- March 25th, 2024, 11:27 am#4995382
After the openning weekend, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire rocked first place at the box office. As a fan, I am happy to say we saw it Thursday night (openning night for us non-red carpeet premiere viewers.)
We live in Canada and it just so happens we are a short walk from one of Cineplex's handful of VIP Exclusive locations (aka: the location is exclusively a 19+ theater.) The venue has those lovely recliners with bottom warming technology. The catch 22 is the venue's are not setup to promote and sell film merch so in the past year, Cineplex just stopped bringing film merch (popcorn buckets, toys, etc.) to these handful of locations.
Since Dan Aykroyd is a Canadian born actor, he's worked to ensure his Vodka is heavily promoted by Cineplex. So, the VIP Exclusive locations almost always have a special beverage. We came home with a set of Skull shaped glasses.
We wanted to enjoy the film so we made sure to only have the two beverages and watch the film. I recall the film spot on and would love another go in the theaters. We enjoyed the film. It was a fun time!
However, as a fan of Ghostbusters, I am legit worried we might not see another film again. Sure Frozen Empire is setting pretty with over 60 million world wide but with theater's taking half the cut, we need to see well over 200 million for Sony to be in the green from funding Ghost Corps for this film.
So, I wanted to start a discourse here on the thread taking a better look at the Critics' side of things. While we would love the film to be focused on the fans, we need to acknowledge there needs to be NEW appeal to a new audience that doesn't come attached to existing fans. The films need to appeal to more than just us children of the 80's!
The Climate has Changed
With the failings of Super Hero films since the pandemic, the film theater landscape has changed massively. "Barbenheimer" proved that when franchise films are doing poorly, the cinema landscape can revert to standalone summer blockbusters. Let's be honest with ourselves, the majority of professional Film Critics are not geeks. The majority of these individuals do not want to "do homework" (aka watch 5+ films) to go into a film. You will notice that Film Critics are attacking franchise films more and more since those films reminded them "of the good old days."
Bloated Cast
While it was fabulous to see the OG's of the 80's back in flight suits, I cannot deny Frozen Empire's cast is too bloated for its own good. Paul Rudd's role was awkward new Step Dad which has all the makings for comedic gold and we had almost no screen time devoted to playing that up. of that. Carrie Coon is an amazing actress and for the life of me I cannot think of one plot point in the movie that could qualify as a story arch for her character. Finn Wolfhard's character of Trevor is just there. You can tell Finn is giving depth but with what felt like less screen time than Carrie what can we hope for.
James Acaster was brilliant in his role but once again. There was not enough screen time with that character to even tell if we should expect him as a main stay going forward.
We had Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, and Emily Alyn Lind present but used for little more than your classic hollow 80's/'90's cartoon Ex-Machina/Plot Advancement charcters.
Think About the Children
The film has a PG-13 rating, so, it's safe to assume the viewing audience has the ability to sit through a 3 hour film. Yet, with the mere run time of 1h 55m the film felt it was having to waste more of its time and acting talent. It felt like both James Acaster's and Patton Oswalt's time on screen was wasted with plot expositions to keep the movie advancing forward to the end as opposed to enjoying the moment.
While I feel that 3 hours would be pushing it, 2.5 hours versus 2 hours would have given the script breathing room.
We spend NO time with the big end boss monster. At no point did I feel the dread that this character should carry and that was because outside of the end scene's beam struggle, we barely saw this all powerful being. (It's like going to a Monster-Verse Godzilla film and barely seeing Godzilla.)
Saturday Morning Cartoon Ex-Machina's
The third act devolved into a series of fluke concidences which while normal for your average Saturday Morning Cartoon does not fly today. While a standalone film is supposed to wrap everything up by its end time, it's supposed to feel like the conclusion was reached as a result of the story making sense. I cannot imagine for most that the third act did not feel rushed or like it was trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
The third act in many ways did not feel rewarding.
