The second full trailer for Ghostbuster: Afterlife introduces a new generation of Spenglers to the family business of ghostbusting, teases the return of Raymond Stantz, and introduces both new and familiar spooks.
Directed by Jason Reitman, son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is set in the present day and moves away from the traditional setting of New York City to rural Oklahoma. Egon Spengler’s daughter, Callie (Carrie Coon), and grandchildren Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) find themselves broke and with no inheritance except for an old farmhouse in the small town of Summerville. There, Trevor and Phoebe find the Ecto-1 and other relics from their grandfather’s ghostbusting days, and use them to take on a new outbreak of ghosts that threatens to trigger an apocalypse.
Along with the new cast members, Ghostbusters: Afterlife will also see the return of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts in their roles from the original 1984 movie. Here’s a breakdown of the biggest story reveals and Easter eggs in the second trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Summerville, Oklahoma
Though Ghostbusters: Afterlife may have plenty of familiar props from the original movie, one thing that will be radically different is its setting of Summerville, Oklahoma. In a breakdown of the trailer for IGN, Jason Reitman explained, “Obviously the franchise is synonymous with New York City. But we wanted to go somewhere new, we wanted to go to the American West, we wanted to go to farmland.” One of the very first ideas that the director came up with when visualizing the sequel was the Ecto-1 “wheat-drifting” through a field, which isn’t exactly something that can be done in a New York setting. Summerville is also integral to the story, as Egon Spengler’s family try to figure out why exactly he moved to such a remote area.
Eccentric Accessories
Immediately upon the Spengler family’s arrival at Egon’s old farmhouse in Summerville, it’s clear that there’s something unusual about it. A shot of the house shows a large collection of antennae on the roof, which Reitman says was meant to “echo the top of the Ecto-1“. Beyond simply being a visual homage to the old Ghostbusters car, this equipment also hints that Egon was carefully monitoring supernatural activity in the surrounding area using his expertise on building ghost-detecting tech.
Annie Potts Returns As Janine
Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! But the person who actually picks up the phone when New Yorkers call about a troublesome spook is the Ghostbusters’ secretary, Janine Melnitz. Played by Annie Potts, Janine was a romantic interest for Egon throughout the Ghostbusters franchise and Ghostbusters: Afterlife reveals that she and Egon ended up together and had a daughter, Callie. Annie returns in the new trailer for Afterlife and tells Callie, “Your father wasn’t much of a homemaker. He could hardly keep the power on.” Of course, in Egon’s line of work there are a number of possible reasons why the lights might be flickering.
Egon Spengler’s Floor Puzzle
Simple safes are so boring. Instead, Egon hid his greatest invention under the floorboards and barred it with a puzzle that Phoebe is seen carefully solving in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer. This may have been Spengler’s way of keeping the ghost trap safe for whenever he needed it, but he could also have hidden it below the floorboards because it contains a particularly troublesome ghost.
Ghostbusters On YouTube
Phoebe and Trevor Spengler aren’t initially aware of their family legacy or what their grandfather did for a living, and as children of the 21st century they naturally turn to the internet for answers. There, they find the original Ghostbusters commercial that has since been uploaded to YouTube. Besides the nostalgia factor, this also ensures that each member of the original team makes an appearance in Ghostbusters: Afterlife – even Egon, who was played by the late Harold Ramis.
The P.K.E. Meter
Egon Spengler was a brilliant scientist and a professor at Columbia University, and in the 1984 movie he is responsible for building almost all of the now-iconic ghostbusting equipment used by the team. The gadget most strongly associated with Spengler is the P.K.E. (Psycho-Kinetic Energy) Meter, or Aurascope, which was used by the Ghostbusters to detect the presence of the supernatural. The P.K.E. Meter returns in the new trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with the Spengler kids discovering the original device among their grandfather’s collection of ghostbusting tech.
