameos. Bill Murray's part was absolutely painful to watch, the cut on Annie Potts' "Whadd'ya want?" is so terribly awkward, etc. The only one that didn't make me cringe was Ernie Hudson showing up at the end.

There's still a lot to like in the movie (and the extended cut on Blu-ray fills in a lot of holes, like why Erin is suddenly alone in her apartment and not with the other Ghostbusters; at the same time it swaps some jokes from the theatrical cut and they really, really don't land).

I don't have the near-encyclopedic knowledge about GB2016 that I do the other two films, but the Sony leak made it clear that Sony very much wanted to cash in on Ghostbusters nostalgia, to the point that Amy Pascal seriously considered ordering Sony's legal team to sue Murray for breach of contract. After it became clear, in no uncertain terms, that Murray wouldn't do the movie, and then Ramis died*, that's when Sony started calling every comedy director in Hollywood asking for a pitch for a remake. I mean, Feig is a talented director, but I don't think he was the right fit for an effects-heavy movie.

* I still think it was incredibly ghoulish for Reitman and Aykroyd to have been talking about doing GB3 and saying poo poo like "yeah, we're hoping to shoot later this year," when Ramis couldn't loving walk for the last several years of his life.

Timby fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Aug 2, 2018

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
I should give it another watch, it’s on Netflix UK, and I own the extended cut Blu-ray (it was like £5 on Amazon). I did just remember that it absolutely wastes Charles Dance on a rehash of the Austin Powers bit about penis pumps.

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

I guess Feig just isn't funny (he is AWFUL whenever he showed up on Joel McHale's Netflix show). He just put up a camera and told the actors to adlib. Occasionally that work, like Hemsworth's interview. But it's usually loving atrocious, like the Dean flipping the bird for 10 minutes.

They must have had little confidence in the script. There's no craft or care like in the original. Look at this thread for all the info on the wonderful score and sets.

The film had a bad director. That's the crux of it

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
Is Fox still running Ghosted with Craig Robinson and Adam Scott? Does anyone watch that?

Iron Crowned
May 6, 2003

by Hand Knit

The_Doctor posted:

Is Fox still running Ghosted with Craig Robinson and Adam Scott? Does anyone watch that?

It got cancelled, and the last two in sequence episodes we're really good. I liked it

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



I hope someone like Hulu, or Netflix picks up Wellington Paranormal for streaming


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApxbN3Bp6f4

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

Alan_Shore posted:

The film had a bad director. That's the crux of it

Again, I don't think the issue is that Feig is a bad director. Bridesmaids, Spy, The Heat and Freaks & Geeks should prove that. (And let's face it: If it weren't for Stripes and the first Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman would be an afterthought in the canon, so let's not say he's a god among men, either.)

I think the issue with GB2016 is that it was a studio-mandated movie that had far too many cooks in the kitchen. Aykroyd himself, for example, is on record as saying that he was constantly giving notes on the script, and Aykroyd lost the plot decades ago.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
It feels like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to bring across that the ghosts are a legitimate and serious threat, but also have a wacky workplace comedy about not getting enough dumplings in their wonton soup. Tonally it’s all over the place.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

The_Doctor posted:

It feels like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to bring across that the ghosts are a legitimate and serious threat, but also have a wacky workplace comedy about not getting enough dumplings in their wonton soup. Tonally it’s all over the place.

Which is a bit funny given the original movie does that too but gets it right.

I think a big part of the problem is that Ghostbusters is so well remembered because it manages to balance a lot of things without seeming like it's trying; sci-fi, horror, and comedy of various types. It doesn't really try to bother with the whole genre thing, mixing mysticism, science, sex comedy and wisecracks seamlessly.

Tart Kitty
Dec 17, 2016

Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Alan_Shore posted:

I guess Feig just isn't funny (he is AWFUL whenever he showed up on Joel McHale's Netflix show). He just put up a camera and told the actors to adlib. Occasionally that work, like Hemsworth's interview. But it's usually loving atrocious, like the Dean flipping the bird for 10 minutes.

They must have had little confidence in the script. There's no craft or care like in the original. Look at this thread for all the info on the wonderful score and sets.

The film had a bad director. That's the crux of it

Ghostbusters doesn't work with lovely improv. I think that's the heart of the issue. Like the first movie might have been written by three dudes turbo-stoned in a cabin, but it was written with a coherent plot and threaded jokes. The reason why that first movie is so quotable is because most of the dialogue and punchlines were crafted, and what ad-libbing there was was focused around the center idea of the punchlines. The modern Apatow method of sitting a camera down and waiting for something good enough to be babbled out doesn't really work in a more plot-driven narrative, especially with very arch character types. A couple of dudes sitting on their couch smoking weed? That's fine. Improving exists in that bubble. A sci-fi comedy with extradimensional portals and ghost fighting space-age technology? You need to keep the wheels on the road.