First, we have Emily Alyn Lind's Melody. We've reached Phobe's hormone years. So, on top of her being the most awkward of ducks, we all know how quintessential connecting to another is at that age. Even if you were not the type or in the position to let the hormones go wild and unlock Gozer, anyone can relate to how vital that need for connection is at that age. For that reason to anyone who came out of the film saying "Phobe is too smart to be played", I say restate: teenage hormones!
Melody's whole plot boiled down to being the source of magic fire to be used against the ice demon. Did Melody need to be working with the big bad for that to occur? No. Did Melody need to trick Phobe into Ghostwalking to achieve that? No. The plot between these two could had been as simple as two souls connecting.
Patton Oswalt played geeky Patton Oswalt to perfection however the whole purpose of Patton Oswalt's character was to tell the Ghostbusters a magic evil recording from the 1920's existed. Since the magic evil recording was destroyed immediately, Patton Oswalt's Dr. Hubert Wartzki was little more than a stand in for Ray (our already existing occur expert.) Basically, we spent less screen time with an OG Ghostbuster to spend with a character we might never seen again on a plot that went no where.
Finally, we spend time with a third character whose presence is little more than an Ex-Machina solution to our problems: Kumail Nanjiani's Nadeem Razmaadi. Kumail skillfully played the wrong place/wrong time archtypical character. Traditionally, in films, this character type continues to encounter happenstances which bring them more involved into the plot and led logically to their involvement in the final act. Instead of playing that, we were told at pretty much the start, their character was the solution to the problem.
You know what removes tension from a scary monster film... being told you protagnoists already knew about the Muggin before they even attempted to fight the big scary monster.
...
When we look at this film objectively, it's little surprise why Frozen Empire ended up receiving poor initial reviews from film critics. It was a short film with too many characters to allow for any of them (let alone all of them) to shine with final act felt like less like the result of the plot unfolding and more like a rushed attempt to tie the plot threads together.
I am not a fan of those words coming out of my mouth...
I just want more films in this franchise!
I want a new wave of 15~25 people discovering Ghostbusters through the next movie and that next movie living up the high bar set back in 1984.
We live in Canada and it just so happens we are a short walk from one of Cineplex's handful of VIP Exclusive locations (aka: the location is exclusively a 19+ theater.) The venue has those lovely recliners with bottom warming technology. The catch 22 is the venue's are not setup to promote and sell film merch so in the past year, Cineplex just stopped bringing film merch (popcorn buckets, toys, etc.) to these handful of locations.
Since Dan Aykroyd is a Canadian born actor, he's worked to ensure his Vodka is heavily promoted by Cineplex. So, the VIP Exclusive locations almost always have a special beverage. We came home with a set of Skull shaped glasses.
We wanted to enjoy the film so we made sure to only have the two beverages and watch the film. I recall the film spot on and would love another go in the theaters. We enjoyed the film. It was a fun time!
However, as a fan of Ghostbusters, I am legit worried we might not see another film again. Sure Frozen Empire is setting pretty with over 60 million world wide but with theater's taking half the cut, we need to see well over 200 million for Sony to be in the green from funding Ghost Corps for this film.
So, I wanted to start a discourse here on the thread taking a better look at the Critics' side of things. While we would love the film to be focused on the fans, we need to acknowledge there needs to be NEW appeal to a new audience that doesn't come attached to existing fans. The films need to appeal to more than just us children of the 80's!
The Climate has Changed
With the failings of Super Hero films since the pandemic, the film theater landscape has changed massively. "Barbenheimer" proved that when franchise films are doing poorly, the cinema landscape can revert to standalone summer blockbusters. Let's be honest with ourselves, the majority of professional Film Critics are not geeks. The majority of these individuals do not want to "do homework" (aka watch 5+ films) to go into a film. You will notice that Film Critics are attacking franchise films more and more since those films reminded them "of the good old days."
