Ghostbusters 2 gets a lot of hate. I mean, itâs gotten hate for the past thirty years. And yeah, as you could tell by the title, Iâm here to explain to you why Ghostbusters 2, the black sheep of the franchise before the better-received reboot came along, is actually a pretty awesome movie. Does that mean itâs anything approaching the original? Of course not. To be honest, few things are. Ghostbusters is one of my favorite films of all time. But that doesnât mean that Ghostbusters 2 is terrible.
I mean, while the villain of the piece is no Gozer, heâs a genuine part of pop culture. Vigo the Carpathian is exactly the sort of super-serious antagonist you need in a sequel thatâs way more crammed with jokes than the first, some of which land and some of which donât.
I think the reason for some of the hostility toward Ghostbusters 2 is the same as youâll see for any sequel: It didnât need to happen. Ghostbusters feels like a franchise, but that doesnât mean it ever needed to be one, because the original is a truly complete film unto itself. And part of what I really like about the second is that it finds a smart way to pick up with these characters some time later. At the beginning of the first, we meet three intellectual schmucks who have been in college half their lives, are the laughing stock of the academic community, and then you have that ending. The whole city is cheering them on. The army and police couldnât do anything to stop it. It was these four lovable genius-idiots in jumpsuits that saved New York. They gained respect and it felt earned.
With that in mind, I think itâs a ballsy move that sort of pays off to open Ghostbusters 2 having already stripped all of that respect away. It makes sense. Iâm always interested in the idea of continuing on after completing a journey, after achieving some sense of finality, because thatâs the way real life works. While the Ghostbusters saved the city and everyone cheered and chanted their names, by the time the sequel rolls around theyâve been disbanded and gone their separate ways.
The whole thing is extreme, and I think it lost a lot of viewers, but I buy into it. I think itâs totally the way mob mentality works to like something, cheer for it, and then either condemn it or insist it was fake to begin with. If the city came out and said a giant marshmallow terrorizing the city was not real, even if you saw it with your own eyes, thatâs obviously the stance youâd rather believe.
Having the team go their separate ways means you have a real sense of getting the band back together and Iâm a sucker for that kind of plot. That doesnât mean itâs a great plot overall or that it totally works in the way that Reitman, Aykroyd, Ramis and Co. intended it would. Not all of the neat ideas in Ghostbusters 2 totally mesh together. The slime is interesting on its own, the idea of the city having turned on the Ghostbusters, Vigo the Carpathian is a satisfactory villain but in some respects heâs kind of the least interesting thing about his own movie.
You canât watch Ghostbusters 2 in the same way you watch the first, where youâre generally aware that youâre being treated to a comedy milestone. But itâs a satisfactory follow-up of that world with those characters, that manages to give minor players like Lewis and Janine a lot more to do and has some great set pieces. I donât know how people considered it too much to see the group riding the statue of liberty into battle when the original ended with its antagonist taking the form of a hundred-foot marshmallow mascot.
I would definitely encourage people to go back and give the sequel a second look because thereâs a lot of interesting stuff in there. Some of itâs truly great and some of it falls flat, but that doesnât mean the movie as a whole is anything approaching a disaster. Much like the slime thatâoccasionallyâdrives the plot, it just makes you feel pretty damn good, when all is said and done.
