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Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-19 17:30:02
Edited:
2025-05-21 23:03:28
Imported:
2026-08
Tags:

Content

Happy weekend everyone! Ghostbusters 3 incoming... 😄 I'm looking forward to your comments on this one! Especially considering the super mixed reviews online. Curious to know your thoughts! [Direct link here.]

Cheers,

✦ KL

Files

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) ✦ Full-Length Watchalong Reaction

Comments

Nathan Jasper

McKenna Grace is one of my favorite young actresses. I first saw her in Gifted and was so impressed with her. She's continued to shine in everything I've seen her in and was a huge positive for this film. Pairing her with Podcast and Paul Rudd made an unstoppable fun trio. The only one that I ironically thought was miscast was Finn Wolfhard. It just felt like trying to capitalize on "that Stranger Things kid" rather than finding the right guy for the role. I could say the same about Paul Rudd, being cast because he's Ant-Man and kids would recognize him, but Paul Rudd fits into every role so... no complaints lol. The quote he says about science being "punk rock" while every other subject was safe is so accurate and I love the writers for putting that in the film! You gotta have brains AND guts to be in the science field. I appreciated the father/daughter/granddaughter aspect of the film and related deeply with it. When this came out, my grandfather would have been dead 11 years and I currently live in his home so "feeling his spirit" is something I can relate to. Afterlife brought back the quick witted quips and the heart that the alt-verse film lacked and it felt like Ghostbusters again. GB2016 might have been dedicated to Harold Ramis, but this was actually completely FOR Harold Ramis. The work they did with his spirit and making him look like he was part of the film... it was incredible. And the hug he shared with Callie...heartbreaking but so so wholesome. The thing that really broke me though? On the board in the basement, Callie briefly sees the sheet where Egon recorded how many freckles she had. That alone shows how much he adored and loved her but that never-ceasing science brain just didn't know how to express it outside of doing everything he could to make sure she was protected. People just didn't see, or rather didn't take the time to see, how much he truly cared. Loved seeing the guys again but I'm also glad it focused on the next generation more. Olivia Wilde as Gozer was pretty great casting. She looked almost identical to the original Gozer. The effects both CGI and practical, the makeup, everything was perfect. No secret I loved this movie just as much as the original lol PS - where can I find an Aztec death whistle? Asking for a friend lol Currently 40 min in so I'm going to enjoy the rest of the reaction. Thanks for watching these movies, I've loved revisiting them!

David Martin

I really enjoyed this film...I almost dropped a tear. The casting was perfect and they did a great job honoring Harold Ramis. I remember people were kind of effy about it when the trailer came out b/c of the previous movie lol, but after it came out a lot of people loved it.

Nathan Jasper

Side note, isn't it ironic how teens say they're older than they are and adults say they're younger than they are? It's like we regret growing up or something. Weird.

