How soon we forget! This weekend’s “Ghostbusters” continues to be scrutinized for what it represents —ruining childhoods! Destroying a franchise! Hollywood cynicism!— rather than what it is (namely, standard industry operating procedure with respect to rebooting intellectual property, only *gasp* there are women in the lead roles!), and it seems fanboys have conveniently overlooked that “Ghostbusters II” was pretty much doing the same thing in 1989.
READ MORE: Review: Forget The Sexes: Gender Is The Least Of The New ‘Ghostbusters” Concerns
At the time, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman didn’t even want to make a sequel to “Ghostbusters,” but Columbia Pictures, encouraged by the success of the original and the animated series, put the screws to them, and so they acquiesced. The result? It wasn’t very good. Of course, it did well at the box office, but the movie itself didn’t make much sense, as this Honest Trailers points out. Why would New York City suddenly disbelieve the heroes who saved them just five years before about the existence of the paranormal? What happened to the effortlessness of the first movie? Anyway, it goes to show that even the creators of the franchise could muck it up as much as anyone else might have.
Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section.