"Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is a love letter to the original 1984 movie and its loyal fans. It has Easter eggs to prove it.
This article contains Ghostbusters: Afterlife Spoilers.
The dream of getting Ghostbusters 3 was shattered a long time ago. There were false starts and rumors throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and the sequel is about to be realized. However, by the tragic death of Harold Ramis in 2014, it seemed impossible to see the possibility of four original Ghostbusters standing side by side.
This is one of the reasons why Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters: The Afterlife is so surprising. Long-time fans of the first two films are very eager to close and possibly open the back door to the larger Ghostbusters movie world. This film comes from a talented filmmaker who is determined to pay tribute to his father's most beloved work. It also tried to serve the movie’s most ardent fans.
Therefore, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" is full of homage to the original movie, Easter eggs, reference materials, and various other nods. There are demon dogs, ghost traps, and even a very familiar flat hair type. So needless to say, here is a guide that tries to catch all the free roaming steam.
-The first Easter egg we saw didn't feel like a callback to Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters. On the contrary, it seems to be a tribute to another early modern blockbuster, which apparently had a major impact on Jason Reitman. When we witnessed the supernatural activity taking place on a mountain in the heart of Oklahoma, the cluster of ghost clouds looked a lot like Steven Spielberg’s third type of intimate contact (1977) by UFOs The alien space created above the Devil’s Tower. This may be an early suggestion that Jason will take these materials in different directions.
-When we saw a man who was supposed to be Egon Spengler arrive at his lonely farm and raise a rusty ghost trap, we still quickly got a series of ghostbusters nods in the opening prologue. However, when his larger plan to capture the impending demon entity failed, he returned to the house and took out his old PKE meter for a loving extreme close-up. Apart from accurately predicting when his fate will arrive, it is not clear why he did this...
-When Zuul's ghost form killed Egon, smoke invaded under the door and the demon came out of the armrest of the chair. This reproduces the scene where Dana Barrett was attacked and possessed by the same demon entity in 1984. Although the CG Zuul face emerging from the smoke is a new feeling.
-It was also revealed in the opening remarks that when Zuul does not own a human, it will fly around as one of the red and pink spectral points. This is the first time that the ghost containment device was established in the Ghostbusters after the crash of the ghost containment device at the fire station.
-When our nuclear families Callie (Carrie Coon), Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) inherited their inheritance on the ruined land of Egon, they saw Egon scare the locals away by spraying ominous passages from the Bible. Record 6:12: "When the sixth seal was unveiled, I saw the earth quake; the sun turned black like sackcloth; the moon turned into blood." This quoted one of the creepy moments in the original movie, in which Ray· Stanz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zedmore (Ernie Hudson) argued over whether Christianity is a myth and whether the biblical prophecy of the resurrection of the dead from the grave is in line with their special work.
-In the "Murder House", Phoebe and Trevor seem to ignore the stack of books seven or eight feet high in the background. This evokes evidence of the first haunting people found in the New York Public Library in 1984, even though Bill Murray rolled his eyes and sneered, "You are right, no one would stack books like this. "
-When three young Spengler was forced to hide under the kitchen table due to the earthquake, the footage looked deliberately reminiscent of Ray, Egon (Ramis) and Peter Winkman (Murray) in court The scene hides under the table to avoid ghosts in 1989 Ghostbusters II.
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-It goes without saying, but Annie Potts is a popular presence in everything she does, including her cameo here, where she replayed the role of Jenny Melnitz. Apparently, she and Egon recovered their flirtation from the first film sometime in the 90s or 2000s, because she is no longer with Louis of Rick Moranis, which implies that she and Egon Lived in this house for a long time.
-This may be trivial, but introducing Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) as a bad teacher by letting him show off his middle school curriculum Cujo (1983) seems to be a big deal to Mr. Grooberson (like some other in the original movie) The role is the same) approved) will be attacked by a terrible dog. Cujo also starred in Dee Wallace, who played the role of mother in ET (1982). This is another groundbreaking Spielberg blockbuster of the same era as Ghostbusters. This is about a family without a father participating in otherworldly adventures...
-When the podcast (Logan Kim) took Phoebe for a walk around their so-called boring town, the children passed the logo of a discontinued Shandor Mining Company. This is the first clue that the cult responsible for the attack on Gozer in the 1984 movie is also related to the town. In fact, a man named Ivo Shandor is the leader of the cult who designed the evil building in Central Park West.
-Phoebe’s Art Deco hieroglyphs on the mountain shown in the Podcast reproduce the layout of the statue on the top of the Dana Barrett apartment building in the first movie in a two-dimensional picture.
-After Egon's invisible ghost took Phoebe into his ghost trap, she took him to the school to show the Podcast and (unintentionally) Mr. Grooberson. He used this opportunity to tell them about the forgotten history of the New York Ghostbusters in the 1980s. The afterlife then interestingly inserted many unused and/or deleted extras and even footage of Aykroyd and the company as if they were news reports at the time.