Mysterious Earthquakes
Paul Rudd’s character, Mr. Grooberson, offers a big clue as to why Egon Spengler might buy a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Speaking to Phoebe in the new Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer, Mr. Grooberson explains that the town is experiencing mysterious earthquakes despite being nowhere near any fault lines. Grooberson is a seismologist who came to Summerville to investigate the earthquakes, and has a day job as a summer school teacher in order to pay the bills. This is how he connects with the Spengler family, as the scientifically-minded Phoebe is the only kid in his class who is genuinely interested in the earthquakes. Egon likely came to Summerville for the same reason that Mr. Grooberson did – guessing that the earthquakes had some kind of supernatural source.
The Return of Gozer
Gozer the Destructor is back in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Originally played by Yugoslavian actress Slavitza Jovan when Gozer appeared in a metallic, silvery female form, Gozer is a powerful deity that is thousands of years old, and was once worshipped as a god by the Sumerians. In 1984’s Ghostbusters, Gozer was summoned by a modern-day cult with the intention of bringing about an apocalypse to cleanse the earth of humanity. Ghostbusters: Afterlife‘s trailer has a brief shot of a figure crawling out of a hellish portal that could well show how Gozer returns to our world.
What Lies Beneath Summerville?
The Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer offers up an explanation for the strange earthquakes when it shows Trevor and a group of other kids peering down into a mine shaft that has a sinister reddish-orange glow at the bottom of it, before something that looks like the spectral Terror Dog form comes bursting out of it. It’s possible that Summerville is home to another pocket of the Cult of Gozer, who have invited the deity to emerge from beneath their town. Having a portal to a hellish parallel dimension hidden underground could certainly cause some unusual seismic activity, and later in the trailer the kids discover something at the bottom of the mine shaft that looks an awful lot like an altar to Gozer.
Gozer, the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster
A shot of the kids descending the mine shaft in the elevator reveals that at the bottom is a temple to Gozer, with a large statue of the deity’s female form from the original Ghostbusters movie that’s flanked by statues of Zuul and Vinz Clortho. Surrounding the Gozer statue is a writhing mass of mortals who are seemingly worshipping the fearsome god – or begging for mercy. And in front of the statues is a deep well containing a gateway between Gozer’s dimension and our own.
The Dry Ice Of Doom
Aside from her flat top and her faithful canine sidekicks, a major element of Gozer’s gravitas in the 1984 Ghostbusters movie was their tendency to be surrounded by masses of roiling dry ice. One shot from the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer shows dry ice pouring in through a doorway, indicating the presence of a portal to Gozer’s dimension. In the original movie, Zuul and Vinz Clortho precede Gozer’s arrival by taking possession of two unfortunate human hosts, Dana and Louis. Given one of the Terror Dogs’ pursuit of Mr. Glooberson elsewhere in the trailer, the seismologist may end up being a target for possession in Afterlife.
The Masochistic Mini Stay-Pufts
The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is one of the iconic supernatural manifestations from the original Ghostbusters movie. The skyscraper-sized monster was created when Gozer the Gozerian told the Ghostbusters to choose a new form for “the Destructor.” Three of the Ghostbusters carefully kept their minds blank, but Ray made the mistake of trying to picture something non-threatening, and chose the Stay-Puft mascot. Despite the giant Mr. Stay-Puft’s messy end, Gozer may have enjoyed spending time in that form and decided to manifest through these miniature versions of it.
The Mini Stay-Pufts that appear in Ghostbusters: Afterlife might look a lot less scary than the kaiju-sized Mr. Stay-Puft, but in the trailer they demonstrate one of their key advantages: they don’t feel pain. Jason Reitman describes the Mini Stay-Pufts as “just like curious 5 year-olds who wanted to break everything,” and “everything” includes each other. One Mini Stay-Puft is shown apparently having a great time as their friends use a kitchen blow-torch to turn them into a s’more.
The Terror Dog
Accompanying Gozer in Ghostbusters 1984 were the demigods Zuul (the Gatekeeper) and Vinz Clortho (the Keymaster), who manifested in the form of two terrifying hellhounds known as Terror Dogs. Ghostbusters: Afterlife‘s trailer shows an updated version of the Terror Dog in both a spectral and a corporeal form. The former is seen attacking Phoebe as she hides out on a school bus, and the latter bursts through the doors of a Walmart in pursuit of Mr. Grooberson. Though many of the effects in Ghostbusters: Afterlife are entirely practical, the new Terror Dogs were created using a combination of puppetry and CGI.
