Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 3 (Ghostbusters 2016)

Look out, girls, I think some of those ghosts complained about
the new Star Wars movies, too!

Oh yeah. Now we can really jam again. I thought, going into this marathon, that this would put me in a real tricky position of wanting to critique it but being afraid to. It's no secret that the well of critiquing this movie has been thoroughly poisoned by some real unsavory characters. Needlessly clinging to nostalgia for the first one? Raging misogyny? It's all there. I was really wary, going in, that I'd have to play in that well. It's not a nice place to be in! Thank goodness that I don't have to. I'd seen this once before, and I thought it was just fine. Watching it here and now, in sequence with the movies it's a reboot of? It might be my favorite one. To the nostalgia crowd that might be blasphemy, but like I said on Day 1... I like Ghostbusters. I didn't love it, either in my youth or in my adulthood. That does not make it a bad movie or one I dislike, but it makes it something that can be surpassed. For me, Ghostbusters 2016 surpassed it for me. Why? Because I had the most fun watching this one. Compared to the others, it's got a unique energy to it that appealed to me. I'm going to talk about that energy now, and some other neat stuff. We shouldn't be here long.


Wait. We need a better name for this. Okay. From now on, I'll just call the 2016 reboot film "Ghostbusters" and I'll call the original movie "Ghostbusters '84". Okay? Okay. Why did I have more "fun" watching Ghostbusters than I did Ghostbusters '84? Easy answer. I found Ghostbusters to be the "funniest" one. I know how that sounds, but hear me out. Ghostbusters, the series, is at its heart about putting a bunch of comedians into an action comedy involving ghosts and the catching of said ghosts, yeah? So, the tone of the comedy is dependent on which comedians you have in the starring roles. The first ensemble foursome's comedy stylings and tone lend themselves more to a witty deadpan style of humor. Those two movies are amusing, but for me it wasn't laugh out loud funny. (That could also be due to the fact I've seen them both multiple times each, but I digress.) Ghostbusters, on the other hand, had me laughing out loud at several moments. McCarthy, McKinnon, Jones, and Wiig have a completely different set of comedy stylings and tone with this movie, and it's one that I actually enjoyed more in the moment. I have to give props to Chris Hemsworth as well; he plays an adorable dumbass and his humor plays well with the other girls. Oh yeah, and almost everyone from the first movie gets a cameo in this one except for Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis, who were retired and dead respectively. They're simple little affairs, but the funniest to me is Bill Murray's because of the grim ghoulishness in which the new movie bothers to have him come back to cameo just so a ghost can throw him out of a window. It's an unexpected bit of dark comedy and it just gets you. So yeah. Let's just take it that my... interesting tastes made it so that I found this movie to be the most fun and/or funniest out of the others, and get to the real crunchy stuff: the villain!


Oh, Rowan. You're a wild one. Rowan's not some ancient deity or spooky ghost. He's actually a dark mirror to the Ghostbusters themselves. No, I can't keep away from the goddamned mirror imagery, but Rowan has dozens of goddamned mirrors in his ghost reactor room so the movie's handing me this shit! Rowan is nothing more than Ivo Shandor from Ghostbusters '84 with the same technical know-how as the Ghostbusters. Recall why Ivo Shandor wanted to summon Gozer; he thought society was too sick to survive and wanted to summon a god to bring about the apocalypse. Rowan's much more of a petty MRA type, which is almost darkly comic considering what happened when the movie got announced, but he's not going to harness the power of a god. He wants to do it all himself, and to do it he's studied the book that two of the Ghostbusters wrote so he can conjure ghosts. Yeah. The mass of psychokinetic energy that usually makes the Ghostbusters busy isn't done by a supernatural entity. It's done by one dude with the same tech the Ghostbusters use! And he pulls it off, even becoming a ghost himself in the process as part of his grand plan to lead the other spirits to cause destruction or whatever. Oh, but then the fun begins. First of all, I want to mention the visual flair of this movie when all the ghosts are running wild through the city. I absolutely love how this movie looks and how bright and vibrant the colors are. The ghosts are all blue and green, and the Ghostbusters proton guns are a nice contrasting red. I'm no color theory person or visual analyist, but I know what I like and I really like this. Anyway. Fun. Rowan, being a dark mirror of the Ghostbusters, can harness their power even as a ghost. Witness how he steals their iconography for himself. Mr. Stay Puft shows up as a haunted Macy's Parade balloon. Slimer, the most iconic ghost of the series, steals Ecto-1! Rowan is absolutely imposing his will upon things extra-narratively at this point, and then he goes for the money shot. The giant things stomping through New York in Ghostbusters movies have gone through a back and forth. In Ghostbusters '84, it was an ancient god weaponizing a corporate mascot. In Ghostbusters 2, the Ghostbusters themselves used a monument as a beacon of positivity. Rowan pulls it right back to the original concept. Not only did we have the two biggest icons of Ghostbusters come back under his command... but Rowan transforms into the goddamned Ghostbusters logo ghost, grows giant, and stomps through the city. Dear god in heaven, he's weaponized the franchise itself! This is a level beyond the logo being both that of the film and the company. The only way to defeat him is with that iconography... so the Ghostbusters pull the same trick from the first movie, using their own car. Total protonic reversal. Bye bye, Rowan. Yeah. So, like I said. This is the most fun Ghostbusters movie to me! The other films have their merits, of course, and are incredibly entertaining... but if I just wanted to sit down and have a few laughs and have fun? I'd throw on this one. It's all a difference in humor, really. This is great, though. Really, I love it. Now, let's talk about something other than catching ghosts.

Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 2 (Ghostbusters 2)

Modern art.

Not even two days in and already we hit a wall of "Holy shit what the fuck do I talk about for hundreds of words with this one?". Damn it all. I literally just finished watching Ghostbusters 2 as I write this, and I have no idea what I'm about to ramble out of me. There's a lot of cool things in the climax, but there's a whole movie before that happens. The weird capitalist readings are only there in the first act or so, as the fallout between movies gets resolved and we get the team back together to catch more ghosts. Let's start there, I guess. The first movie made it textually clear that the literal end of the world as brought about by Gozer's reckoning was the reason the Ghostbusters were so successful with their ghost-catching business. In between movies, of course, we learn that they got sued into oblivion for all the property damage and everyone basically thinks they were fraud hacks. I'm reminded of a 7th Doctor line about humanity's amazing skill of forgetting their brushes with the extraordinary here. The movie goes the extra mile here in putting the Ghostbusters on the back foot so they can start from nothing again, but it really didn't have to. Like I said, they only have big business when a calamity generates a shitton of psychokinetic energy and makes ghosts run rampant throughout New York. No end of the world, no ghosts to catch, no money coming in. They fold. Of course, this being a second Ghostbusters movie, they're going to come back. The means by which they come back is fair enough, I suppose. No real complaints here... so let's talk about the new elements. Let's talk about slime and art.


So some sort of Vlad the Impaler ghost trapped in a painting of himself is channelling psychoreactive slime under the museum he's in so he can revive himself and possess a baby to live again and rule the world. Uhh. Okay. This was a lot simpler when Gozer just wanted to bring about the end of the world because Bad God. Vigo is... complicated. This stuff all works fine when you watch the movie, but sitting down and trying to write about it after the fact? I have no goddamn idea what he needed the slime for. Was it there already and it just woke him up once they took his painting out of storage? Did his power create the slime and let the negativity in New York make it multiply and flow under the city? The movie doesn't say. Like I said, it doesn't HAVE to say it for it to work as you're sitting there watching the thing. This is not needless nitpicking to say that the movie sucks. This is just me trying to say something about the movie and wondering about its further machinations and ramifications and whatnot. We're all caught in it, the dooming death spiral of late capitalism that created a sequel to Ghostbusters and doesn't quite know what the hell to do with it. Remember that moment in the first movie where the film's logo is the Ghostbusters company logo? The Ray Parker Jr. song is an actual thing within the movie's world. The lines are bleeding over. It's this massive mess of art. Is Ghostbusters 2 a well-loved movie? I don't know for sure. I know that I think it's okay. Not as good as the first one to me, but solid enough. My attention didn't wander while I watched it just now. It's wandering now as I'm rambling, but the hell with it. These aren't meant to be deep dives. Let's wrap this up and talk about the ending bits, which are the most interesting part.


