Ghostbusters The Videogame Vs. Legacy: What's the Best Sequel?

Ghostbusters The Videogame Vs. Legacy

Ghostbusters: Legacy is kind of one of the most unlikely sequels in movie history, mostly because it shouldn't have existed. For decades there was no square of the circle, an agreement that would put the actors and the director on the screenplay, so much so that at one point a female reboot signed by Paul Feig was ventured and it seemed that the series, at the cinema, it was over there. It served the death of Harold Ramis - Egon - to shake the status quo, leading Jason Reitman, son of that Ivan who had directed the two films in the '80s, to shoot a real sequel, which however took almost two years to be released in cinemas, between COVID-19 and all the rest.

The funny thing is that video game enthusiasts, in the meantime, had already had a real sequel, first in 2009 and then in remastered version exactly ten years later, when Legacy - which at home is called Afterlife, go figure - had just begun to talk. Developed by Terminal Reality in its main incarnation, Ghostbusters: The Videogame is a third-person action that lets us experience a new Ghostbusters adventure shortly after the events of Ghostbusters II, introducing new characters and bringing back virtually all the protagonists of the two. And so, by 2021, the iconic series that shouldn't have followed if it finds two: one official in the cinema and the other in the form of a video game. We have compared them to determine which is the best and, better said, which is canonical in our heads. So be careful. This article contains huge SPOILERS about the video game and the film, so proceed with caution if you haven't seen Ghostbusters: Legacy in theaters yet or you haven't played Ghostbusters: The Videogame yet.

The game

Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered, the Ghostbusters in a scene from the game Ghostbusters: The Videogame is not a simple video game, but a kind of intersection of proton flows from which they are the following films emerged, firmly planted in the story behind the scenes of the whole brand. Perhaps not everyone knows that a sequel to Ghostbusters II has been talked about for years, but the film failed to materialize because the parties in question were unable to agree: in particular, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who they had written the first two films, struggling to drag Bill Murray into a new script. At one point, in fact, this third film, which should have been titled Ghostbusters: Hellbent and released between 1990 and 2000, included the entry into the team of a new generation of Ghostbusters composed of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Chris Farley. The protagonist of Meet the Parents, in particular, was supposed to replace the character of Peter Venkman that Murray had played in the first films.

At the end of Ghostbusters: Hellbent nothing came of it, until Terminal Reality consulted Aykroyd and Ramis for writing Ghostbusters: The Videogame. The two authors thus had the opportunity to transform that third film never made into reality, pulling out of the drawer so many ideas that they had had at the time of the first two films and that they had to ultimately exclude, starting with the final confrontation with Ivo Shandor, the real mastermind behind all the Ghostbusters troubles. Over time, Murray also softened, among other things, who participated with the rest of the cast as a voice actor: unfortunately, the tight deadline did not allow to involve Sigourney Weaver, who had said she was interested in the project anyway (Rick Moranis, however, had already moved away from the professional scene).

Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered, the Marshmallow Commercial Man in a scene from the game All these elements frame Ghostbusters: The Videogame as a much more direct sequel to Legacy, but the truth is that most of the story takes up the characters, situations and dialogues seen in the first films, in a sort of homage that today we would consider strong fanservice. In the game the four Ghostbusters are not directly controlled, but an anonymous alter ego of the player simply nicknamed cadet, rookie or rookie, who is in charge of testing the new team equipment. The story begins when Slimer and another ghost escape from the containment grid, forcing the Ghostbusters to visit some iconic movie locations such as the Sedgewick Hotel, but the intertwining thickens with the appearance of a new type of ectoplasmic slime which, accumulated in large quantities, it can open a gap between dimensions. The team will discover that Gozer is trying to come back to life by taking advantage of an exhibit inspired by his Sumerian cult overseeing Dr. Ilyssa Selwyn, Peter's new love interest (voiced in the original language by actress Alyssa Milano).

La The game's narrative is very interesting because it manages to connect some apparently disconnected events between the first two films, reconstructing a much more ambitious and sensible plan behind the threats that ours have faced over the years. From the spirit of the librarian to the slime, passing through the decisive role of antagonistic characters such as the annoying Walter Peck, Ghostbusters: The Videogame puts a lot of meat on the fire, titillating fans who may never have even imagined such an ambitious scheme behind the two funny comedies. cinematic supernatural.

In the end, in fact, our heroes are confronted with Ivo Shandor, the Mephistophelian architect mentioned several times in the films and in the game, linked in an unsuspected way to the character of Ilyssa, and true nemesis of the Ghostbusters in all and for all. After defeating him, the four protagonists decide to entrust the rookie, now a full member, with the management of a detachment outside New York.

Ghostbusters: The Videogame then takes up many subplots that Aykroyd and Ramis had imagined writing the films, and he bases some very important brand new ones, such as the idea that Ghostbusters become a franchise on an international scale. So what's wrong with this videogame sequel? In reality, there is nothing that does not work in and of itself, but as we said The Videogame is a jumble of discarded assets, recombined together to form a sensible framework that relies above all on quotationism and nostalgia. Which makes perfect sense, if you think about it, because the game was meant to be exactly that: a homage and at the same time a closing of the circle for the authors of a story that at that point seemed inevitably destined to remain unfinished.

