Film Friday: Ghostbusters II (1989)

Ghostbusters II has been much maligned on the basis that it never lived up to the original. In a way, that is true. Part of what made Ghostbusters so great was that it was highly original, and you can’t get that same feeling of originality from a sequel. But you know what? Beyond that, this really is an excellent sequel and I think a great many people have underestimated it.

Plot

Five years later. The Ghostbusters have closed their doors. After saving New York City from Gozer, they got sued by everyone and found themselves barred from hunting ghosts. Each of the Ghostbusters has found a new job. But things are about to change.

Dana Barrett now works at the Manhattan Museum of Art, where she restores paintings for a man named Janosz. One of the paintings Janosz is restoring is of Vigo the Carpathian, an evil tyrant and magician who threatened to return to life. The thing is, Vigo is alive within the painting and he is drawing upon the evil energy created by all the negative emotions of the people of New York. In fact, those negative emotions are creating a river of “mood slime” which is flowing directly beneath the museum.

Soon enough, Vigo takes an interest in Dana and her newborn son Oscar. This brings the Ghostbusters back together and leads to them reopening their business for their inevitable showdown with Vigo.

Why This Film Works

Although Ghostbusters II made a ton of money ($215 million on a budget of $37 million) and it has demonstrated strong staying power, it was critically despised when it came out. Some claimed it “slimed everyone’s fond memories of the original.” Gene Siskel complained that the film “didn’t try to do anything special.” Ebert said that nobody around him laughed.

But frankly, they mis-remembered the first film. Ghostbusters was never the laugh-a-minute riot they seem to think. To the contrary, it was the type of film where the payoff came in the storyline and the relationships of the characters. And while there were moments where you laughed out loud, most of the jokes really were just “warm glow moments” or snort/chuckles. And in that regard, Ghostbusters II does something incredibly difficult: it perfectly maintains the feel of the original.

Sequels come in two flavors. The first involves the continuation of the story. The Empire Strikes Back or The Matrix Reloaded are perfect examples of these. These take place immediately after the first film and they involve “what happens next.” Thus, for example, having won a surprise victory, the Empire/the Machines strike back and the heroes must now overcome a bigger, more-determined onslaught. In so doing, the characters typically continue their evolution and their relationships grow and change. The other type of sequel involves repeating the same formula as the first film as the characters engage in a new adventure. The goal here, as a writer, is to repeat the emotional journey the characters undertook as closely as possible. Consequently, these typically involve undoing everything the characters achieved in the first film so they can build it all again and then letting them repeat their prior acts with only minor differences.

Ghostbusters II is the second type and it follows the formula perfectly. It begins by wiping out their business by having them sued by everyone and discredited again. They are spread to the four winds. It also begins with Dana and Venkman being broken up as couple. This allows the writers to rebuild each achievement from the first film – the successful creation of the business, the successful construction of the friendship/team, and the successful completion of the relationship between Dana and Venkman. That allows them to completely repeat the emotional journey of the first film.

Simultaneously, the film picks the perfect villain. Vigo is approximately as menacing as Gozer was in the first film, so again the emotional impact is the same. But Vigo is also a very different villain. He has different powers, a different goal, and defeating him will require a different solution than the Ghostbusters used in the first film. Consequently, while the story feels like it has the same level of menace and the same challenge, it also feels like a fresh story. This is not just Gozer II.

More importantly, the choice of Vigo avoids two of the biggest sins sequels commit when they pick their villain. If Gozer had just come back for a second round, then all the satisfaction people felt at the resolution of the first film would be undone because the ending wouldn’t be meaningful. Alternatively, if Gozer’s bigger brother shows up, then you have this problem that the challenge of Gozer is diminished and all the time spent showing the heroes just barely beating Gozer suddenly seems false. This is the problem between Alien and Aliens actually. By having Ripley face a hundred aliens in Aliens and making them more or less disposable, it diminishes her accomplishment in Alien, where she only kills the one, and it calls into question how she could be so inept in Alien but suddenly so kick-ass in Aliens. There’s no such problem here. In fact, in picking Vigo, who is equally menacing but presents a different problem, Ghostbusters skillfully avoids the whole problem.

Each of those choices demonstrates excellent writing and I dare these critics to find a better way to handle the story. But there’s something more to consider. Where sequels really need to be judged is in the execution. And in that regard, the real question to be asked is: “Does the sequel feel like the original?”

Indeed, think of it this way: how would an audience that just watched Ghostbusters react if you moved straight into Ghostbusters II rather than showing the credits. Would they see this as the same film or would they feel something jarring? Look at Caddyshack II, Grease II or Blues Brothers 2000 for examples of films that would have audiences scratching their heads wondering what had happened. Even putting aside the cast changes, those sequels displayed differences in style, costumes, camera work, pacing and writing. They feel like cheap knock-offs of the original. Ghostbusters II doesn’t do that.

If you watch Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II back to back, you will see similar pacing, similar characterizations, similar emotional content, and similar humor. The sequel doesn’t suddenly focus on a character who happened to become a hit with audiences at the expense of the characters focused on in the original. It doesn’t try to change the nature of the story by becoming more or less dramatic, more or less “zany” or slapstick, or more or less grandiose; it maintains the balance between the horror and comedy. And it carefully maintains the tone of the relationship between the characters. This is actually quite an achievement, especially for a film that was produced five years after the original.

Yet, the film also feels fresh. When you are watching the Vigo story, you never once think of Gozer, and you quickly find yourself engrossed in the story as the characters struggle to solve the mystery of what is happening. This is not a quick knock-off.

Ghostbusters II truly is a top notch sequel. Is it as original as Ghostbusters? No, but then it couldn’t be. Indeed, if it had been, people would have been upset that this wasn’t what they expected. But it was every bit the equal of the original in terms of laughs, in terms of depth of story, in terms of emotional content and the emotional ride, and in terms of feel. And if Ghostbusters II had been the original, I suspect it would have been just as big a hit as the original.

Thoughts?