Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Another Lackluster Ghostbusters Movie

In recent years, there have been quite a few legacy sequels that have arrived and fizzled out under the weight of their own expectations. To make a legacy sequel, one has to walk a fine line between telling a story that is good and interesting and telling a story that will appease the worst aspects of fandom that just want to see the toys they played with as kids do the cool things they imagined as a child. Ghostbusters has now had two major attempts at this, first was three years ago with Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and the second being here with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire which, despite being a sequel to Afterlife, feels like a second attempt to bring back the Ghostbusters franchise which will likely just leave the viewer asking why that is needed at all.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, like any good legacy sequel, picks up a few in the future after the last film and pays very little mind to the actual world that was built. This is very similar to how JJ Abrams on The Rise of Skywalker did not like the creative choices made in The Last Jedi so he spends a good amount of the film either ignoring things completely or retconning the events to fit into his narrative. Either way, the Spengler family (and Lucky and Podcast for reasons that are never fully explained) has relocated to New York City and has taken up the task of being Ghostbusters. Through a convoluted (and honestly ridiculous) series of events, a demon/evil god/ghost has been released from captivity and is hoping to freeze the world over for ambiguous reasons. They have to team up with the original team to take down this demon and save the world.

At its core, Ghostbusters is a comedy franchise, not a dark action franchise. There is a Snyder-esque desire to bring credibility to this series by having it be a very self-serious paranormal action film but all that ends up doing is creating a film that is two thirds exposition and one third the ending action scene. Just because something is funny does not mean it cannot have serious stakes (just look at the original movie) but clearly someone at Sony is hellbent on making the Ghostbusters franchise stand alongside Spider-Man as their major tentpole but at its core that’s not what Ghostbusters is.

This film also repeats the mistakes of Jurassic World: Dominion where there are way too many characters introduced and given some plot relevancy for the audience to care about any of them. There are too many subplots that exist purely to create the illusion that characters are doing things that are important that it just overcomplicates what should be a relatively simple plot. It’s the story of an ancient demon escaping and trying to destroy the planet, there’s no need for superpowers, a side-quest to the library, a machine that can suck the soul out of a person and make them a ghost, or really the entire first chase sequence. Cutting these aspects would have allowed for more character moments that feel authentic.

The third act is at least interesting because clearly it is what the studio wanted out of the gate but the issue is it resolves character arcs that were never properly developed and just feels hollow. Aside from that, which will be available on home media in reasonably short order if someone really wants to see it, this movie is not worth going to see, which is a shame because some of the ingredients are there to make an interesting final product. Hopefully between this and Madame Web there is some discussion at Sony about what the plan is going forward with their franchises because this quality output cannot be sustainable long-term.

Final Rating: 5/10