Who Ya Gonna Call?
Hot on the heels of last year’s announcement of an all-female Ghostbusters reboot, Sony has recently announced that they will also be making an all-male Ghostbusters reboot. Don’t feel bad if your first reaction to this news was “Um…what?” Apparently Sony wants Ghostbusters to be a shared universe like Marvel. In fact, every major movie studio right now wants to exploit the Marvel method for fun and profit. Warner Bros. is cramming a whole DC Cinematic Universe into Batman V. Superman, Universal is trying again to reboot their classic monster franchises starting with last year’s Dracula Untold, Fox is setting their new Fantastic Four in the same world as the X-men and Disney is now making Star Wars into a shared universe.
It seems like Hollywood always does this, they find a good idea and run it into the ground. Soon after Star Wars came out all the studios put out space movies. Dawn of The Dead got a successful remake and suddenly every Horror franchise gets remade or rebooted. It makes sense from a business stand point, if something makes money keep doing it. However from a story telling standpoint it leaves a lot to be desired. And while it’s easy (if not always smart) to remake a movie or reboot a franchise, creating a Marvel style movie universe is a bit trickier.
For one thing, not every property can sustain a whole universe. Take Ghostbusters for example: both Ghostbusters films are character driven affairs. It’s watching Bill Murray’s antics as Peter Venkman that draws people in not the concept of a world where ghosts exist. Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd could have written Ghostbusters as Alien Hunters or Mutant Wranglers, as long they gave the same brilliant comedic performances it would have been just as successful. For Sony to build a shared universe on a concept that’s more about jokes than lore seems to be kind of a weak move.
Did We Learn Nothing From Amazing Spider-Man 2?
Another problem is stand-alone movies. It’s okay to put a couple of scenes worth of connective tissue into a movie to hint at a larger picture. Unfortunately if not done correctly the movie becomes nothing but a two-hour set up for another movie. A good example of how not to do it would be last year’s Amazing Spider-Man 2. Sony was so hot to set up a shared universe featuring the Sinister Six and Venom that they forgot to make ASM its own movie. Not that Sony is the only offender. Marvel’s Iron Man 2 felt like an excuse to bring Black Widow and Thor into the MCU and Batman V. Superman feels more and more like a prologue to Justice League. How do we know that these two Ghostbusters reboots won’t just be a means to set up a crossover between the two teams in a later movie?
A Marvel Shared Universe Makes More Sense Than A Ghostbuster One.
Marvel works as a shared universe because it was set up that way back in the 1960s. That’s fifty some odd years of Spiderman swinging by and waving at the Fantastic Four on his way to help Daredevil fight the Kingpin. And even then team-ups were a special occasion. The bulk of the Amazing Spider-Man’s original 700 issue run featured solo-stories with crossovers happening maybe once, or twice a year.
Now compare Marvel’s rich history of interconnected stories with Ghostbusters. It’s just not the same. To be honest, no one really cares what everyone else is doing in the Ghostbusters universe. The Ghostbusters themselves are the concept. Even something with an expansive mythology like Star Wars doesn’t need a shared universe for its films. Let the books, video games, and comics explore the other parts of the Star Wars universe, the movies are for the Skywalkers and immediate family and supporting characters only. If you start releasing one Star Wars movie a year you dilute the brand, you make each subsequent film less special. And that’s really the problem with all of these shared universes.
Marvel has its movies planned out through 2020, DC as well. Sony has already announced when their respective Ghostbusters movies will drop and when to expect a new Spider-Man. All of these studios are planning for the future, how best to promote synergy between their properties, what big tent pole flick will be the culmination of their various stand-alones. No one seems to be focusing on the now. These individual movies have to first be a success before sequels and crossovers are planned. Going back to Sony and the Amazing Spiderman 2 debacle, they had so many films and sequels planned out and they were all riding on the back of ASM2. Then, when Spider-Man collapsed under the weight of all those expectations, Sony was left with all of these plans and promises that were now nothing more than words on paper.
Ghostbusters Origins: Louis Tully
Ultimately, the new Ghostbusters films will live or die based on their stories, performances, and direction and not how well they build a shared universe; for all we know they may end up being amazing. But that’s only going to happen if Sony treats each one as a separate entity and stops worrying about how to build the Ghostbusters brand, and that’s a big if. What’s more likely to happen is we’ll get The Ghostbusters Meet The Other Ghostbusters in 2018…followed by with any luck, a stand-alone Louis Tully movie.