-Grooberson showed the movie Child's Play (1988) to the class that day.
-When the ghost of Egon brought Phoebe to his secret laboratory, she discovered that the entrance had to be slid down from a pole, just like the fire station in the original movie.
-The hidden laboratory includes Spengler's original jumpsuit and some spare parts. There is also a mysterious red laboratory equipment in his laboratory. At the beginning of the original movie, we saw that the order of the dean of Columbia University was cancelled.
-In the background of the same scene, you can see several old TVs from the 1980s, they have the same inexplicable green geometric figures and obsession with expanding brain activity, which decorated Egon in the 1984 movie Laboratory.
-Phoebe discovered how to call the living Ghostbusters by watching the greasy salesman advertisement in the first movie. This is actually a good contact. It's so common that a tacky TV commercial like the past is saved as a bit of kitsch on YouTube 40 years later.
-When Phoebe and Podcast tried Proton Packs for the first time, she said "Turn on my power", just like Ray did to Peter during their first ghost hunt.
-In the same scene, the podcaster wears Ray's ghost goggles. To this day, their purpose has never really been explained, but I can attest that, as a kid in the 90s, I thought they were the coolest damn thing in the world and always wanted a pair. Looks great, podcast.
-The entire existence of Ecto-1 is like the "Easter Egg" in the original movie. But what is really exciting is that when the main child is pulled over by the police, they will open the glove box to find the registration information of the car. Instead, they found Egon's last Twinkie. This is one of the better nods, a tribute to Egon’s infamous "Twinkie theory" about the end of the world.
-At the same time, when the local sheriff (Bokeem Woodbine) quoted Ray Parker Jr.'s song and asked: "Who are you going to call?"
-In the movie's most public tribute to Ghostbusters II, Phoebe used one of her phones to dial the number in the '84 ad on YouTube. In 2021, most importantly, Stantz's suspicious "Ray's Occult Books" store is from the sequel. More than 30 years later, he is still trapped in the same bookstore, which looks even more tired on the other side of the Internet revolution. He is even using the same cell phone. For poor Ray, it was appropriate, but frustrating.
-In the scene, Lei mentioned two original movies when he burst into laughter, "It's banging, eh? I've been there once myself."
-Lei's arm is also tattooed with "Revelation 6:12". Obviously, in the nearly 40 years since the first movie was released, he has become a believer.
-I don't know if this is considered a tribute, but all the jokes of Pete Venkman in Ghostbusters who can successfully re-enter academia by becoming an advertising professor is a bit delicious.
-Ray’s nostalgia for the "Reagan Age" is a bit interesting, because the original film was criticized (and sometimes even criticized by actors) for looking back on the fantasy of the 80s. In this fantasy, smug American scholars began to enter the private sector despite intrusions Sexual EPA did its best, but it can still get rich immediately.
-The extreme close-up of the collapse of the stonework and the glowing red Zul's eyes is an obvious redo of the shot of Zul escaping from the statue in the first movie.
-Paul Rudd’s character ending an awkward date night by buying a pint of Baskin Robbins is a double whammy for product placement, by offering advertisements in 31 flavors (possibly expensive), and recalling Rudd’s previous Ant- in Marvel The act of shamelessly inserting Baskin Robbins in Man (2015), where he introduced his former superhero role at Baskin Robbins. He was then fired, but the script kept naming the company "jokes" throughout the rest of the MCU movie. But the ice cream franchise only gets a shout out here.
-Mr. Grooberson, played by Rudd, regrettably unable to enjoy his ice cream, because he was quickly troubled by the miniature puft cotton candy people who looked like giant monsters in the 1984 movie, but now they have real cotton The sugar is so big. This is shameless fan service, but it is undeniably one of the more interesting clips in the movie. You will love this little guy, even if he melts so much, he still walks on the grill, you may even wonder why Stay Puft kept the same mascot after it hit Columbus Circle.
-Grooberson's discovery that Zuul eats dog food is an endorsement of Louis's initial belief that someone brought a dog to his party in the first movie. Zuul deflated Gary’s tires before eating Gary. It was an embarrassing attempt, recalling how the customers of the green watch Rick Moranis tavern were swallowed by a demon dog and returned to their meals at a loss. of.
-Trevor laughed at Podcast and Phoebe and said "I did some digging." It felt like a general adjustment to the outdated lines in many old movies (including Ghostbusters), because now everyone can do similar things on Google Extensive "digging".
-When our core Scooby Gang returned to Shandor Mining and entered the abandoned interior, they found an Art Deco style statue that looked very familiar. Why are you there, Stone Gozer.
-In the mine, they also found Ivo Shandor's tomb-although he does not appear to be dead yet, does he? At first, I thought it was a mistake because his grave said that he died in 1947. The first movie tells us that it was not until after the First World War that he began to believe that humans were too sick to survive. But technically, he could have started his secret society in the early 1920s and still lived to 47 years. In any case, it makes him feel a little perfunctory here, because this movie has no effect on his resurrected corpse (or JK Simmons playing him).
