Fixing Ghostbusters (2016)

[Yukaphile]

... okay, my bad. I haven't seen the movie in years... since literally before turn of century...

Indeed. As I said, I don't much care for our current generation of actors. I think the old ones were better.

[Admiral X]

I would have done the passing of the torch thing. They could have worked with Harold Ramis's death and Bill Murry's unwillingness to continue with the franchise. I saw someone else suggest the idea that Egon had died as a result of their ghostbusting and the remaining members of the team deciding they were "getting too old for this shit." That works perfectly, and they could even have some humor from all the applicants they go through. Like whereas before they had to deal with skeptics, now they'd have to deal more with Alex Jones types who take it way too far. They could even still keep the all-female team and make some jokes off of that and the associated stereotypes.

I'd go further and make Bill Murry's character something of an antagonist, and how far it would go would be based on his willingness to be a part of the project. Basically, I'd have had him move on from the team some time ago simply because it seemed like a dead-end and he didn't want to be stuck doing it for the rest of his life. Not to mention the narcissistic tendencies of the character which craved external validation and how his character was introduced as basically being a fraud who was trying to get by doing as little work as possible while using his position to try to get laid. So I'd have him have become a pop-scientist type in the vein of Neil deGrasse Tyson, only way more full of himself.

So what this would translate into is that Venkman could either be mentioned as having become this off screen to explain what happened to him and his lack of participation in the story. Depending on the interest of Bill Murry (I certainly wouldn't get his participation through threats of legal action the way the people making the 2016 movie did), this could be expanded into a few cameos or even be a fully fledged antagonism where he quite ironically find himself in the same position as that EPA guy who gave them so much trouble in the first movie. The main difference here is the argument would be against the company as a private entity, and this aspect of the movie would be the same whether it was Venkman or some other character created for the role. Basically the argument would be that the government should be in charge of ghostbusting, and honestly the movie could go either way on that in how it turns out. Either way the new team will still be the new team, even if it just means they're working for the NYC branch of the new government agency.

[technobabbler]

..

[technobabbler]

same continuity. Make it revolve around a couple of the kids of the original 4 (yes, a bit fan-fic) + "newcomer". And the original 3 act more like mission control.

Start w/the 3 original ghostbusters cracking jokes about the good ol' days. pan out, it's besides the tombstone after Egon's funeral.

it's 2016 Ghostbusters the business went belly up Everyone's doing their own thing. Egon's estate is paying for the containment unit. Zenckman is hosting a "Ghost Hunters" type show.

Smart Kid #1 (Zoe Saladana as Winston's daughter) is a PhD in astrophysics but researches the paranormal as a hobby.

"Evil Corporate Guy-Occultist" (a stranded ghost from 1985 who took human form) owns the world's largest coffee chain. all the locations form some lay-line formation and beneath every coffee house is a MacGuffin. and after the second to last location opens, paranormal activity around the world jumps to 30 year highs.

now all Dr. Evil has to do is open the one final coffee house in NYC and the MacGuffins activate and open a transdimensional portal as each coffee house was built on a paranormal hotspot.

Smart Kid #1 discovers this and rounds up the old crew + some new faces to defeat Evil Corporate Guy.

[Nealithi]

I watched this movie and I did wince several times. But thought it picked up when the big bad sacrificed himself to begin possessing others. From his apology for the slime being way worse than he thought to Yes Chris Hemsworth getting everyone to dance because he was a puppet master felt large hammy and fine. It was opening night with a ghost who wanted to be a Diva. And it worked.

What failed to capture me from the beginning was the lack of friendship/chemistry with the initial three as well as how two dimensional the university people were written.
Based on how this supposedly has panned out in written material and follows some of the concepts of Dan Akroyd's original script. Begin the movie with the crossing the streams scene from the original. Pan out to show different people in different realities drawing devices like the proton packs. Zoom in on a young girl drawing a crude version and showing it to her friend. Then fast forward to her giving a lecture in a university and someone asks about her work in parapsychology. Let her remind them that is not on any test nor is it part of her curriculum. But her work is shown to keep coming up from a rival. Then she gets a call from her old friend. She goes to check and her friend and an associate got the detector to work. You can keep most of the jobs in the movie. But have the connection be they at least heard of each other on forums. Thus the four are brought together to investigate the subway haunting. Have the group trying to shut them down be the FBI. Not the mayor. And because the FBI thinks it is someone using the 'ghost' angle as cover for something else and the 'quacks' will just get in the way.
The villain was fine and his turning himself into a ghost means unless the definitely catch him. He can come back. Most of the fight scene remains. Let the FBI fund them getting the fire house. And then in the credits while they are studying the phenomenon that opened a dimensional portal. One opens in the fire house. And Ray steps out in uniform. "Hey Ghostbusters. We need to talk." And shows them Akroyd's original idea. A trans-dimensional bunch of people going about busting ghosts. Roll more credits and have one of the FBI agents checking something in the building then turn and you see him wipe a bit of ectoplasm from his nose and smirk. Setting up the villain to return.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The queef joke STAYS.

[Deledrius]

I think G-Man's rewrite is a good one, though quite a bit more drastic than is needed to "fix" the film.

Like... cancer levels of awful.

It was nowhere near that bad. It was an average film with decent actors and great visual updates to the original. The humor often overstayed its welcome or missed the tone of a scene. With a director who can get a better performance from the comedians and reign them in when needed or recognize when they're onto some clever improv, and much tighter editing, a sequel could really recover from the first film's mistakes.

One of my biggest disappointments with the script was that Patty's character being a lay expert on local history went underused. It's a great concept for a character on the team. I would probably have spent less time on the bickering between the two leads and spent more time using Patty's knowledge to help them out on the spectres they faced.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Honestly, my biggest let-down with the film was the lack of courage/audacity in the creature designs. Glowy humanoids are nice and good, but the inhuman deformity and rubbery grotesqueness was a big part of the charm for the original two films. I saw some unused concept art for GB3 that made me weep.

[Deledrius]

I noticed that too during a recent rewatch. The uncanniness granted by using stop-motion/puppetry was an interesting choice that seems to have lost something in the translation to all-CGI ghosts.