Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire looks like it’ll be a suitably fun-filled Ghostbusters adventure with a lot of laughs, but it’ll struggle to top Afterlife’s most emotional scene. Following on from its predecessor, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire will see the Spengler family returning to New York City to help the original Ghostbusters in their quest to fend off another spectral invasion. This time, the ghosts have frozen the city during one of its signature scorching summers, threatening the world with a second Ice Age.
While the trailers for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire tease plenty of laugh-out-loud gags, thrilling action sequences, and spooky special effects, it might fall short in the area that made Ghostbusters: Afterlife so great. With Juno director Jason Reitman at the helm, Afterlife was a much more emotional experience than the other Ghostbusters movies, and it set a high bar for the franchise’s human drama going forward. The true test of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’s success is whether it can top Afterlife’s greatest scene.
Egon’s Ghost Arriving To Help Phoebe Was Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s Greatest Moment
In the final battle of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, when Phoebe Spengler is struggling to defeat Gozer the Gozerian alone, the ghost of her grandfather Egon appears and helps her handle the proton pack. After Gozer is defeated, Egon has a touching reunion with his fellow Ghostbusters, in which they apologize for doubting him, and he hugs his estranged daughter Callie. This is by far the most emotionally engaging and tearjerking moment in the entire Ghostbusters franchise, a franchise that previously never worried too much about the audience’s emotions.
The appearance of Egon’s ghost in Afterlife was both a heartfelt way to honor Harold Ramis’ legacy and a perfect emotional conclusion to the movie’s story. Callie spent the movie lamenting her complicated relationship with her late father, while Phoebe spent the movie looking up to the grandfather she never met, and Egon’s ghost’s appearance resolved both of those arcs beautifully. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire will surely have a lot of funny gags and exciting action scenes, but it’ll struggle to top the surprise factor and emotional punch of Afterlife’s Egon scene.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Risks Ruining What Made Afterlife So Successful
What made Ghostbusters: Afterlife such a success was its focus on the characters and their relationships and their emotional arcs. Based on its action-packed, exposition-filled trailers, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire seems to be more interested in lore and set-pieces than characters and emotions, which is what set Afterlife apart. It’s all about setting up a new big bad after the defeat of Gozer, but this isn’t Marvel. Ghostbusters fans are more concerned with character dynamics than who the big bad is.
