How good is Ghostbusters: Afterlife compared to the other Ghostbusters movies? Almost forty years after Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd brought Ghostbusters to the world in 1984, his son Jason has finally made the belated threequel that was decades in the making. And despite some divisive reviews for Afterlife, it’s very good.
Rather than a reboot or a direct sequel that follows the original Ghostbusters team, Jason Reitman made something that both continued their story and played into the affection in which the Ghostbusters universe is still held. It is a legacy movie with a look to the future, but it crucially proves how well it knows its past while also looking to the future. If Ghostbusters is to have a movie future, the crucial thing is that Afterlife has set the pathway for it to happen, whether with all of the original cast returning again or not.
But how does Afterlife rank alongside Ivan Reitman’s original and Ghostbusters II, as well as Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters: Answer The Call? Here’s every Ghostbusters movie ranked from worst to best including Jason Reitman’s long-awaited Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
4. Ghostbusters (2016)
Otherwise known as Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, Paul Feig’s all-female reboot of Ghostbusters – as part of a reinvigoration of the IP that would also have seen a Chris Pratt/Channing Tatum-led alt-team movie – was never a bad idea. For all of the bleating online about “wokeness”, that was a hollow complaint from people who don’t really need to be listened to. But that doesn’t mean the movie was a good reboot. Fundamentally, Feig’s reboot never quite felt like it understood the tone of the original – which was never quite the slapstick SNL-fest some cynics still bafflingly seem to believe – it was a straight movie with comic relief and snark. Ghostbusters 2016 was, in contrast, a garish farce, more like Eddie Murphy’s Haunted Mansion than Ivan Reitman’s original vision.
None of the cast is bad, with Leslie Jones and SNL’s Kate McKinnon offering game approximations of the characters they’re clearly riffing on (Winston and Egon), but it’s never bold or new enough and its nostalgic anchor never quite understands the iconic original. Beyond the casting, the story is weak, the villain is frankly terrible, and it flirts way too hard with being obnoxious.
3. Ghostbusters II
1989’s direct sequel to Ivan Reitman’s original Ghostbusters has a lot of detractors, and sits lowest on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bill Murray’s seeming disinterest a hot topic of criticism. In reality, it’s still a fun caper, with a great villain in Vigo The Carpathian who managed to achieve iconic movie status despite barely even moving in his scenes and a final sequence that outranks even the original for silliness. Yes, Venkman isn’t quite his sparkling self – probably because Bill Murray claims he was tricked into making Ghostbusters II – but the effects remain great, with the new Muppet-like ghosts of the Scoleri brothers, there’s bags of cast charm and a pleasant New York mentality storyline.
Perhaps the problem is that Ghostbusters II does very little new, with the same basic set-up – a conceit that required an improbable mass cynicism around ghosts despite the events of 1984 – but it remains warm, charming, and very entertaining, even more than thirty years on. It remains one of the greatest cinematic tragedies that the original plan for Ghostbusters 3 never happened with the cast still very much in their comic prime.
2. Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Arguably the most shocking thing about Ghostbusters: Afterlife is not its surprise character appearances (including cameos by JK Simmons, Josh Gad, and Olivia Wilde as Gozer), but is rather how little the original Ghostbusters actually appear. And despite the complaints about 2016’s reboot leaving them out entirely, Afterlife actually works better for that intentional oversight, because this is a legacy story that balances the new with nostalgia perfectly. Criticism leveled at Jason Reitman’s Afterlife bemoans empty fan-service, but if you’re choosing to watch this movie without expecting a nostalgic celebration of the original, you’re watching the wrong movie.
The new cast is great without attempting to replace the original team, with McKenna Grace in particular offering hints of how great her career can be. And of course, any vehicle for Paul Rudd’s special brand of charisma is always welcome. The story, too, is very well-handled, calling back to 1984’s timeline smartly, and the decision to frame the Spengler family’s life in Summerville as a tribute to Harold Ramis’ Egon is inspired. There might not be a lot of newness here, but that’s not was needed or asked for from fans, and ultimately, Afterlife is warm, funny, and it uses its surprisingly sparse original Ghostbusters moments perfectly.
1. Ghostbusters (1984)
The original and still the best, Ghostbusters was and is a zeitgeist movie that took some of the biggest rising comedy stars of the early 1980s and built a high-concept, surprisingly scary comedy-horror mash-up around them. Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson are amazing, but Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and Annie Potts have all transcended the limits of the movie to become eminently quotable and perpetually cosplayed. Even the intentionally obnoxious elements – like Slimer – come off well because the tone is so masterfully handled by Reitman’s directing.
The big fallacy about Ghostbusters is that it was always a slapstick, SNL-like comedy with a high joke rate, but that’s not the whole story. Because for the most part, three of the Ghostbusters play the whole thing straight – it’s just that they’re either oddballs in Stantz and Spengler’s case, or they’re perpetually baffled, in Winston’s – while Bill Murray snarkily mugs in the most charitably written role in the movie. How different it would have been if Eddie Murphy has been cast in Ghostbusters as intended. Anyway, the point remains that Ghostbusters is all about balance: it’s scary when it needs to be, funny, packed with heart, and written so well that the lines remain quoted in heavy rotation decades later.