-On the wall, the children found that various dates related to catastrophic disasters in history were engraved on the stone, including the Tunguska explosion in 1908. It is believed that in that decisive year, a meteor explosion over the Siberian plains caused 830 square miles and 80 million square miles of trees and an unknown number of people—to be wiped out. Ray (inaccurately) also mentioned that it was a 1909 inter-dimensional event in the 1984 movie.
-When the children returned home and found their mother sitting in her chair, she was breathing heavily as when Dana was possessed. She also relayed this famous line in a devilish voice, "There is no mother, only Zul."
-After the demon mother escaped, the children came up with a game plan and put on the flying suits of Ghostbusters. In this scene, Podcast found and wore the same stupid brainwave device decorated by the possessed Louis for 84 years.
-The demon mother put on a golden dress to establish a relationship with the key master (the demon Grobson), echoing the red number worn by the demon Dana.
-After becoming weird, the demon mother and the demon Grobson arrive at a temple under the mine, which looks exactly like the temple on top of Dana Barrett's building in the first movie. They eventually became Zuul dogs like Dana and Louis. Their combination brought Gozer back to the flesh, and the same evil pink entity we once saw in New York City now flies over the prairie.
-In the montage of haunted towns, the only public repetition I caught was the ghosts of rotting corpses that local residents showed up in restaurants. At first I thought it was the creepy taxi driver in the 1984 movie, but the beard on the handlebars indicated that he was a local from a century ago.
-The climax really begins when a mentally confused Gozer comes out of the cornfield to attack the main character who has retreated to Dirt Farm. The emergence of Gozel from the crops makes it feel like a subtle nod to another touchstone of ghost fathers and their adult children in the 1980s, Dreamland (1989).
-Since all the hopes of Phoebe and Scooby Doo seem to be the last, and their plan to use Grandpa's problematic giant ghost trap seems to have disappeared, when we heard the words "Hey Flattop!" The ironic sun shines through our eyes. It was an obvious blink, and Xiang Lei blinked and said: "Aim for the flat top!" In '84.
-At the same time, Ray repeated his confrontation with Gozer 40 years ago. He called her "Gozer Gozer" and asked her to "leave this world immediately." Gozer remembered these elders clearly, and now asked with a sneer whether Ray was a god. Somehow, even if he had four years to think about his mistakes, Ray still hesitated to give the correct answer until Winston reminded him of what he said last time: "When someone asks if you are a god, you say yes! "He is the same, although not particularly convincing.
-OG Ghostbusters tried to defeat Gozer by crossing their weapon stream in the same way as last time. But this time the strange little Chekov's proton bag technique didn't work. Maybe it's because they aimed directly at Gozer instead of her temple/gateway to another dimension?
-This may be the ultimate Easter egg in any movie-and the taste is problematic-Harold Ramis's Egon Spengler's digital entertainment seems to have helped his granddaughter and three old partners win the day. Even Peter's dry but low-key "I thought you might show up" seemed to be an acknowledgment of the distance between Bill Murray and Ramis, which was reconciled before Ramis died.
-The podcast is covered with a lot of marshmallow goo in Ecto-1, which is a callback to all Sans Murray's views at the end of the first movie.
-When the ending subtitles begin, Ghostbusters: Afterlife uses the original title card of the 1984 movie.
-The feature of the first post-subtitled scene is that Sigourney Weaver returns as a guest star in Dana Barrett. Still like her character's taste for Flannel in Ghostbusters II, she seems to be happily married to Peter, but this sounds unlikely.
-Peter and Dana are also playing with Pete's old shock equipment and ESP test card. Peter even admitted that he used it only to shock the boys and to leave the totally unspirited girl alone so that he could date his students. Yes, Dana, he really deserves to be shocked again.
-The final ending scene first reminds the audience (or shows to those who have never watched the DVD special) that there is a deleted scene in Jenny's original movie, giving Egan a commemorative medal for the 1964 Queens World Fair. We cut till now, she still holds the other one she owns.
-Jenny took the coin to see Winston, Winston did a good job for herself. Jenny asked him to admit that he had spent money to keep the lights in Ray's bookstore on all these years. But he admits that this is because although he became a rich man in the 90s, he has never enjoyed life like he did when he was in Ghostbusters.
-Winston relayed what he said when they (wrongly) believed that they defeated Gozer in 1984. "I have the tools and talents."
-We also saw that Winston seemed to really dream of rejoining the Ghostbusters when he visited the old abandoned fire station in the original movie. Downstairs, the ghost containment unit seems to be there all the time. Its flashing lights also herald new adventures (maybe there are familiar dead faces?) If there is another movie, I bet Slimer is on the farm there.
David Crow is the film editor for Den of Geek. For a long time, he has been proud of his geek qualifications. Growing up in movie classics, from...
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