Let's all go to the movies~

[Büge]

This isn’t a sequel to the 1984 film. It’s a sequel to spinoff merchandising objects and the coddled memories of kids who were too young to understand that the “Keymaster” and “Gatekeeper” bit was a sex joke. It strip-mines a nostalgia for something that never existed, as calculatedly phony as the ersatz Americana setting, shot in Alberta, Canada. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” treats with pseudo-religious reverence the events of a movie in which a ghost blew Dan Aykroyd in a firehouse.

[hngkong]

It was at Fort Detmerring, not a firehouse.

[hngkong]

It was at Fort Detmerring, not a firehouse.

I also want to make it clear that yes, I do hate myself.

[mharr]

The only good modern Ghostbusters is Resurrection, a Nerdy Show podcast trpg campaign guest starring the Team Fortress 2 guys. https://nerdyshow.com/ghostbusters

[Niku]

Well it's not entirely modern on the Retronauts scale, but the IDW Ghostbusters comic was reeeeeeal good. I read a giant chunk of it and it does a great job of organically tying together disparate parts of the franchise (including Extreme Ghostbusters and the video game); I didn't keep up with it forever but apparently it also hooked into the 2016 film whenever that came around. One of my favorite storylines involved a rival group of Ghost"busters" who invented a gun that could just explode ghosts because why the fuck would you try to imprison them when you can blow them up? (spoilers: because that's not how ghosts work and they made everything obviously worse)

[Thad]

Well it's not entirely modern on the Retronauts scale, but the IDW Ghostbusters comic was reeeeeeal good.

BTW, the current Beast Wars comic I keep gushing about is written by the same guy (Erik Burnham).

I grabbed most of the IDW Ghostbusters in various Humble Bundles some years back, and...I think I read most of it? It gets a little hard to figure out the order once the main series ends and it turns into a series of miniseries. I think I read all of Ghostbusters International, and I know I read Ghostbusters: Get Real (the one where they cross over with the Real Ghostbusters). And I think I read Deviations (the "What-If" series).

But I think it really worked best when it was an ongoing series and really had a chance to build longer story arcs. I particularly appreciated the attention Winston got; he got a long-term arc, and they really fleshed out his character, expanding on the resume he gave Janine when he applied in an earlier draft of the movie script, before it was cut down to "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."

Man, Winston got a raw deal. I watched a couple of the interviews with Aykroyd, Murray, and Hudson doing the rounds for the new movie and Jesus Christ, Ernie Hudson still barely gets to say anything.

At least Winston got some attention on The Real Ghostbusters, but then again, that's the series where Ernie Hudson tried out for the role and lost out to Arsenio Hall.

Anyway. At a glance it's hard to tell what the status of the Ghostbusters comics license is. There was supposed to be a new miniseries in early 2020 but I'm not sure if it was ever released, and most of the series has disappeared from Comixology, though I see Ghostbusters: The Other Side is still available for Kindle and IDW is still listed as the publisher, so it looks like they still have the digital publishing rights to at least some of the series?

Hope they get it straightened out. Regardless of whether the movie's any good, I'd love to see what the comics do with it.

[Mongrel]

At least Ernie got the best deal from mother nature.





This dude is seventy-five and he looks absolutely amazing.

[mharr]

Gods, those weapons in the Ghostbusters reboot. Scientists discover physical evidence of immortal human soul, immediately develop ways to torture and annihilate same. I mean, sure humans would totally do that irl but wasn't this supposed to be a comedy?

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

...Tracy Yardley knows damn well that's not even in like the top three million worst things you might come across when researching Knuckles' backstory.

[Mongrel]

"I had a bad dream... let's microwave the baby!"

[Thad]

Much more serious answer than any of this deserves:

I don't claim to be anything like the actor Idris Elba is, but Knuckles's motivation is pretty simple. He's sworn to protect the Master Emerald; Robotnik convinces him Sonic's trying to steal it. I don't know the details of the script, but that's the story at its most basic level and from the trailer it looks like that basic outline is probably still there.

Pure conjecture: Elba's participation in the film probably consisted of a day or two in a recording booth. It's entirely possible that all they gave him was his part of the script, not the whole thing. In that context, it's perfectly reasonable to give the director the old "What's my motivation?" because that may not be spelled out in the pages he had to look at. Even if Knuckles's motivation is simple and easy to grasp, that doesn't mean that it's clear just from his dialogue, taken in isolation. I bet he doesn't show up until the end of the first act, at the earliest, after everybody finishes dumping exposition.

Now, there are other, related questions, beginning with "why does he listen to an obviously sketchy dude like Robotnik?" and that answer is going to depend on what they've kept versus what they've changed from the original story. But in the context of Knuckles's first appearance in Sonic 3/& Knuckles, the answer was:

1. Knuckles is a hermit who lives in a cave and has no friends. He does not have the socialization to realize that Robotnik is clearly untrustworthy.