Pity that like 80 minutes had to pass before we got to this wild stuff, but we'll let it slide. The slime is charged with negativity, but it can be charged with positivity... which makes it jiggle and move stuff. The Ghostbusters, unable to bust through the wall of slime blocking the museum, need a different approach. An idealistic one. You don't blow up negative slime. You heal it with positivity... and what's a symbol of positivity in New York? The Statue of Liberty. The Ghostbusters coat the inside of the Statue of Liberty with positive slime, play its favorite song to make it move, and control the goddamned thing with a Nintendo joystick to lift the spirits of the city and break through the slime wall. Where do I even begin? Using a Nintendo controller? Dear god, it's like the Nintendo Project all over again. The alchemy of video games rings true here and lets the Ghostbusters save the day. More to the point... the Ghostbusters have learned from five years ago. They're mirroring Gozer's little trick and using it to stop Vigo! The first movie had Gozer use a corporate mascot to stomp through New York to instill terror on the masses and bring the end of the world. The second has the Ghostbusters use a symbol of America and New York to instill positivity to all the people of the city and save the day. Hell, it almost has to be this way. What is the Statue of Liberty, if not a gigantic piece of modern art sitting out there in New York City? A piece of art that instills positivity defeats Vigo's negative energy, and then they hose down his stupid monster head and blow him up. Yay. Then his painting becomes a painting of them? The Ghostbusters become art? Yay. I guess. That's Ghostbusters 2. It's fine. It's just fine! It's not as good as the first one but it's just fine. We're not done with catching ghosts yet, though. Oh no. They made one more, didn't they. Oh yeah. We're going there. Buckle up. Tomorrow is going to be a ride.

Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 1 (Ghostbusters)

In this scene, Bill Murray is secretly possessed by one of
the movie's investors.

Damn. October crept right up on us, didn't it? I'm still disoriented from the big rush of a weekend vacation, so in my case it really did just sneak up on me. Regardless, summer's last grasps are gone. The air's chilly, the grass is no longer growing, and fall has well and truly started. So too has October. The spooky month! It's another 31 days of spooky content from me, and we've picked a classic to kick things off. I've wanted to do this one for a while, but I never got around to it. Until now, of course. I want to preface this by saying that I like Ghostbusters. Note the key phrasing there. I am not one of the many who grew up with this as a nostalgic classic on constant rotation in the VHS player or anything like that. It's not one of my very favorite movies of all time by any stretch. This will become relevant in two days time, probably, but for now just know that this isn't a sacred temple for me. It's an enjoyable movie that's fun to watch, however. I do like it. There's a lot to love, of course. It's charming and witty, with lots of great little comedic moments. It's spooky and imaginative with all of its ghost business and its special effects. It's got a killer cast! It really isn't hard to see why it's a classic, but I don't want to simply get in there and talk about why it's classic. I want to go a little weirder with this. I want to sink into this movie's implications a bit, explore the dark undercurrents of the period in which it's made, and get a little something going to kick things off here. I want to go back to the old ghosts of the Nintendo Project days and talk about the spectre haunting this movie. The Dread Beast GREED, I called it back then. Hell, let's not make up funny words for it. Ghostbusters is a movie about capitalism and apocalypse.


Certainly, being a movie from 1984, there's a big stink of yuppie-level moneymaking all throughout this movie. The opening act, when you distill it down, is three folks starting up a unique new business together and finding massive success with it, leading to them becoming celebrities in their own right. Of course, the unique new business is a ghost-catching service. The fact that this is at all needed is an important plot point of the movie, and all but stated by their new hire of a fourth man at about the halfway point. The Ghostbusters are so busy and successful because the literal goddamned end of the world is conjuring up a paranormal energy storm in New York City... and they're making an honest job out of it. Now, they're not hypercapitalists or anything. Far from it. They're working class guys who have gotten a bit of fame from their weird and wild service. You can see it in the montage at about a third of the way in, with their faces plastered on every magazine and them getting talked about on radio shows. Casey Kasem has a bit about them in the middle of American Top 40! The fact that a bunch of dudes caught a ghost as part of their job is a trivial factoid on the radio! There are some undertones of class divide in Ghostbusters, and their base intent was probably to play for comedy. The snooty upper class turning up their noses at this whole "ghost" business is prevalent throughout the movie. Look at the scene at the beginning when the Dean evicts the three of them, giving his little speech about how unfit they are to RECIEVE FUNDING AT SUCH A WELL-TO-DO INSTITUTION FOR FUNNY SPOOKY SCIENCES, WELL I NEVER! Or when Rick Moranis is running from a Sumerian demon dog and the fancy restaurant is locked up and nobody at all gives a shit about him out there. Hell, half the comedic beats of the hotel scene are based on the juxtaposition of the working-class Ghostbusters with the fancy hotel and fancy hotel staff! The money is a real concern to me, and maybe I'm overthinking it... but that's just what happens when you've seen a movie so many times. The price for the Ghostbusters catching Slimer in the hotel is $5000. That's a lot of goddamned money, and they catch a lot of goddamned ghosts in that montage. A fancy hotel can afford that, sure, but what about the average small business? Or, God forbid, a normal family haunted by some spooky ghost? The Ghostbusters really should be rich as almighty fuck, and yet you don't really see any changes in their lifestyle or expensive extravagances. Winston claims in a one-liner that he's only making $11,500 a year. That's like, two ghost catchings according to the hotel thing! Where's that money going?


