"Ghostbusters": 11 Things the Sequel Needs to Do to Succeed

[Ohnooze]

I really think you can honor the past, present, future, all genders and races buy not focusing on gender and race so much.

Yea I know, I'm a huge bigot. I personally don't care what color or gender the ghost busters are and I'm not sure why it has to be pointed out at all.

But whatever....

[PhantomStranger]

I think there is a good Ghostbusters film out there to be made in a decade when it happens. I always look at Force Awakens as a way you can honor the past and do the future. So that is my stance. They can have a way to do it , write great female lead characters with males next to them and not fall into cliche laden crap. So it can be done.

Just so long as the male characters are always "in their place" (half-step back and eyes downcast) right?

How about we just try writing great characters period?

[numberthirty]

I really think you can honor the past and have strong female characters in a variety of ways. I'd also want Annie Potts be Egon's widow in the next film. That she and him did become a couple and have a couple kids. Its what I'd do.


- Egon's daughter is more a rebel type. She's a genius but his death and always dedicated to Ghostbusters Inc. (a corporation Egon ran with the others) made him busy. Egon's son isn't as smart but he works for Ghostbusters Inc. He wanted to follow in his foot steps.


- A former group of disgruntled Ghostbusters that Ray and Winston had to fire due to being reckless form their own competing business. But with little ethics. They soon end up nearly launching New York into a nightmare dimension when they face a powerful ghost.


- Peter's son (James Franco) and Ray's son (Seth Rogen) are best buddies and not the smartest and need to get their act together. A theme in this is these 2 are funny clownish guys who try and pick up women and get caught smoking pot by Ray have to step up.


- I'd have Winton's daughter emerge and she's a genius and actually builds the new Ghostbusters gear. New traps , new packs and more.


- Basically there would be 5 of the new Ghostbusters . When you caught the children and them all coming together to take on the new threat and free New York.

You really need to read the IDW series my friend.

FYI...

http://www.maxlandiswrites.com/ghostbusters-iii/

Seeing as it appears the new Ghostbusters franchise will be moving away from the previous films, and be a complete reboot, I thought it would be fun to release an idea I’d been kicking around for a third movie, turning the first two into a trilogy. Following my own beliefs about trilogies, it is a completion of the cycle and themes started in the first film, updated for modern film standards. As such, it features a heightening of the first film’s threat, as well as multiple action sequences, and deeper emotional through-lines for the characters.

It’s very sparse, but still very long. If you’re wondering where “all the jokes are” or whatever, just trust that if I actually wrote it, I’d do my best to make this movie very, very funny.

So…

We start in the 1920s, where we witness cult leader Ivo Shandor proclaim the prophecy of the two comings of Gozer, one a failure, and the second thirty years later, to destroy the world. One of his followers speaks out, and is killed for his insubordination…becoming the spirit who is eventually known to us as Slimer.

Slam to 2016.

Ghostbusters was a national franchise, privately owned and government subsidized. But the lack of extradimensional invaders meant that there was ultimately a very limited amount of ghosts to bust, and the very optimistic national expansion slowly depleted the Buster’s funds (“Did the Atlanta chapter really need a helicopter?”). The Ghostbusters remain iconic, but despite the merchandise, cartoon show, etc, the company itself is bankrupt, on the verge of collapse.

Only two houses remain open; there hasn’t been a legitimate call in more than ten years. The original Busters are for the most part long gone; Venkman took the money and disappeared into seclusion, Winston Zeddemore quit the busters in 1991 and has since become a Richard Branson style billionaire, and Egon Spengler accidentally ascended to a higher plane of existence, leaving only the increasingly delusional Ray Stantz, who has run the company into the ground.

The New York Team is now comprised of Ted Becker, an earnest sweetheart living a dream born as he watched the Busters defeat Gozer as a little boy in 1985, Veronica Spengler, Egon’s Very Egon-Like daughter who feels in turns respectful and resentful of the hole left in her world, Brian Quaid, a fast talking breezily confident self-proclaimed psychic with a chip on his shoulder, and Irwin Oberstein, a gearhead MIT kick-out metalhead who sees the Ghostbusters as the ultimate way to explore his punk rock ideas about quantum physics.