The movie

Ghostbusters: Legacy, Mckenna Grace and the Ecto-1 in a scene from the film Ghostbusters: The Videogame, however, had an unexpected effect, and that is to raise Murray's interest in the franchise , at the same time convincing Sony to carry on the idea of ​​a film sequel. Unfortunately, the drafting of the new script was enormously tormented, above all by the desire of Aykroyd and Ramis in primis to write a practically perfect script that could bring all the actors together, making them agree. The idea was to bring back everyone, absolutely everyone, including Moranis, but life eventually pulled a curve ball when Harold Ramis died in 2014, among other things shortly after solving some problems that he and Murray had been trailing since the 1990s and from the production of the film Starting Over (in which Murray was the star and Ramis was the screenwriter).

Sony, which in the meantime absolutely wanted to carry on the brand, therefore ordered Paul Feig for the 2016 female reboot. Not a bad movie, let's put it this way, but an extremely mediocre product that sacrifices an exceptional cast and some very funny idea on the altar of showmanship and girl power. Well, the film failed at the box office, but it renewed the determination of Aykroyd and the Retiman, father and son, to pay the honors to their late friend and colleague.

Which brings us to Legacy, announced shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, only arrived last week. A very different product from the original films, but still linked to those 80s-90s and to family films that were all the rage at a time when we were perhaps purer or more carefree. Legacy is a film on the generational change, on the meaning of inheritance - hence, probably, the Italian subtitle - and on the elaboration of mourning, but it is also a sly film, which winks at the nostalgic fashion of the moment and rides the wave, perhaps a little late, of titles like Super 8 and Stranger Things. It is no coincidence that the hype has discreetly insisted on the participation of Finn Wolfhard, that is Mike Wheeler in the popular Netflix TV series.

The real protagonist, however, is Mckenna Grace, who holds the entire movie. Grace plays the role of the small but very intelligent Phoebe, who moves to Summerville, Oklahoma, with her mother Callie (Carrie Coon) and her brother Trevor (Wolfhard). There the grandfather, who they never met, left a shack after disappearing of natural causes, and since Callie has no money and they've just been evicted, Summerville seems like the right opportunity to start over: a new school, new friends. , a nice new professor played by the evergreen Paul Rudd who immediately takes a liking to Phoebe.

The problem is that Phoebe's surname is Spengler: thirty years have passed since the events in New York, no one remembers the Ghostbusters anymore , who went bankrupt shortly after Ghostbusters II and many believed they were mythomaniacs anyway, and Egon had abandoned his entire family to be a mad hermit in Oklahoma. Too bad he wasn't crazy, because under Summerville a door to the Hereafter is about to open wide that threatens to bring Gozer back to Earth, and this time to stop the Destroyer there are four teenagers, a weird professor, some malfunctioning accessories and an Ecto- 1 that falls apart.

Ghostbusters: Legacy, the young cast in a scene from the film The new film has a very powerful value: Jason Reitman is an excellent director (if you have never seen Juno or In the clouds, to say, recover them) and together with screenwriter Gil Kenan doses the fanservice in an intelligent way, teasing the viewer in a crescendo. Let's say that the film takes it really easy to characterize the characters and delineate the mystery of Summerville, but it is an adventure that could only be described in this way: the Goonies meeting the Ghostbusters. Literally. For a less keen audience, Legacy is a fun adventure that balances drama and comedy well and leans on a great cast, while hardcore fans of Ghostbusters, who know the life, death and miracles of actors and the intricate crafting of this film, they will recognize an important metanarrative level in the final minutes and in the last goodbye to Harold Ramis.

Interestingly, Legacy, like The Videogame, also draws heavily on the discarded ideas of Hellbent and the previous films. . We find Ivo Shandor, albeit to a much lesser extent, and Gozer the Destroyer, the parallel dimension from which ghosts come and the idea, suggested in the last scene after the credits, that the Ghosbusters must expand now that the supernatural threat is back for all to see. The young protagonists, on the other hand, represent the new generation of Hellbent and the recruit of The Videogame: not all of them work - Woflhard and Celeste O'Connor, aka Lucky, have much less screentime than expected - but Phoebe and Podcast (Logan Kim) also apply to them.

The verdict

Ghostbusters: Legacy, Paul Rudd in a scene from the movie Ultimately, which is the best "Ghostbusters 3"? Our answer is: neither. Both stories touch different chords, honestly. The Videogame is more of a choral adventure, focused on the team dynamics of the old Ghostbusters, not so old in the year in which the story unfolds: in the cinema it would have been a real blockbuster that would have made the fans of the first two crazy film, but at the same time it would have lost a lot on the comedy front, representing a perhaps more serious and compelling drift, but less tuned to the frequency of Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters.

Legacy, for its part, is a different product that aims to be a sequel in the broadest sense of the term: the characters and events of the films of thirty years ago are only the springboard to continue the franchise, so much so that in the meantime the Ghost Corp, a company who would like to establish the equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Ghostbusters sauce. But Legacy is also the catharsis of a team not so much in the cinema, as in real life. It is a film that can be read on several levels, if you look carefully and deepen the context for a moment: it is a farewell, a goodbye and a new debut.

Ghostbusters: The Videogame, a scene from the game Maybe the real sequel to Ghostbusters I and II was to be a combination of the two scripts. Maybe it should have been that Ghostbusters: Hellbent never materialized, because, let's face it, a supernatural comedy along the lines of the first two films, with Ben Stiller and Chris Rock putting the hundred load as they learn the trade from Aykroyd, Ramis and Hudson, would have been absolutely devastating. Ironically, life has literally put a hand in the story, inside and out, of a film about the dead. It sounds strange but it is, and as much as one may like or despise the new movie or video game, this series has succeeded in a feat few others can boast: having two sequels at the same time. Which one do you prefer?

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