Of course, with this unique business comes the form of government regulation. On paper, Walter Peck of the EPA is absolutely correct in wanting to examine this new ghost-catching machine shit to make sure its environmental footprint won't harm the planet. You wouldn't let big oil just do whatever it wanted, after all. If you give capitalism an inch, it won't just take a mile; it will take the entire goddamn highway and lobby for a special "existing on the same planet as the highway" tax for everyone to pay them. But then, the Ghostbusters aren't a big business. They're three scientists and a new hire who catch ghosts! The movie doesn't have anything to say on the possible ecological ramifications of the ghost containment unit, preferring to just have Bill Murray call William Atherton names and then say "COME BACK WITH A WARRANT, DICKLESS". Which he does. The movie does Peck no favors by having him simultaneously order the ghost containment unit shut down and then blaming the Ghostbusters for the ensuing explosion and release of all the fucking ghosts. Like, no shit all the ghosts will come out if you turn off the ghost containment unit! All of this is what finally powers the end of the world; the coming of Gozer. I really do wish the movie got into what Gozer's domain as a god was. All we know for certain is that Gozer is from ancient times and brings about destruction via its chosen form. Ivo Shandor, Gozer worshipper and engineer of the apartment complex that serves as Gozer's gate into our world, wanted to cleanse the world after the horrors of World War I. Did he want a new beginning, or a complete wipeout? We don't know. We can't know. What we do know is that Gozer appears, here and now in 1984... and that the form of the destructor is chosen. Lest you think I've been bullshitting this entire time about this capitalist undercurrent, let me remind you that the form of the destructor is literally a giant corporate mascot for a brand of marshmallows stomping through New York like Godzilla. Hell, as pointed out to me on Twitter by the ever-wonderful Jack Graham... the logo the Ghostbusters use for their business is the movie's own logo! The capitalist serpent is eating its own tail! Jesus Christ! The only thing left to do is blow it all up. Yeah, okay, the resolution of the movie is basically just a bit of Doctor Who technobabble. It does the trick, though. That's Ghostbusters. It's very good, and I managed to get a pretty neat reading of it with this. I'm satisfied. What else does this franchise have to offer now that it's a big hit? We've got 30 more days and a lot of time. Let's find out, shall we?

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 5)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future | Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality | Part Four: The Crybaby's Dreams And The Dark Queen's Nightmares

Part Five: The Crybaby's Uncorruptible Eternal True Self

"Things end. That's all. Everything ends, and it's always sad. But everything begins again too, and that's... always happy."

I don't believe it. After months of watching this show, months of thinking about it, and months of trying (and stalling) to put those thoughts into words... we're finally at the end. Sailor Moon Sailor Stars. Once we get these couple of thousand words out there into the air, that's it. I'm finished. Well, almost finished. There's a little surprise that will be lurking at the very end, but we've got a whole show to talk about here. One I've been all but chomping at the bit to talk about. Let's get it all out there, clear as day, like a real thesis statement sort of thing. Sailor Stars is not my favorite season of the show. What it manages to be is both a greatest hits compilation of many elements that made the previous four seasons resonate with me in some way, as well as managing to introduce some concepts with inspirational weight that still remain with me. It all sounds like a recipe for great success, but it just doesn't come together in the end. It's so tantalizingly close to doing it, but at the last second they make a blunder. No, I take that back. A blunder is something akin to stubbing your toe. This is a creative writing decision that utterly betrays the show at the eleventh hour and very nearly murders it before it can ride off into the sunset. In the Sailor Moon R post I made a big show out of Usagi and Mamoru's manufactured relationship "drama" and how goddamn toxic it was. I called it the first of two betrayals the show would pull on me. Sailor Stars has the second. We will get to it, and we do have a way of reading it that still crackles, but by God am I going to be angrily scrawling about that one. I just want to put that out there before I begin. This season was still really engaging and had some amazing concepts to think about, and I'll be singing its praises for the next... oh, 2000 words? Rough estimate? We'll take a lot of sugar with our bitter pill. For now, it's time to begin Sailor Stars.