Things are bad for the team; along with financial pressure and a sense of aimless ennui, they’re being protested and harassed by a group called Free Spirits, a new age movement that believes the Ghostbusters keeping their catches indefinitely trapped constitutes a human rights violation.

When Winston Zeddemore approaches Becker about convincing Ray to let him buy the Ghostbusters to repurpose the technology, Becker turns him down. Becker is committed to the cause, and believes that one day the world will need them again, even as his personal life has begun to fall apart, with a disapproving fiance and a disappointed father. They thought he was going to be a scientist. Instead, he’s a “curiosity,” relegated to repeatedly giving people tours of the Ghostbuster’s firehouse.

He’s not the only one of the New York Busters with a problem; Oberstein the gearhead is being repeatedly approached by douchey scouts from huge tech companies trying to poach him. Oberstein is torn; he doesn’t want to leave the Ghostbusters, but the money they’re offering is too good. He approaches Becker about wanting to amp up the proton packs; “Really take us to Mount Olympus,” but a frustrated Becker turns him down, and Oberstein considers quitting. It would be giving up on a dream…but maybe the metalhead has to grow up? He’s not sure, and it’s bumming him out.

But over in Los Angeles, trouble is brewing. The LA chapter of three is essentially the shiny “I Fucking Love Science” durrh we-are-cool-geeks NERD PRIDE reboot of the Ghostbusters, and has been eeking out a profit through public appearances and huge parties. These are the bullshit lookatmelookatme scientists, who, while not TERRIBLE people, definitely suck enough to earn an eye-roll.

The LA team is approached by a man named John Reiser, from the United States Government’s top-secret Moebius Initiative. The initiative has a simple goal, complexly stated: the capture, reformatting, indoctrination and assetizing of ectoplasmic lifeforms; long story short these crazy fuckers want to WEAPONIZE ghosts. They want to buy out the Busters and use their tech for this sinister purpose. LA is on board for this (they need the money), but Reiser demands a government controlled test run of the technology, which has been out of use for a while.

Big problem: no ghosts. The LA team hasn’t caught a spook in their entire time as Ghostbusters. The LA busters head to New York to try to convince the NYC chapter to loan them an old ghost from the containment unit.

As financial and emotional pressures increase on the busters in New York, things are getting tense, especially between the team and their loopy leader, Ray Stantz, who’s clearly out of touch and desperate for the good old days. Ray just doesn’t have the answers they need; he misses the other Ghostbusters desperately, and longs for the moment when he, a lifelong outcast, felt loved and useful. Covered in Marshmallow. A hero.

A frontman for The Free Spirits, a goodnatured, surprisingly intelligent and open minded guy named Dante, befriends Veronica Spengler, and the two have an instant chemistry, which is revealed to be at least partially fuelded by a Free Spirits plan to infiltrate the firehouse and free the ghosts. Eco-terrorism-cum-ecto-terrorism.

It’s at this point that we learn that Spengler, every night, listens to white noise static, hoping from communication from her father Egon, from the afterlife…But so far, she’s only heard one word: her name, Veronica. And it turns out that was just part of a radio commercial for a mattress company. She’s deeper and sadder than we’d imagined, and her resentment against her absentee father hides a deep, unfulfilled longing. There’s a reason she’s a ghostbuster, after all: She’s been chasing Egon’s “ghost” her whole life, so to speak.

She confides in Dante: “I don’t know what’s worse; the idea that he’s not there…Or the idea that he’s there, but he doesn’t care.”

They end on a kiss, Spengler’s first in a while. Dante’s conflicted; Veronica Spengler doesn’t seem like the corporate scum his movement says to hate.

Meanwhile, Quaid has a rare, possibly prophetic dream; Slimer, warning him about a door that’s opening, beyond which is only a massive, bloodshot eye, and seven writhing snakes.