Tyler Foster

If you think of me less as a Ghostbusters fan and more as the guy who frequently diverges from the pack, it should come as no surprise that this is...my least-favorite Ghostbusters movie. I still like it, but even if we were to say, for example, that the ceiling on how good Ghostbusters (2016) could have been is lower than that of this movie, I feel like the gap between how good the film could be on paper and how good it is in execution is smaller than that of this one. First things first: I love Phoebe. Phoebe is the reason to make this movie, she's the reason the movie is good, I'm all about Phoebe. McKenna Grace does an excellent job of evoking Ramis' deadpan performance and creating something new, and I appreciate that Reitman (who thanked director Paul Feig on stage at Ghostbusters Fan Fest in 2019 for "kicking open the door on what a Ghostbusters movie could be") chose to make Phoebe Egon's granddaughter -- eat dirt, misogynists. In general, I like all of the new characters, and the first hour or so is pretty fun even if I have tiny issues. The main thing I don't like -- and this is a problem that the first four movies have in various ways -- is that it continues the Ghostbusters' movies entrenched fear of doing something completely original. Many have mentioned the "Real Ghostbusters" cartoon, which diverges from the films in that it essentially goes full sci-fi/fantasy, featuring all sorts of inventive new ghosts and ghouls, and sometimes even taking the Ghostbusters to other dimensions. Ghostbusters II famously got a ton of flak for having the same plot structure as the original, by making the Ghostbusters underdog heroes again. One of the things that I liked about the 2016 movie is that it gave us entirely original characters and a brand-new threat, even if the end of the movie is contemporary "giant beam in the sky" stuff. So for this to return to Gozer and repeat the Keymaster/Gatekeeper stuff was a pretty big disappointment to me. I've seen that! If the heart of the story is Egon, the threat here could be anything. We've already resisted the urge to re-use Slimer and moved the action to a new location, why go back to the well on the big bad? Another thing that bugs me is that Ghostbusters is first and foremost a comedy. There are sci-fi/horror elements and effects sequences, but the first movie is great because it's really funny. It's true that the 2016 movie has a different tone to the humor, and there are jokes in it that go on too long or don't work, but there's also plenty of that in this, even if it hews closer to the dry delivery of the original movies. In particular, Finn Wolfhard is either saddled with or ad-libbed a bunch of nothing comedy lines that always bug me, such as "Really?" to end a scene or "What is happening right now?" which he says twice -- they can be delivered with the cadence of a joke, but there is no actual joke in them. I will also be the odd man out and say that while I am fine with the movie being a tribute to Egon and that I miss Harold as much as the next fan, I personally did not want to see them resurrect him on-screen via CGI. The movie is about Phoebe, and while many fans loved it, I really think that shot of the four Ghostbusters together should end with Phoebe and not ghost Egon. The movie gets by for 100 minutes without showing us Egon, and I think it could have gone all the way. Just show some sort of ghostly energy adding to her proton pack and we will know it is the same spirit energy that has been following Phoebe around the whole movie. The best I can say about that stuff is that the effect is convincing; it doesn't look like Tarkin in Rogue One. (Fun fact: while his head's been completely replaced with digital Harold, the "Ghost Farmer" is played by Bob Gunton, the villainous warden in The Shawshank Redemption.) My main change here, before I had watched the next one, would have been to have fleshed out the Callie role. Personally, I think the movie can downplay the idea that Egon was an asshole. We've seen the other movies, he was kind of Spock-like in his logic, but not an inhuman person. (In fact, you can just straight-up delete Ray's "Egon Spengler can rot in hell" line and just make it a mystery to them why he stole the equipment and abandoned the group.) Instead, just say he was absent. Emphasize that the reason Callie struggles to understand Phoebe is because Phoebe is such a reminder of her brainiac dad who wasn't there. The end of the movie would then be Callie and Phoebe finally having an emotional breakthrough with each other, through the other-worldly efforts of the grand/father who previously wasn't there, and they can still say goodbye to Egon now that his last wish is fulfilled.

Tyler Foster

Ghostbusters: Afterlife finished shooting in 2019, just a few months before "The Mandalorian" premiered. It would end up being delayed by COVID until 2021, but the Mini-Pufts (another thing that doesn't technically make any sense -- the Ghostbusters summoned the Marshmallow Man; there is no reason for the mini-Pufts to just come to life) technically pre-dated Baby Yoda in the craze of miniature, cuter versions of famous pop culture icons. The guy who plays the hardware store owner is a famous playwright named Tracy Letts, and he is also married to Carrie Coon, so he got a little cameo as a result of being her husband. One slightly weird note about the Ramis stuff is that while (if I'm remembering correctly) the family gave generic permission, they didn't find out the extent of what happened in the film until they saw the finished movie, and they apparently said it was a little weird, especially with the framing of Egon being an asshole. They said something along the lines of having to remember that Egon the character is not necessarily a reflection of Harold the person, even though the movie is obviously a tribute to Harold the person. That might be Reitman getting his wires crossed a bit; Ivan had some reputation over the years as being tough to work with at times. The police officer behind the desk when Callie and Gary come to retrieve Phoebe and Trevor from jail is played by Dan Aykroyd's daughter. Over the credit scroll, there's a song called "Haunted House" playing, which is by Mckenna Grace herself. In order to find the original deleted film footage and scan it in 4K for the beginning of the post-credit scene, Jason Reitman had Sony go through their original archives, stored in a salt mine, and uncovered a ton of deleted footage that had never been seen before from the original movie. Ironically, there seems to be quite a bit of deleted footage from this movie that wasn't released; the home video version only has a single deleted scene (one which I believe may explain a throwaway line in the finished film; I haven't actually watched it yet. In the scene, Phoebe lights up the proton pack for the first time in the field outside the house, the day before target practice with Podcast, and the proton stream causes the corn to pop, which is why Callie comments "you found popcorn!" when Phoebe is watching the Ghostbusters commercial on YouTube). Also, I don't know if you talked about them specifically as the actor and not the character in the outro at all but FWIW, Celeste O'Connor, who plays Lucky, is nonbinary and goes by they/them pronouns.

Steve Mercier

I like it enough...has its moments. As of yet--for me--nothing will live up to the original, in large part because these movies focus on nostalgia and homage instead of just telling a new story. This one gets some of that right.

RichieRich

I like this one a lot. I’ve seen this twice now and teared up twice with that Phobe scene at the end.

Thadman

I, personally, loved this one. I loved the 1st one, was sorta "meh" on the 2nd one. Didn't watch the reboot 'cause of people saying it just wasn't very funny, not because it was a reboot or anything, plus I have so many things I've been meaning to watch that I haven't yet. Saw this one 2x in the theater and got misty both times at the end. Haven't watched Frozen Empire yet.