Muncher On The Run
Ghostbusters: Afterlife will feature a selection of new ghosts, one of whom appears to be a distant relation of Slimer from the 1984 movie. Muncher, a bulbous blue spook with many wrinkles and folds, bears a striking resemblance to Slimer but has the added bonus of having six limbs, making him resemble a ghostly tardigrade. In the new trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Muncher is seen fleeing from the new generation of Ghostbusters as they chase him down in the iconic Ecto-1, which has had a few upgrades since it was last seen.
Introducing The R.T.V.
Along with the familiar P.K.E. Meter, a brand new ghost-catching gadget appears in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer when Phoebe and Trevor are chasing down Muncher in the Ecto-1. The R.T.V. (Remote Trap Vehicle) is exactly what it sounds like: a remote-controlled ghost trap on wheels that can be used to chase down ghosts while driving in the Ecto-1. Director Jason Reitman wanted to make the ghost-catching process more active and mobile in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, to shake things up from the traditional image of Ghostbusters standing in a row with their proton packs to catch a spook. The R.T.V. appears to be made up of the original ghost trap and some new-looking wheels, so this particular invention may be the work of Spengler’s grandkids. Trevor has an aptitude for engineering (demonstrated by him fixing up the Ecto-1), while Phoebe has inherited her grandfather’s love of science.
A Skeletal Callback
After ghosts were unleashed on New York City in the original Ghostbusters movie, there was an amusing shot of a businessman climbing into the back of a taxi without realizing that his driver was actually a skeletal zombie-looking ghost. There’s a callback to this in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer when the skeletal ghost of a miner is seen being served coffee in a diner. According to Jason Reitman, this skeletal ghost was an entirely practical effect achieved through puppetry, and was intended as a tribute to the skeletal taxi driver from the 1984 film.
Familiar Ghostly Effects
The pink ghostly streaks that emerge from the portal and go flying all over town don’t just look like the effects from the 1984 Ghostbusters movie – they are the same effects. Jason Reitman scanned the original VFX in order to recreate it for the sequel, in order to give Ghostbusters: Afterlife an authentically retro feel and maintain the same “look” for its supernatural goings-on.
Shandorian Conspiracy Theories
The YouTube age has apparently created a small cottage industry surrounding the strange things in the neighborhood that the New York Ghostbusters were called in to deal with. In the “Related Videos” section for the Ghostbusters ad (alongside “Proton Acceleration With Megan Amram” and “Where are the Ghostbusters now???”) is a video titled “10 signs the government is run by Shandorians.” While this might sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, the Cult of Gozer in the original movie (which was led by Ivo Shandor) was indeed made up of followers who were powerful and wealthy men, drawn in by promises of even more power and wealth.
Ray’s Occult Books
The 1989 sequel Ghostbusters II revealed that, rather than being thanked for saving the city from Gozer and preventing an apocalypse, the Ghostbusters were instead sued for property damage and shut down with a judicial restraining order. The movie picks up five years later, with Ray now making a living as the owner and proprietor of Ray’s Occult Books. The end of the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer shows that Ray’s Occult Books is still being run by Ray Stantz, though he answers the phone with a rather grumpy greeting of, “We’re closed.”
Ray’s New Tattoo
The Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer ends by teasing the return of Raymond Stantz, who is still working at Ray’s Occult Books. Though his face isn’t shown, the shot of Ray reveals something new: a tattoo on his arm. Though it’s difficult to read in the shot, Jason Reitman has revealed that the tattoo is of the Bible passage from the Book of Relevation that was discussed by Ray and Winston in the original movie. “Revelation 6:12” can just about be made out on the top half of the tattoo, and the words below must be an excerpt from the full passage, which reads:
“And I looked, as he opened the Sixth Seal and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth and the moon became as blood. And the seas boiled and skies fell.”
The mention of an earthquake is certainly intriguing, given the seismological oddities occurring in Summerville. Coupled with Phoebe’s mention of a possible apocalypse, it appears that Gozer intends to make this Oklahoma town ground zero for their next attempt at destroying the world.
Key Release Dates
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Release Date:2021-11-19
