David Reynaga

A poster of “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” found outside of Harkins Theater

If there’s something strange in people’s neighborhoods, who are they going to call? Ghostbusters! The company and movie franchise have been iconic since the year 1984. Ghostbusters have been available throughout almost the entire year until there wasn’t a call anymore to answer to. The Ghostbusters have been through so much, from deaths to being replaced and wiped for a certain period. To new workers running the business, we need to look back from the beginning to the people who started it all.

Ghostbusters originally started with 4 members(Egon, Peter, Ray, and Winston) and have always gained the same situations within every movie. In the original movie, they are introduced to government issues, stating their business is wanted cause it’s not real to people. The company starts with Egon, Ray, and Peter studying the paranormal and building a proton pack a dangerous laser that holds ghosts and Winston joins in looking for a steady paycheck. Walter Peck who is an inspector of the Economy Protection Agency ends up shutting down the Ghostbusters building and freeing all the ghosts that were captured. They end up meeting the mayor and are given a chance to fight a god named Gozer and save New York. Gozer ends up becoming a giant marshmallow man who wants to destroy New York and take over, but the Ghostbusters blast the portal and undo all the spirits that came out of the portal. 

Ghostbusters 2 takes 5 years later after the original, and all the members are now doing their things since there aren’t many hauntings in New York anymore. Ray and Winston are party members to keep the company up, Peter runs a TV show, and Egon does his studies. They all reunite after discovering something below New York an ooze of negativity, basically slime that feeds on the bad side of New York. We also get greeted by Vigo a god who runs the ooze and is how he gets most of his energy, and he is looking to be reborn. He tries to take the child of Dana Barrett, Peter’s old girlfriend until she leaves him, to protect her from him. The Ghostbusters end up finding another version of the slime a positive slime that makes anyone positive if any contact or makes any object alive. They used the positive slime to put on the Statue of Liberty, which then came alive and was eligible to infiltrate the building Vigo was in. The Ghostbusters try to defeat Vigo but fail even with the positive slime until the people of New York come together and spread more positivity. Vigo became weak and was defeated, along with all the ghosts that were summoned from the slime

In Ghostbusters (2016) everything is restarted, meaning this movie is a remake to the original Ghostbusters. Before this movie was released we sadly lost one of the original Ghostbusters actors, Harold Ramis who played Egon Spengler in the original and second Ghostbusters movie. In this movie, all the original actors from the first movie are just side characters, but for Harold Ramis, they put a head statue of him in the university. This movie has a gender swap from the Ghostbusters crew to the secretary but still takes place in New York. Erin, Abby, and Jilian start the company Ghostbusters and meet with Patty a girl who knows her way around New York. All 4 try to stop the source of some random ghost device that eventually leads to the opening of the gateway. The 4 ended up using a high explosive device on top of the Ecto-1 to close the portal and were eligible to close the opening between the worlds. They successfully built their company and found out that Gozer was on the way to rise. Unfortunately, the sequel for this movie was canceled due to how poorly it was made.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the sequel to the original 2 Ghostbusters movie, and is the movie to honor Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler. This movie shows the grandchildren of Egon Spengler and the single mother Callie as the daughter of Egon Spengler. Callie gets kicked out of her apartment and is forced to live on her father’s dirt farm, where Phoebe slowly gets to the true secret of what her grandfather has been doing all these years. Phoebe discovers the true reason why Egon moved to an abandoned area in Oklahoma to stop the Ghost from coming through a vortex. Phoebe tries to follow in his footsteps while the ghost of Egon guides her, until a ghost is let out and is the cause of Egon’s trap to be destroyed. Gozer has risen and is now able to conquer Earth after all these years. Phoebe ends up getting help from her friend Podcast and her brother Trevor, to distract and lure Gozer to the farm. The farm contains a hundred ghost traps a way to fully stop Gozer from returning to Earth. The fight begins and with the help of all the proton packs they are eligible to split Gozer into multiple parts causing her cycle to be disrupted. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, spoiler warning for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire if anyone has not watched it. The heroes of Ghostbusters Afterlife are now in New York ready to take back the city where it all started, until they are disrupted. The storage place that clears the Ghost from the trap is now full and is ready to burst and set all the ghosts free. A mysterious orb is around New York and contains a spirit that Ray Stanz and Podcast try to find out who is inside. Meanwhile, Pheobe is devastated because she is a minor and can’t work in an official officer job, so she tries to find a hobby until she finds out she found a ghost-like human. Melody appears and tells Phoebe that she wants to be let go so she can see her family that died in the fire. Phoebe wanted to be a ghost, so she set up a liberate plan to be a ghost for 2 minutes, but Melody knows something. The spirit in the orb is known as Garraka a frozen spirit, she mind controlled the ghost of Phoebe and broke free Garraka from her prison. Meanwhile, in the entire movie a teenager named Nadeem realizes he is the fire king and is the only one who can defeat Garrakka, but doesn’t know his power yet. Phoebe uses copper to make a fire proton pack, and the fire king uses his power, but without a match he’s pointless. Melody had a match on her to show her purpose that she must prove worthy of being a hero. Garrakka is defeated, and Phoebe gets to be a Ghostbuster, even though she is a minor she saves the whole city with her intelligence.