Back in 2016, director Paul Feig put out his version of Ghostbusters, a reboot of sorts that attempted to capture the spirit (sorry) of the original 1984 classic in an updated setting and using four very talented female comedians, Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones in the lead roles of ghost-catchers for hire. Mix in Chris Hemsworth with the still extremely popular IP, and Sony should have had a hit on its spectral hands, but as many might remember the film was ultimately a bust at the box office.
Being retrospective, Feig has recently opened up about his proposed plans for a sequel to his Ghostbusters, as the studio had grand plans on relaunching the series on wide scale. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast,Feig expressed his desire to open up the world, geographically:
“I definitely wanted us to go to another country. Because when we were doing the press tour, the international press tour, every country the reporters would come with these drawings or artist renderings of that country’s ghosts. And every country has these really wild ghost stories and ghost characters that they scare kids with or keep people in line with. I really loved the idea of the Ghostbusters going to like Asia. Yeah, so there’s a lot of fun stuff that we could have done.”
RELATED: Paul Feig Would Love To Make More Ghostbusters Movies
For full disclosure, I may be one of the world’s largest Ghostbusters fans ever, having stated multiple times that I believe the 1984 film should be in the conversation as one of the greatest movies ever constructed and executed. With that context, I have a few thoughts about this idea.
On one hand, I certainly like the idea of exploring specific supernatural cultures across the globe that each have their own rich mythology. I don’t disagree with Feig at all on this point, and the idea of having Ghostbusters in various countries taking on the modern-day translations of ancient ghost stories is an incredibly appealing concept. Imagine tales where the scientist-busters research the history of the Loch Ness Monster or the Terracotta Army, only to learn that both have supernatural elements they must contend with. There’s a lot of entertainment to be mined from that idea.
All that said, taking a formula and moving it to a new location without purpose or reason can be incredibly lazy. I believe the Die Hard series, and all of its blatant rip-offs, are an excellent example of this. Even the more current iterations have gotten derivative—we live in a world where Olympus Has Fallen (i.e. Die Hard in the White House), photocopied its own transgression with London Has Fallen (i.e. Olympus Has Fallen in London).
Given the way Paul Feig handled Ghostbusters, I’m just not convinced that he had the ability to expand the universe in the way his concept would require. The 2016 Ghostbusters seemed like a byproduct of conflicting ideas—on one hand, Feig kept saying he wanted to do something new and fresh, but on the other he seemed to rely so much on nostalgic cameos and references that he seemed to misunderstand the core elements that made the 1984 Ghostbusters so special (to elaborate fully I would need several more paragraphs, so I’ll summarize and say it was the combination of grounded, deep characters put into a plot of equal mix comedy and horror). The funniest moments of the 2016 film aren’t Ghostbusters-related, but rather bits that could appear in any comedy, such as McCarthy complaining about a wonton, or objectification of the dimwitted Hemsworth.
Original star and writer Dan Aykroyd was so convinced that the most recent Ghostbusters film was going to be hit, he created a new production label (Ghost Corps) with the intention of expanding the series with spin-off films, books, comics, and television series. It’s that last option that intrigues me most at this point. I’d say to Sony to take Feig’s idea and run something like it on a small screen as a limited series where a new set of New York-based Ghostbusters travel to visit all of their franchises that have cropped up across the globe. I think that would be incredibly fun…just don’t let Feig write or direct it.
Would you like to see the Ghostbusters return in globetrotting fashion?
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SOURCE: Happy Sad Confused
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