Quaid, usually the joker, awkwardly attempts to tell the rest of the team about his dream; they blow him off, not believing he’s a psychic, and further discussion is halted when the LA chapter arrives, asking to “borrow a ghost.”

With Dante The Handsome Hippie’s rhetoric fresh in her head, Spengler spearheads a rebuttal, and the friendly conversation between the two last Ghostbuster teams on Earth nearly degenerates into an all out brawl…when they’re interrupted by a call. On the red phone.

Janine answers. They can’t believe it. It’s a ghost.

The NYC team has been called to action for the first time ever, and hop in the Ecto-1, giddy to face this challenge. The LA team, however, takes an errant comment by Ray about the Park West Building as a clue, and leaves with a new plan.


And so on...

[trooper_thorn]

FYI...

http://www.maxlandiswrites.com/ghostbusters-iii/

I'd watch the hell out of that.

[BeastieRunner]

FYI...

http://www.maxlandiswrites.com/ghostbusters-iii/

I read his "pitch" a long time ago and was not impressed.

I'd rather see JMS or Erik Burnham get a swing at a script since they can actually write good Ghostbusters stories.

[trooper_thorn]

I read his "pitch" a long time ago and was not impressed.

I'd rather see JMS or Erik Burnham get a swing at a script since they can actually write good Ghostbusters stories.

I liked it, but there is plenty of room for editing (as is usually the case).

Definitely lose the whole love interest angle.

[simbob4000]

I read his "pitch" a long time ago and was not impressed.

I'd rather see JMS or Erik Burnham get a swing at a script since they can actually write good Ghostbusters stories.

J. Michael Straczynski? Why would anyone want him to write a Ghostbusters movie, or just more movies in general?

[PhantomStranger]

J. Michael Straczynski? Why would anyone want him to write a Ghostbusters movie, or just more movies in general?

1) Because he's good.

2) Because he knows Ghostbusters.

[Deadxman]

J. Michael Straczynski? Why would anyone want him to write a Ghostbusters movie, or just more movies in general?

He wrote a lot of the first two seasons of the real ghostbustes, Before ABC decided to listen to a so called "Experts" and changed things.

[simbob4000]

1) Because he's good.

2) Because he knows Ghostbusters.

He ain't good. Ninja Assassins is just about a crime against humanity.

[Deadxman]

He ain't good. Ninja Assassins is just about a crime against humanity.

Again go watch the first two season og TRGB he was the story editor for the show and wrote the following

◾Slimer, Come Home
◾Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream
◾Citizen Ghost
◾When Halloween Was Forever
◾Take Two
◾Xmas Marks the Spot
◾Knock, Knock
◾Ragnarok and Roll
◾Chicken, He Clucked (personal Fav)
◾Slimer, Is That You?
◾Who're You Calling Two-Dimensional?
◾Doctor, Doctor
◾No One Comes to Lupusville
◾The Thing in Mrs. Faversham's Attic
◾They Call Me MISTER Slimer
◾The Grundel
◾The Halloween Door
◾The Ghostbusters Live! from Al Capone's Tomb! (Unaccredited)
◾Russian About
◾The Haunting of Heck House
◾Janine, You've Changed

[PhantomStranger]

He ain't good. Ninja Assassins is just about a crime against humanity.

Haven't seen it, so can't comment on it.

He wrote for Captain Power, TRGB, and Babylon 5, all of which were excellent.

[simbob4000]

Haven't seen it, so can't comment on it.

He wrote for Captain Power, TRGB, and Babylon 5, all of which were excellent.

No they weren't.

[PhantomStranger]

No they weren't.

Reality says otherwise. JMS is one of the most highly regarded SF creators of our generation.

[BeastieRunner]

J. Michael Straczynski? Why would anyone want him to write a Ghostbusters movie, or just more movies in general?

JMS is one of, if not the greatest, Ghostbusters writers of all time. There are legions of Ghost Heads that are superfans because of his takes on the boys in gray (or in this case, the boys in multi-color flight suits).

Did you not watch the cartoon growing up?