‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ trailer channels Star Wars in the worst way possible

There has been an awakening. Can you feel it? No, it’s not Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It’s the trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the long-awaited third movie in the Ghostbusters film series (which sidesteps the 2016 reboot entirely) that bears a comical resemblance to 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, right down to the triumphant joyride of an all-too iconic vehicle.

On Monday, Sony Pictures released the trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a new Ghostbusters sequel directed by Jason Reitman, son of original director Ivan Reitman. The film will release in theaters on July 10, 2020.

Set in rural Oklahoma, a struggling family of three moves into an old inherited farmhouse and unearth a trove of discarded gadgets and gizmos used to catch ghosts in 1980s New York. These tools will come useful when a series of strange phenomena begin to sweep through this sleepy town.

Starring Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Paul Rudd as a school science teacher, these new characters essentially train themselves to become Ghostbusters. And unlike the capitalist fantasy of starting up a business in New York (complete with a lo-fi TV commercial) and sticking it to the EPA, these characters will learn the Force how to catch ghosts in emotionally dramatic fashion.

If you thought, “Ghostbusters shouldn’t be funny, it should be serious,” congrats, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is for you. As if forgetting that Ghostbusters was a star-studded comedy, the junior Reitman’s film looks grim and overly sentimental. Based on the trail, it mythologizes the past (literally, it seems no one but conspiracy theorists like Paul Rudd’s character remember the Ghostbusters) and puts too much stock into descendants of familiar characters.

It is, in essence, The Force Awakens for Ghostbusters. Except unlike Star Wars’ willingness to break from the past (such as in the case of Rey and her parentage), Ghostbusters: Afterlife is going hard in the other direction, with these kids apparently being the grandchildren of the late Harold Ramis’ Egon Spengler.

Look, I love and miss Harold Ramis too, but come on.

Kurgen

Article URL : https://www.inverse.com/article/61561-ghostbusters-afterlife-trailer-2020-is-like-star-wars-not-stranger-things