Ghostbusters III (The Rules)

Lately I've been thinking about the oft rumored, still not made Ghostbusters III. Anyone who has read this blog regularly knows what that means, me trying to figure out a way for it to work AND live up to the nearly THREE DECADE wait for it. I've been a huge fan of the series since I was a kid. I even dressed up as a Ghostbuster for Halloween when I was five. But until this point, I just kinda let the idea sit, but as I started thinking about it, I outlined myself a series of "Rules" the movie would need to follow to work.


These are the rules.

1. No Ghostbusters in Hell. I LIKE the idea of it, but the very nature of relaunching the Ghostbusters franchise requires a slightly more... "safe" story in a way. This is also why i kinda discounted that wiggy "phone lines are actually the nervous system of an angelic being" thing from a couple years ago that was being kicked around as a concept. My thinking is if your relaunch movie is a success, THEN you can do Ghostbusters in Hell or go really nutty with something like the other thing. But at the moment, this third movie needs to primarily deal with bringing things up to speed, and expanding the idea to then carry off future stories if popular. An to do that, the overall movie needs to be somewhat safe as you are already dealing with a new cast. (note: when I say safe, understand that... that is a BIG word, relatively speaking for me... but we'll get there in a moment.)

2. No reboot/remake, but sequel. This is one franchise that CAN survive a sequel going with a new cast and characters. You are already having an issue of potentially not having the full group of four back, added to that they are getting up there in years. To try and recast the characters would be stupid when you can USE them to advance the character's stories. As much as I dislike the idea of a new team, it's a necessity, but it just needs to be done well. Extreme Ghostbusters was kinda... a start, but we'll get back to that too.

3. No offspring. Making the new team the kids of the old team is just fucking LAZY. It's more or less trying to do a reboot by saying "oh, they totally act like their parents! Only this time Peter's a girl!" Fuck you, lazy writer! More or less the new team needs to be unrelated. One or two can have ties to the old team, more or less all of them should be AWARE of the Ghostbusters at this point, but no offspring, cousins, nephews, students, delivery boys, etc. With ONE caveat...

4. The classic Ghostbusters must be INTEGRAL to the plot and solution for the movie. If you are going to have a new team, the automatic thing that most writers spring to is "well, they're just more awesome and better than the old ones!" Fuck you! We loved the old team, they were famous for a reason. To try and shove the new team down our throats in this manner just pisses us off. If the new team is worth our time, let the audience decide that. But at the same time, do not venerate the originals. These were... not perfect people by any stretch. They were fuck ups. Skilled, smart and could overcome, but fuck ups none the less. ("Are you a god?" "No." "Then... DIE!") You need to have the originals be a key factor in the victory of this movie, but the new team has to show their stuff too. Like a... passing of the torch kinda thing. They're not as talented as the originals, but they have the potential and the day would not have been saved without them.

5. No "getting the boys back together" story. Dear LORD Dan, how many movies are gonna be like this? Ghostbusters II Should NOT have done that. (Nor Blues Brothers for that matter) it's like... Remember that movie and characters you loved?! Yeah, that didn't matter. I understand crafting a story in such a way to have development. but the "reset" button method pisses me off! It's lazy! Oh, yeah, the business failed... lets do it again! Fuck you! This would serve even LESS of a point here as you are supposed to be introducing the new team. Why the fuck would you want your new team to learn from a team of failures?! I get that as characters we love the boys, but... god damn! it makes no sense from a story perspective. HOWEVER, there is this theme of failure running as an undercurrent in the series. Not just in the second, but even the first! The reason they became Ghosbusters is that they failed in a college setting. They were even failures as GHOSTBUSTERS for a good chunk of that movie. (Thus why GBII is nigh unforgivable in this, we SAW them failing as Ghostbusters! It's rehashing the same thing over, but less good!) So, there DOES need to be this sense of failure. But it can be done more cleverly than that.

6. The first and second movies both happened AS did a version of the Video Game. The Cartoons and comics did not. And that one hurts... really hurts... I loved the cartoon as a kid. I think is does WONDERFUL things to try and broaden the idea, the monsters can get kinda freaky and even Extreme Ghostbusters did some decent things with trying to have a new team. But... they didn't happen. I would like to think SOME elements of them happened, but overall, officially, no, they are not within the same continuity. FURTHER, they are not used as a basis for anything new. Sam Hain, the Grundel, the Boogieman, the Ghostmaster ALL fascinating notions for villains! But no. Same thing with the Extreme Ghostbusters team. Decent characters but should NOT be the basis for the new team. (Though, unofficially, I like to think of them as one of the GB Franchises, though that's another thing we'll get back to.) Some elements should be taken from them to enhance the whole, but overall, they need to remain a secondary canon.