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

Timby posted:

Again, I don't think the issue is that Feig is a bad director. Bridesmaids, Spy, The Heat and Freaks & Geeks should prove that. (And let's face it: If it weren't for Stripes and the first Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman would be an afterthought in the canon, so let's not say he's a god among men, either.)

I think the issue with GB2016 is that it was a studio-mandated movie that had far too many cooks in the kitchen. Aykroyd himself, for example, is on record as saying that he was constantly giving notes on the script, and Aykroyd lost the plot decades ago.

I enjoyed Bridesmaids and Freaks and Geeks but they're incredibly different beasts to Ghostbusters, as has been stated.

I don't know if the script was the problem. The man wrote Ghostbusters. It was the awful, obvious improvving that sucked the life out of the film.

Yes Ivan Reitman won't go down in the pantheon of best directors, but weirdly enough, he directed the best film ever made.

sponges
Sep 15, 2011

Alan_Shore posted:

he directed the best film ever made.

Watch more movies

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

sponges posted:

Watch more movies

You don't come into the Ghostbusters thread and say it's not the best movie ever made.

But go on, name your favorite.

MrJacobs
Sep 15, 2008

Alan_Shore posted:

You don't come into the Ghostbusters thread and say it's not the best movie ever made.

But go on, name your favorite.

those are 2 very different things though. The best movie ever made is about as close as you can get to perfection within a film or genre and is universally beloved or at least respected. You favorite movie can be anything good, mediocre, or sucks poo poo.


3 Ninjas can easily be your favorite film, but there is no loving way it is one of the best movies ever made.

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

MrJacobs posted:

those are 2 very different things though. The best movie ever made is about as close as you can get to perfection within a film or genre and is universally beloved or at least respected.

But that's Ghostbusters!

Haha yeah I get your point, I should have said "name better movies".

Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Which is a bit funny given the original movie does that too but gets it right.

I think a big part of the problem is that Ghostbusters is so well remembered because it manages to balance a lot of things without seeming like it's trying; sci-fi, horror, and comedy of various types. It doesn't really try to bother with the whole genre thing, mixing mysticism, science, sex comedy and wisecracks seamlessly.

It'd be an interesting exercise to dig into the genre precedents of Ghostbusters. I watched the 1967 Hammer film Quatermass and the Pit a few days ago and it shares a heck of a lot of DNA with Ghostbusters including a finale where the heroic scientists are forced into a position where they have to sacrifice themselves to destroy a gigantic white ancient otherworldy monster that is towering over the city in order to save humanity. The film starts with a scientist being forced to surrender his life's work to a system he's fiercely opposed to (the military in this case, the corporate world in Ghostbusters) and a lot of the plot involves the plucky scientists arguing against stuck up authority figures who want to dismiss all the recent weird stuff as a hoax. The scene where they use brainscanning equipment to access racial memories of the martian massacres has obvious similarities to the scene where Egon interviews Vinz Clortho but also the scene where Dana is possessed by Zuul and starts floating.



There's also a scene where a technician is alone in the basement and is terrorized by freaky poltergeist activity (which is somewhat similar to the librarian scene in Ghostbusters) and he then gets possessed and staggers through the city freaking people out (which is somewhat similar to the Keymaster scene) etc etc..

sponges
Sep 15, 2011

I just don’t find GB particularly funny but a lot of that is because Venkman is an irredeemable deviant and the movie plays it for laughs.

Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right

sponges posted:

I just don’t find GB particularly funny but a lot of that is because Venkman is an irredeemable deviant and the movie plays it for laughs.

Just out of interest, how old are you and when was the first time you saw the movie?

sponges
Sep 15, 2011

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

Just out of interest, how old are you and when was the first time you saw the movie?

I saw it when I was 5 or 6.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I remember the part where they're in jail and Venkman loudly talks about having sex with a possessed Dana, which gets all the prisoners' attention. And then the Ghostbusters start theorising on what's going on while the other prisoners watch. They seem to actually fit in pretty well.

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I remember the part where they're in jail and Venkman loudly talks about having sex with a possessed Dana, which gets all the prisoners' attention. And then the Ghostbusters start theorising on what's going on while the other prisoners watch. They seem to actually fit in pretty well.

That... Literally doesn't happen. What? He says he likes her because she sleeps above her covers. Four FEET above her covers. She barks, she claws, she drools....