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 4)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future | Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality

Part Four: The Crybaby's Dreams And The Dark Queen's Nightmares

“I am, and always will be, the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes, and the dreamer of improbable dreams.”

Well then. Let's push through and continue this wild odyssey. It could be said that Sailor Moon peaked with Sailor Moon S, and everything afterwards was a bit of a decline in quality before leading to the ultimate betrayal. It would be really easy to build to that narrative, but I don't want to. I don't want to because that really isn't how I saw the show, but it does put us in an interesting position. The fourth season, Sailor Moon SuperS (I guess you say it like the plural of the word "super", just for mental pronunciation. Wait, is it like a "super" version of Sailor Moon S? Holy shit.), is a wild deviation from what happens in the equivalent arc of the manga. Now, the 90's anime itself is a wild deviation from the manga in a lot of ways. So many so that my pal Alina, when reading through the previous essay on S, reacted in confusion and surprise and stated something along the lines of "I don't remember ANY of this happening in the manga!". The recommended viewing guide I'd been using to cut out a lot of the monster of the week episodes and shotgun the plot-relevant stuff was a bit more disdainful about SuperS as well, calling it basically a filler season. To say I find this line of thinking incorrect would be putting it mildly. What SuperS lacks in "plot-essentialism", it more than makes up for with strong thematic resonance and personal growth for the characters. If you're already down with the whole utopian idealism thing, what's a bit of so-called filler to get in the way of the characters growing and learning? 

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 3)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World | Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future

Part Three: The Crybaby's Idealism Vs. The Pair's Practicality

"Listen. If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"

(Copyright claims are a headache and a half in the USA, so if you can't see the above you'll have to make do with this. Same visuals, but it has the dub opening theme to it... which is iconic in its own right. Aaanyway. Sailor Moon S!)

At last, then, we've come to it. Sailor Moon S, the third season of the show and the exact midpoint of this entire experience. I have not-so-subtlely been building this up as the point where everything changes, and that isn't a lie. With overall reflection, I can say that Sailor Moon S was my favorite season of the show to watch. It was the most consistent with its themes and it hits some of the highest highs that the show will ever reach, while avoiding doing anything untoward like betraying my trust in its characters for the sake of a cheap shock. It would be easy to claim that the entire arc of the show's quality creates a parabola, with Sailor Moon S at the top. Easy, but not entirely accurate. There are some aspects where it falters compared to what's come before, and some aspects of what's to come that will resonate better with me. In the broadest strokes, though? Holy shit it's a masterpiece. We've taken our first steps into a bolder world with the show now, and the battle is bigger than just throwing magic powers at space demons. Sailor Moon S wants to tell a story about people, and about a clash of ideologies which cast a shadow on everything that's come before. Hold on tight. Everything's about to change.

Moonlight Shines Eternal (The Sailor Moon Post: Part 2)

Previously- Part One: The Crybaby Who Saved The World

Part Two: The Crybaby Heals The Future

"Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?"

(If the above video is blocked because you're American or otherwise, here's an alternative for you. )

Somewhere between here and now, we basically lost my 2003 experience of watching the show. As I said, I watched from the tail end of the first season right up to the filler arc which opens up the second season, Sailor Moon R, here. There's nothing to comment on, as I remember it being an okay story at the time. The most notable thing about it is that it brings the Sailor Senshi and Tuxedo Mask out of retirement by giving them back their memories, restoring the status quo. Not only that, but Usagi and Mamoru actually become a couple! Isn't that sweet? Maybe I should have revisited the Doom Tree arc to see how it holds up, as it's not really held in high regard. Either way, it doesn't matter. We've finished in 2003, basically. (There will be one small exception in the next part.) I don't know why I stopped back then. It could just have been my summer job keeping me busy, and then college keeping me extremely busy. 2003 has waned now, and we're focused on what I felt and saw in 2018. This leads us to both an inspiration and a problem. The inspiration is our new force of change which literally falls out of the sky to crash into the status quo of Usagi and Mamoru enjoying a date: a mysterious pink-haired little girl also named Usagi, soon dubbed "Chibiusa" to avoid confusion with our heroine. Actually, it's not right to write about her in such a vague fashion. Chibiusa is an incredibly important part of the show whose actions influence the very heart and soul of the narrative. We're still going to be talking about her up until Part Five, believe it or not. She's nowhere near my favorite character, but she's still vital to how the show is going to progress. For the time being, though, she's just sort of a bratty character who hoodwinks her way into living under Usagi's roof as her cousin by hypnotizing her family. It sounds like I'm making this shit up, but I'm not.