You’d be very hard-pressed to find a Ghostbusters fan who had anything complementary to say about Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot, which sparked the wrath of the internet by virtue of its mere existence.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with four women playing the lead roles, and much of the vitriol was unwarranted once it descended into outright animosity, but making wide-ranging changes to the established mythology and roping in legacy favorites for jarring cameos as completely different characters definitely didn’t work, never mind the Easter Eggs failing to make it clear whether Feig’s movie was a sequel, reboot, remake or something else entirely.
It would be the understatement of the century to say a lot of people didn’t like it, but Ghostbusters: Afterlife director Jason Reitman isn’t one of them. In a recent interview with Insider, the filmmaker lavished praise on Feig’s effort for opening new doors to the mythology that he gladly walked on through.
“When Paul made his movie, he kind of broke the doors open. Suddenly a Ghostbusters film did not have to be about those four original guys in Manhattan. That was a big moment. I want to see all kinds of Ghostbusters movies. I want to see Ghostbusters movies from all my favorite filmmakers, coming from all kinds of different cultures and different countries. Paul really did the hard work so that I could make this movie.”
The major difference between 2016’s Ghostbusters and next month’s Afterlife is that the latter is the project people have been asking to see for over 30 years, acting as a direct sequel to Ivan Reitman’s first two installments. Feig tried to put his own stamp on the material, but the diehards simply weren’t having it, and the encouraging news is that the latest stab at updating the property is poised to gain their seal of approval.