Bloated Cast
While it was fabulous to see the OG's of the 80's back in flight suits, I cannot deny Frozen Empire's cast is too bloated for its own good. Paul Rudd's role was awkward new Step Dad which has all the makings for comedic gold and we had almost no screen time devoted to playing that up. of that. Carrie Coon is an amazing actress and for the life of me I cannot think of one plot point in the movie that could qualify as a story arch for her character. Finn Wolfhard's character of Trevor is just there. You can tell Finn is giving depth but with what felt like less screen time than Carrie what can we hope for.
James Acaster was brilliant in his role but once again. There was not enough screen time with that character to even tell if we should expect him as a main stay going forward.
We had Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, and Emily Alyn Lind present but used for little more than your classic hollow 80's/'90's cartoon Ex-Machina/Plot Advancement charcters.
Think About the Children
The film has a PG-13 rating, so, it's safe to assume the viewing audience has the ability to sit through a 3 hour film. Yet, with the mere run time of 1h 55m the film felt it was having to waste more of its time and acting talent. It felt like both James Acaster's and Patton Oswalt's time on screen was wasted with plot expositions to keep the movie advancing forward to the end as opposed to enjoying the moment.
While I feel that 3 hours would be pushing it, 2.5 hours versus 2 hours would have given the script breathing room.
We spend NO time with the big end boss monster. At no point did I feel the dread that this character should carry and that was because outside of the end scene's beam struggle, we barely saw this all powerful being. (It's like going to a Monster-Verse Godzilla film and barely seeing Godzilla.)
Saturday Morning Cartoon Ex-Machina's
The third act devolved into a series of fluke concidences which while normal for your average Saturday Morning Cartoon does not fly today. While a standalone film is supposed to wrap everything up by its end time, it's supposed to feel like the conclusion was reached as a result of the story making sense. I cannot imagine for most that the third act did not feel rushed or like it was trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
The third act in many ways did not feel rewarding.
First, we have Emily Alyn Lind's Melody. We've reached Phobe's hormone years. So, on top of her being the most awkward of ducks, we all know how quintessential connecting to another is at that age. Even if you were not the type or in the position to let the hormones go wild and unlock Gozer, anyone can relate to how vital that need for connection is at that age. For that reason to anyone who came out of the film saying "Phobe is too smart to be played", I say restate: teenage hormones!
Melody's whole plot boiled down to being the source of magic fire to be used against the ice demon. Did Melody need to be working with the big bad for that to occur? No. Did Melody need to trick Phobe into Ghostwalking to achieve that? No. The plot between these two could had been as simple as two souls connecting.
Patton Oswalt played geeky Patton Oswalt to perfection however the whole purpose of Patton Oswalt's character was to tell the Ghostbusters a magic evil recording from the 1920's existed. Since the magic evil recording was destroyed immediately, Patton Oswalt's Dr. Hubert Wartzki was little more than a stand in for Ray (our already existing occur expert.) Basically, we spent less screen time with an OG Ghostbuster to spend with a character we might never seen again on a plot that went no where.
Finally, we spend time with a third character whose presence is little more than an Ex-Machina solution to our problems: Kumail Nanjiani's Nadeem Razmaadi. Kumail skillfully played the wrong place/wrong time archtypical character. Traditionally, in films, this character type continues to encounter happenstances which bring them more involved into the plot and led logically to their involvement in the final act. Instead of playing that, we were told at pretty much the start, their character was the solution to the problem.
You know what removes tension from a scary monster film... being told you protagnoists already knew about the Muggin before they even attempted to fight the big scary monster.
...
When we look at this film objectively, it's little surprise why Frozen Empire ended up receiving poor initial reviews from film critics. It was a short film with too many characters to allow for any of them (let alone all of them) to shine with final act felt like less like the result of the plot unfolding and more like a rushed attempt to tie the plot threads together.
I am not a fan of those words coming out of my mouth...
I just want more films in this franchise!
I want a new wave of 15~25 people discovering Ghostbusters through the next movie and that next movie living up the high bar set back in 1984.
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