io9's seen Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and our own movie maven Germain Lussier called it “great until it’s derailed by gratuitous fan service” in his spoiler-free review. But if you’d like to know exactly what he was talking about, Sony Pictures has very helpfully released a final trailer for the film which makes it abundantly clear what the fan service is.
Seriously, the trailer deserves a spoiler bar merely on principle.
The most obvious reveal (glimpsed in an earlier trailer) is the two Terror Dogs from the first Ghostbusters movie. Fans of the original 1984 film will recognize them as the demons who possessed Dana Barrett (played by Sigourney Weaver) and Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) and transformed them into Zuul the Gatekeeper and Vinz Clortho the Keymaster, respectively, the two heralds of the ancient Sumerian god of destruction Gozer (Slavitza Jovan). You shouldn’t need the arrival of the original three surviving Ghostbusters there at the end (which Sony very annoyingly plays coy by not showing their faces, as if we somehow wouldn’t know who they are) to figure out what the film’s climax is going to be. But if you do, don’t worry because this trailer also spoils this at the 0:43 mark by revealing a rather familiar sleeve and hairdo emerging from the depths.
I’m honestly less upset at the spoilers than I am by discovering the movie is just going to replicate the end of the original Ghostbusters rather than do anything new—yet another film made for nostalgic 40-somethings. To be fair, many people have enjoyed Afterlife’s fixation on nostalgia over creativity, but I hope any kids who end up watching the movie end up being able to understand it, let alone enjoy it.
Speaking of nostalgia, Ghostbusters: Afterlife stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and Sigourney Weaver, all reprising their roles from the first two films, and if Weaver turns into a Terror Dog again and then Rick Moranis shows up as Tully to become the other one I’ll plotz. The new stars include Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, and more. Afterlife premieres in theaters on November 19.
Also, not as a complaint, but as a side note: Who would read the Book of Revelation with less gravitas than Dan Aykroyd? Please discuss.
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