{"id":3126,"date":"2022-07-19T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T21:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=3126"},"modified":"2022-06-29T21:29:24","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T03:29:24","slug":"movie-ghostbusters-afterlife-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/19\/movie-ghostbusters-afterlife-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Ghostbusters &#8211; Afterlife (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/d\/d1\/Ghostbusters_-_Afterlife_official_theatrical_poster.jpg\/220px-Ghostbusters_-_Afterlife_official_theatrical_poster.jpg\" alt=\"Ghostbusters: Afterlife\" width=\"220\" height=\"339\">Ghostbusters: Afterlife<\/u><\/strong><br>\nYear: 2021<br>\nRating: PG-13<br>\nLength: 124 minutes \/ 2.07 hours<\/p>\n<p>Hollywood nostalgia is a huge moneymaker for my generation. Movies we grew up loving like <em>Star Wars<\/em> (1977), <em>Jurassic Park<\/em> (1993), and <em>Ghostbusters<\/em> (1984) have all received &#8220;requels&#8221; in <em>The Force Awakens<\/em> (2015), <a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/25\/movie-jurassic-world-2015\/\"><em>Jurassic World<\/em><\/a> (2015), and <em>Ghostbusters: Afterlife<\/em> (2021). These movies act as sequels, reboots, and remakes that take advantage of years of movie-making technology that weren&#8217;t available when the originals came out (even if the originals created amazing spectacles without excessive CGI). The question is: are these requels still entertaining? For <em>Ghostbusters: Afterlife<\/em>, I think it certainly did a better job than <a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/17\/movie-ghostbusters-2016\/\"><em>Ghostbusters<\/em><\/a> (2016) did.<\/p>\n<p>While these types of films rely heavily on call-backs and recycled plots from the movies that came before them, that&#8217;s part of what makes them fun nostalgia-fueled flicks. New characters can give a spark of something different, even if the story beats are still the same as before. Case in point: I absolutely loved Paul Rudd&#8217;s and Logan Kim&#8217;s characters in <em>Afterlife<\/em>, as they were the right balance of straight-man and comedic timing. Still, there&#8217;s something special about a movie like this paying tribute to the actors and directors we&#8217;ve lost since the first film became a hit.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciated that there were enough plot points that differed from the original <em>Ghostbusters<\/em> to make this movie that added to the lore from the previous films. Jason Reitman clearly honored his father Ivan&#8217;s legacy by directing a film that took itself seriously. Even with moments of comedy sprinkled throughout, the laughs weren&#8217;t forced (like in 2016). After all, the original had brilliant dead-pan delivery that made it funny because the characters were taking the existence of ghosts seriously. I hope this movie gets a sequel so it can explore something different from the first plot in the series, but if this is all we get, it&#8217;s a pretty good consolation prize.<\/p>\n<p>A requel that honors the source material, I give <em>Ghostbusters: Afterlife<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2968\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-640x244.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ghostbusters: Afterlife Year: 2021 Rating: PG-13 Length: 124 minutes \/ 2.07 hours Hollywood nostalgia is a huge moneymaker for my generation. Movies we grew up loving like Star Wars (1977), Jurassic Park (1993), and Ghostbusters (1984) have all received &#8220;requels&#8221; in The Force Awakens (2015), Jurassic World (2015), and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). These movies act [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[2715,3094,1116,3093,3097,13,3096,630,3095,8,34],"class_list":["post-3126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-movie","tag-2715","tag-afterlife","tag-ghostbusters","tag-ghostbusters-afterlife","tag-logan-kim","tag-movie","tag-paul-rudd","tag-reboot","tag-requel","tag-review","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}