Alan_Shore fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Aug 3, 2018

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
That said, my memory is very bad.

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost
I visited New York about two years ago and I noticed a couple of things about the geography of the film. It's totally correct. It doesn't play fast and loose with the shape of the city.

Here's the distance Louis runs from the Terror Dog. 55 Central Park West to Tavern on the Green, that's where the rich people in the glass walled restaurant ignore him.

Here's the actual location of Hook and Ladder 8.

The map in the mayor's office is legit.*

Even better, this shot is right on. They might have cherry-picked a spot for the explosion that they thought looked best, but nope, that's right where it should be.


*Incidentally, I looked up the 53rd Precinct. It doesn't actually exist. However, it was the fictional precinct where the old cop show "Car 54, where are you?" was set. The show took place in the Bronx, where that guy is pointing.

Edit:

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

It'd be an interesting exercise to dig into the genre precedents of Ghostbusters. I watched the 1967 Hammer film Quatermass and the Pit
Me too, nice post.

deoju fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Aug 3, 2018

Alan_Shore
Dec 2, 2004

Going to NYC and visiting all the Ghostbusters locations is magical. I always visit the fire station every time in there. And I don't live in the USA.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
I'm about to visit NYC for the first time with my boyfriend in a month, and yeah the Firehouse is definitely on my list of things to see. I'm glad to hear all the scaffolding is down now.

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost
Going to the firehouse is a spiritual pilgrimage. :v:

I did a few other things that were fun.
*Sat right where Bill Murray did on the Columbia University campus when they went into business for themselves.
*Ran down the steps in front of the Public Library.
*Skipped and twirled by the Lincoln Center Fountain.

PS The_Doctor, I recognize your av from the lego thread. Go to the lego store at Rockefeller Center. The have neat displays and sculptures, and the Statue of Liberty minifig magnet is a cool souvenir. :)

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

deoju posted:

Going to the firehouse is a spiritual pilgrimage. :v:

I did a few other things that were fun.
*Sat right where Bill Murray did on the Columbia University campus when they went into business for themselves.

PS The_Doctor, I recognize your av from the lego thread. Go to the lego store at Rockefeller Center. The have neat displays and sculptures, and the Statue of Liberty minifig magnet is a cool souvenir. :)

I thought where Ray and Peter were sat was fenced off?

And yes, I plan to! We're staying with my friend who lives in Hells Kitchen, so I'll be pretty central for everything!

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
Oh hey, this could be fun to play in NY if it's out by then:

https://twitter.com/GBW_AR/status/1025116379442106369

CelticPredator
Oct 11, 2013
🍀👽🆚🪖🏋

the art style is pretty horrendous.

deoju
Jul 11, 2004

All the pieces matter.
Nap Ghost

The_Doctor posted:

I thought where Ray and Peter were sat was fenced off?
Most of that spot is, but you can sit right where Peter does, you just can't stretch out completely.

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

The_Doctor posted:

I'm about to visit NYC for the first time with my boyfriend in a month, and yeah the Firehouse is definitely on my list of things to see. I'm glad to hear all the scaffolding is down now.

The firemen love having tourists / visitors, and at least the last time I was there they still have the GB2 sign in the garage.

deoju posted:

I visited New York about two years ago and I noticed a couple of things about the geography of the film. It's totally correct. It doesn't play fast and loose with the shape of the city.

Yeah, despite the bulk of it being shot in Los Angeles (with New York being primarily used for exteriors and establishing shots), the geography of the movie absolutely holds up. Come to think of it, that's actually a big issue with GB2016, because downtown Boston looks absolutely nothing like New York.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

I remember the part where they're in jail and Venkman loudly talks about having sex with a possessed Dana, which gets all the prisoners' attention.

He's talking about when she starts levitating off the bed and making otherworldly growls and whatnot (after which he presumably injects her with 300cc of thorazine, which I still wonder why he'd have with him on a date; I once got an IV dosage around that level over a few hours and I was out cold for nearly a day).

Timby fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Aug 4, 2018

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

Timby posted:

The firemen love having tourists / visitors, and at least the last time I was there they still have the GB2 sign in the garage.


Aww, really? That's good to know! :3:

Timby
Dec 23, 2006

Your mother!

The_Doctor posted:

Aww, really? That's good to know! :3:

Yeah, they're really cool about it as long as, you know, they're not on a call. They'll let you go in, take photos of the GB2 sign, pose in front of the building, whatever. I went there a few times when I lived in Baltimore (I had to travel to New York quite a bit for work) and every time the guys were happy to let me just walk around.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
Does the pole still work?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply