Sequel Saturday - Ghostbusters & Ghostbusters II

This week's Sequel Saturday will focus on Ivan Reitman's 1984 masterpiece and 1989 travesty Ghostbusters I & II.

What I find most interesting about these films is that essentially the same creative team produces both films, and the original actors resumed their roles for the sequel, but the two films vary wildly as far as quality goes. Where the original's jokes succeeded, the continuation feels flat and emotionless.

Ghostbusters (1984)

The brain child of original Saturday Night Live cast member Dan Aykroyd, Ghostbusters eventually became a collaboration between Aykroyd, director Reitman, and co-writer (and rival SCTV alum) Harold Ramis. Aykroyd and Ramis would also star in the picture, along with fellow Saturday Night Live funnyman Bill Murray and Yale School of Drama graduate Ernie Hudson.

Murray by far has the funniest role, that of psychologist and parapsychologist Dr. Peter Venkman, described by Ramis as "the mouth of the Ghostbusters." Aykroyd saved for himself the role of Dr. Ray Stanz, similarly described as the "the heart of the Ghostbusters." Dr. Egon Spengler, "the brain of the Ghostbusters," was portrayed by Ramis himself, while Hudson took on the role of Winston Zeddemore, a role that basically served as a proxy for the audience, in that he joins the others later on and many of their procedures have to be explained to him as they would to the viewers.

The chemistry between all the characters is one of the things that makes the movie work. Without first believing Venkman, Stanz, and Spengler are friends, the film would be asking to much of an audience to suspend their disbelief at some of the more supernatural elements of the films.

Perhaps what makes the first film succeed where the second film fails is in the character of Walter Peck, played with a superb sliminess by serial bad-guy actor William Atherton. In Peck, the Ghostbusters face a flesh and blood foe that the audience can hate, simply because he wants our heroes to fail.

The jokes work (and are still funny 25 years later), the pacing is fabulous, and the then-cutting-edge-effects hold up for the most part. The film's 107 minute running time left audiences wanting more.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

Unfortunately, after five years of waiting, the follow-up audiences received was the astonishingly inferior Ghostbusters II. Despite the return of the same creative talent both in front of and behind the cameras, the film fails on this fundamental level: Columbia wanted a sequel because the first made more money. By all respects, the first film could have served as a perfect stand-alone sci-fi comedy. But Reitman, Ramis and Aykroyd returned only reluctantly, seeing the first film as their complete cohesive vision.

Ultimately the studio won out and this film was made. It fails more often than it succeeds, changing the focus from the scary ghosts in the first movie to the more marketable slime, which had been featured heavily in the cartoon series released between the two films.

Also contributing to the creative failure is the fact that the Ghostbusters don't really have a physical enemy against which they can fight. They lose their relatability as a result. In order for a film to work in which suspension of disbelief is so important, there must be some link to the real world with which the audience can identify.

Although there are some jokes that are funny, the film is no where near as laugh out loud hilarious as it's predecessor, and it's climactic action involving the Statue of Liberty just feels silly.