7. NO GOZER! NOT A MINION OF GOZER! NOT THE SECOND COMING OF GOZER! OR VIGO! OR SHANDOR! I liked how the Game tied up the plot threads of the first two movies, but to do ANYTHING more with them would be pathetic and a waste. When I said a "safe" movie, I did NOT mean Ghostbusters 1.5 with the same ghosts, the same jokes and the same story. With a concept like Ghostbusters you can introduce all SORTS of crazy ghosts and demi gods! Why in the HELL would you want to do Gozer again? Other than just because the first movie did it, we're scared and lazy and just want to make that again. except now Gozer is the Easter Bunny. I SAY THEE, NAY!

8. Ghostbusters is a HORROR Comedy. Let it be scary. Let it be funny. Don't step on the horror to make it silly. Don't step on the humor to make it too serious. There's this wonderful tightrope you can walk when you have shit your pants terrifying moments (Like Vinz chasing Louis in the first movie, or the ghost train segment in the second) then you have this kinda undercurrent of humor there too. Comedy ENHANCES horror. Horror ENHANCES comedy. Horror builds a wonderful tension, comedy acts as a wonderful release to let it build up again.

9. The modular Murray. Bill Murray is one of the more notoriously unreliable elements of the movie. He MAY do it, he may not do it. And with each flip flop it necessitates rewrites. And bad plot ideas. Of the two i've heard, both have been terrible. One, Bill Murray is a ghost. Talk about vapid cameo. Two, Bill Murray is on vacation with Dana. "Hey, remember those people from the other movie? Yeah, they're just kinda not here for... reasons." Guh... No! Just No! What you wanna do is structure the story in a way that provides interesting situations and expands things if you do or do NOT have Murray! It absolutely IS possible.

10. Ghostbusters is ALL about the inverse of the spirituality vs. science debate, not a part of it! The Ghosbusters' entire thing is figuring out a scientific method for dealing with real, honest to god, supernatural threats. It's not about disproving the supernatural through science. Nor is it about how science simply cannot handle MAGIC! The entire point is this sort of... weird coexistence through an adversarial relationship. The boys use science to take on inhuman THINGS that simply no other human could deal with. Just the same, if your resolution to a Ghostbusters movie has the idea of "and then the Ghostbusters MAGIC'D it dead!" you are missing the point. It's not Science used to disprove these things out of existence. it's not wizards who can fuck up tech cause magic bitches! It's "I AM A FUCKING GOD WITH SUPERNATURAL ABILITIES NO MAGICS CAN HANDLE, RAR!"  "Okay, then i'm gonna fucking MELT YOUR FACE WITH A BLAST OF PROTONS FROM MY ABSURD TECHNOLOGY!!" It is the wonderful notion of: there are things beyond the realm of scientific explanation, but humans are absolutely ingenious enough to overcome it with their brains.

11. The new team MUST be comprised of young comedians. I only really have one in mind, but for the most part, this was a key factor of the originals. They need to be funny and likable elsewhere. Normally, I like the idea of unknowns, but here? They absolutely need to have a bit of renown. Be it TV, movies, internet, comedy clubs, doesn't matter. Firstly because this was a part of building the original, Dan Aykroyd wanting to do a movie with all these people he knew from Saturday Night Live and elsewhere. SECONDLY, because a comedian understands a certain element about human psychology and, as a result, 99 times out of 100 a comedian will give your dramatic moments pure gravitas. BUT at the same time, they CANNOT be mega stars. Remember when they started talking about the idea and they were listing people like Ben Stiller? Yeah, no.

12. No romance within the core team. I can... just see it now. "We're TOTALLY doing the female ghostbuster thing!" "Awesome!" "And she's going to have a complex relationship with this person on the team, maybe all THREE!" "BRILLIANT!" Get the fuck out of here! Romance = good. Romance within your core team of Ghostbusters? Distracting.

13. No grit. I hate that word. "Gritty" it's like the new "Dark". Good LORD did that annoy me the first time around! "This is DARK!" "OH then it's mature and spectacular!" Guh... Grit has become the same thing. "Our version is totally better than the old one because we've made it GRITTIER!" ...well, why the hell didn't you sweep that fucker off? Muted colors and grainy film have become this... horribly boring standard. And the LAST thing the Ghostbusters needs is a "gritty sheen". Slimer, the subway ghost, the goddamn river of slime was the antithesis of muted! It was darkness AND bright, sharp color! And more so, gritty does not translate to "realistic" no matter how you try to pronounce it. The Series was built on this foundation of PLAUSIBLE handwavy Star Trek science. But it was never "realistic", nor should it try to be.

14: Links are encouraged, Small World syndrome is to be avoided. I say this referring to the George Lucas method were everybody is no more than one person removed from everyone else. My daddy knew your momma, who knew our villain's uncle. I guess this can be counted under the no Gozer thing... but that's the idea. Call backs are fine. But ONLY in the sense of: If you remove the original, the current would still have meaning. No artificial weight through retro history. But there DOES need to be some common threads to tie it back into the originals...

So... What does that all add up to? Well, check back a little later, I'm working on it...