BubblyRainbows

No animals were harmed in the making of this film, but they brutalized a whole bunch of marshmallow men! I'm sure some people didn't like the little stay-pufts, but am always thrilled to see cute little things doing stupid stuff, so they were a plus in my book. The cast was amazing, and it was nice to see all of the original Ghostbusters make an appearance. But Phoebe absolutely stole the show. She's the kind of character I would have had such a crush on when I was 12. I'm a sucker for smart girls and bad jokes. Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfard REALLY looked like they could be siblings. And what can I say about Paul Rudd? He's always fun. I had the same response as you when I saw Sigourney Weaver's name pop up. "How the heck did I miss her? Where was she?" I'm pleasantly surprised by this movie. I expected to like it, but I ended up REALLY liking it. I can't decide if I like it as much as the original movie or not, but I had a lot of fun watching along with you. I have managed to remain incredibly ignorant of the details of the next movie... I don't even know what kind of reviews it got. But I'm looking forward to it. My expectations for Frozen Empire have risen a bit after this one.

nouvelle_vague

I’m going to preface this by saying that ‘fan service’ is probably my second-least favourite thing about 21st century movies. There’s a fine line between having fun callbacks or Easter eggs and just craven pandering to a pre-existing audience. And I find it is often most egregious after a fanbase has freaked out after someone has done something even mildly different with a franchise or IP. They go back to something super safe and spend the movie elbowing you in the proverbial ribs “remember when this happened? Wasn’t that cool when you were 8?” for two hours. I was driving through Drumheller when they were making this and I had no idea what was going on, but we were told that they were doing a Ghostbuster reboot with “the kid from Stranger Things.” That sort of sounded horrible at the time (and them filming in Drumheller was beyond confusing), but once I saw Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd were in I was going to go see it. I like Finn Wolfhard and I like Stranger Things, but I think this movie is better and significantly shorter if his character and side plot just doesn’t exist. I guess someone has to drive our protagonists around. I believe he was supposed be the next gen Peter Venkman, but he wasn’t funny and didn’t have the charm. I was very pleasantly surprised to see this story centered on Phoebe instead. Her friendship with Podcast (which felt almost like a prequel letting us imagine what it might have been like when Egon met Ray) was great, I enjoyed her learning about her grandfather, Paul Rudd is effortlessly charming and funny and Carrie Coon is always great and I thought she was funnier than I expected. For an hour I was absolutely enjoying myself more than I ever expected going in. And then the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Minions showed up in the world’s emptiest Wal-Mart and we recreated the third act of the first movie beat-by-beat and it was really disappointing. That being said, the ending worked for me. Someone I know said they actually groaned when Egon showed up. I certainly didn’t feel that way, but I sort of get that sentiment. I definitely think more people were moved by that scene than hated it. I was invested enough in the Spengler story that the goodwill the film had spent 45 minutes eroding still wasn’t so much that I couldn’t get behind the sentiment. But I absolutely see Tyler’s point… it’s weird. It’s weird to have a CGI cameo from a deceased person. It’s weird to do it while portraying his character as absent and having Ray crap on him just to add dramatic tension. It’s weird that he’s not a physical manifestation until the very end. I also really felt it was a weird choice to only have Sigourney Weaver in a mid-credits scene that I guess suggests that they ended up together but otherwise brings nothing to the table. At least give her something to do in the actual film. The end credit scene with a deleted scene… now that’s a very good post-credits scene. I’m glad you recognized Fort Macleod. Given your impressive knowledge of Last of Us locations, I figured you would know some of these (and it seems like you knew a lot of them retroactively) so I was wondering if you knew this was shot in the area and/or when you would figure it out. Also kudos on spotting an uncredited Olivia Wilde.

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I can honestly understand your opinion that Finn Wolfhard was miscast. Like I could have def been okay with him out of this movie (along with Frozen Empire). Yeah, that scene where Callie realized that Egon did give a shit still was so good. Very memorable part of the whole franchise.

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I think we regret not enjoying our youth more at the time that we were experiencing it, than we regret getting older.

Movies with KL

Not really surprised, tbh. 😅 But also glad you enjoy Phoebe and Podcast and liking those characters makes sense. Also agreed that fleshing out Callie more would have been nice. TY as always for the fun facts and info!

Movies with KL

That's fair. The originals/firsts are usually the best.

Movies with KL

Nice! I probably would have seen this twice in the theater too haha

Movies with KL

Phoebe definitely stole the show, agreed! And I'm glad I'm not the only one who panicked re: Sigourney. Thanks for watching!

Movies with KL

Honestly, mood on the fan-service stuff. Even though I def enjoy it at times, media is saturated with it. That's fun to have been in Drumheller during filming! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and yeah, was surprised that I didn't recognize more locations in the moment but sometimes need that list afterwards haha