2. Sonic shows up on Angel Island with a bunch of Chaos Emeralds, which lends support to Robotnik's claim that he's after the Master Emerald.

3. As for the question of why Knuckles can't figure out that this guy

is affiliated with this guy

the answer is that we're operating on cartoon rules. It's the same reason people can't tell this

isn't really the Tick.

[Thad]

Free Guy is a movie with a decent enough premise that's sort of breezy and fun if lightweight until it hits act 3 and becomes deeply stupid even by the standards of movies about computers and video games. Like, okay, so they're going to shut down the game in order to get people to buy the sequel, which is definitely a thing you do when you have people paying a subscription fee for a game, but then people are really getting into the first game because of Guy, which makes Taika Waititi mad because he wants them to stop giving him money for the game they're already giving him money for so they can maybe potentially give him money to play a different game, so he has his techs reboot the game, which erases Guy's memories -- you know how when you reboot your computer it erases everything you've done since the last time you booted it, right? that's a thing computers do -- and temporarily boots everybody out of the game, which is definitely a thing you intentionally do right before a big game launch, is interrupt service for your entire customer base.

So then Guy regains his memories, and he's going to go find the MacGuffin, and Taika Waititi has to stop him, so he kicks everybody out of the game again, but he leaves the game running with no players in it? And then goes downstairs to the server room and starts destroying everything with an axe. Since they were planning on shutting down the game like six hours later anyway, I assume that the shutdown plan was always to just start wrecking servers with an axe.

So anyway some more stuff happens, and there are some references to other movies that one might generously refer to as "jokes", and then it turns out people like The Sims, which is a thing nobody could have possibly foreseen even though The Sims is one of the most popular games of all time, and at some point I developed the headcanon that the last 45 minutes of the movie was written by an AI, and that makes me like it a lot better, like the theory that the ending of Minority Report is a dream Tom Cruise has after they put him on ice.

The end.

[Büge]

at some point I developed the headcanon that the last 45 minutes of the movie was written by an AI, and that makes me like it a lot better, like the theory that the ending of Minority Report is a dream Tom Cruise has after they put him on ice.

or like how Hancock went from "drunk homeless superhero tries to get an image makeover" to "the romantic travails of immortal gods"

[Mongrel]

See now that movie was destined to fail, because a movie dealing with both "drunk homeless superhero" and "the romantic travails of immortal gods" is pretty damned specific, and there is no way in the universe that any such movie could ever beat the one that's also a musical co-starring Christopher Lee.

[Destynova]

[beatbandito]

"If they don't immediately cut to how easy it is to go around that wall I will have faith in this film"
*cuts to title* "oh thank go-"
*cuts back to drawn out reveal about the wall*

[KingRoyal]

I can't for sure say whether I thought Matrix Resurrections was bad or good. Mostly I felt confused. Confused about the narrative, where characters show up to do things and it's unclear what their actual motivation or role in the story is supposed to be, but also confused about why the film exists and what it's trying to say or do.

It almost seems like it wants to say something about the Hollywood process of soft reboot/remakes of a major franchises, such as The Force Awakens, where a film is essentially a beat for beat remake of a previous film but also a continuation of the story, with studios trying to have their cake and eat it to. But aside from the first and third acts mirroring the first film and the subject of forced sequels being directly brought up, nothing about what happens seems to follow that thread. It's just... more Matrix. Just all the surprises are gone.

That makes it sound like I had a bad time, but really Lana Wachowski is still a great action and visual director, and there are some fun fight scenes and choreography, and the set design is great, especially how much care they'll put into a set entirely for it to be used once.

I being vague to avoid spoilers while also trying to convey just how perplexed I was for the film. I kept waiting and waiting for some reveal or plot point that would make me feel like there was a justification for the story, but really it just is. It is because Warner Bros wanted to do it and the only thing Lana could do was helm the project herself. This film may be a mess, but I guess it's a mess that prevented something even worse from being made

[Upthorn]

I'm coming down firmly on the side of "new Matrix movie is good, actually."

I feel like Lana, roped into the project against her wishes, deliberately coopted the corporate nostalgexploitation soft reboot sequel process into making a movie that actually does build on the themes and messages of the original trilogy.

Though I do agree that the in-universe justification for the story is pretty vague and a tad shaky, I feel like the content of the story justifies its existence even if plot continuity doesn't particularly, especially since it has one foot firmly planted in the meta level for nearly the entire runtime of the film.

[Upthorn]

I'm about halfway through this movie right now. I was really hoping it would be funny. It's not, and the moments where it tries to be are actually grating. Other than that, I'm glad this movie exists.

I'm not enjoying the movie, but I am appreciating it. It feels very validating to my experiences of the past couple years.

Edit: Just finished. Extremely depressing, as it should be. A little bit cathartic, too.