#ghost hunters stuck in a loop lmao

[soupmanspeaks]

I think we should lean into the ghosty side of fnaf yk Of course in the original Pizzarias (FNAF 1 & 2) there are probably reports of kiddish laughter after hours, but I mean more so in the SB era, like in the books so much death has taken place in the PizzaPlex, so much energy is always constantly in motion so like maybe during closing, a staff member will see a little girl with ice cream in her hands, next to the Cupcake shoppe, and while they try to alert someone on their walkie talkie, she vanishes, Maybe another staff member will see a girl with a green bracelet next to the rockstar row FNAF 1 stage recreation, but she's only there in passing blinks, And sometimes there's a small boy with tears on his face looking at the golden Glamrock Freddy statue in the lobby, looking at it with a face that shows they have some sort of history, and despite the tears, his expression only has a resigned contentment on it, and on the nights where Freddy is fully deactivated, a slightly older looking boy stands next to him, with a vintage looking Fox mask on, and when approached, they look at the staff, nod along, follow behind, and then disappear into thin air

[armageddon-generation]

Improving Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Frozen Empire has some neat ideas (Ancient ghostbusters, Phoebe & Melody, the Possessor, everything Dan Akroyd, Paul Rudd, James Acaster & Ernie Hudson do) but it’s bogged down by far too many characters and slavish fanservice. Afterlife was meant to pass the torch, but Frozen Empire is stuck replaying the greatest hits.

OPENING AND CHANGED VILLAIN

Instead of firefighters, we open on a 1900s team of ghost-hunters locking the villain Garraka away, led by Nadeem’s great-grandmother

Sealing Garraka away causes a huge explosion, and as we pull out of the burning building, we see a new ghost fly away. This is Melody, the ghost-girl, paralleling Egon’s ghost leaving his farmhouse in Afterlife's opening

Melody’s family were cultists who tried to summon big-bad Garraka. She’s the one who called the ghost-hunters to stop them, but was killed in the confrontation

Garraka tells Melody that her ‘unfinished business’ is summoning him to this dimension—the ritual she stopped her family completing. The only way she can be free is freeing him.

This establishes Melody’s distrust of ghost hunters, because they killed her

CUT CHARACTERS

Venkman and Janine don’t need to be here at all, they’re gone

Cut Podcast. Ray wistfully watches the opening car-chase  alone, out-of-the-loop. He seizes on the arrival of the Orb as his chance to get back in on the action. Podcast's absence also heightens Phoebe’s isolation

Cut Lucky. Her only real moment is defending Phoebe from Garraka, which itself was cut down from the trailers

THE AQUARIUM & COMMUNING WITH GHOSTS

‘Garraka wants to free the ghosts in the Firehouse’ is yet another reused plotpoint in a film full of them.

Instead the (much bigger) property damage in the opening chase loses the team the Firehouse completely, increasing Phoebe’s guilt and isolation

They’ve already been moving ghosts into Winston’s Aquarium lab, so go straight there

They’re testing new technology- think Ghostbusters (2016)’s ghost-chipper, proton-gloves, proton-grenades etc. Callie tests this stuff (bc she has nothing to do otherwise), bonding with Winston as the table uncle-figure she never had.

James Acaster's Dr. Lars is trying to communicate with the caged ghosts, to learn about the other side- he tries to interrogate one to no avail

The idea of someone volunteering to go on 'expeditions' as a ghost via the Spirit Extractor, like an abassador to the Afterlife, is brought up- both Phoebe and Ray are tempted

This makes Phoebe talking to Melody an incredible discovery- a sentient, talking ghost who apparently fully retains her humanity.

MELODY’S FAMILY

When Phoebe finds Melody in the diner, it’s because that's is where she was killed- where her family tried to summon Garraka.

Now the Orb is uncontained her family’s ghosts have become active again, and descend from the upper floors of the building to attack the diner.

Melody’s family are a Cluster Ghost- an amorphous blob of limbs and heads bonded by the sane traumatic cause of death, tripping over itself to get to her. This physical manifestation of her family trying to drag her down parallels Phoebe’s conflict about hers.

Phoebe now takes Melody on a tour of the Aquarium and they bond there, rather than the Firehouse

TREVOR

Finn Wolfhard's Trevor had fuck-all to do in this movie lmao

Replace his pointless sublpot with Slimer with him bonding with the Possessor ghost, which communicates through switching TV stations/radio channels.

The Possessor would probably need some kind of cute visual manifestation to sell this. Think Mogwai, Lilo and Stitch etc Slapstick antagonism turned genuine fun, games of catch etc

With Podcast gone, Trevor accompanies Phoebe and Ray to the library. When the Possessor tries to steal the chant recording he tries to reason with it- c'mon, man, I thought we were bonding, this isn’t you, Garraka’s controlling you, only to get absolutely dunked on

Ray’s research reveals that Garraka’s horns- the 'object' that allows its apparition to manifest- were hidden away separately from the orb

NADEEM'S GRANDMOTHER

To build on the theme of communicating with and humanizing ghosts, instead of pyrokenesis (which felt a little out of place) Kumail Nanjiani's Nadeem is literally possessed by his estranged grandmother.

The idea Nadeem was 'haunted' is already suggested, but by making it explicit we get the slapstick of her puppeteering his body and chewing him out for neglecting his family legacy- arguing with the same mouth etc

Swap Venkman questioning Nadeem with Callie, holding a comedic seance. This gives her a much-needed emotional beat bonding with him over their baggage with their ghost-hunting relatives (Egon vs Grandma). Callie expresses how it feels to reconnect with her dad's legacy, which Frozen Empire never gave us.

She then replaces Podcast helping Nadeem try to hone his powers- in this case, help him and his grandmother work together

GARRAKA THE GHOST-EMPEROR

Garraka can't manifest as a full apparition without its horns.

It's more like the Mind Flayer from Stranger Things, a hive-mind that works through other ghosts. When the ancient ghost-hunters banished Garraka to the Other Side it took over, and has ruled there ever since. This is the 'frozen empire' he's looking to expand

In this way ghosts are shifted from no longer strictly antagonistic, but victims of a cruel tyrant

 When Melody tricks Phoebe into freeing Garraka, it tries to take Phoebe's ghost as a vassal, but Melody volunteers herself to save her. Phoebe returns to her body just in time to see Melody be possessed.

Now Melody is more directly involved in the climax, giving the antagonist a complex, sympathetic face

Dr. Lars replaces Lucky trying to stop Garraka. It kills him to up the stakes

FINALE

Garraka takes Melody to the Diner, where she joins with her family’s Cluster, spreading its supernatural winter as it goes

Change the Death Chill so everyone Garraka chills has their spriti pulled out of them, to join it army of spectral drones. Everywhere it goes it's recruiting, getting stronger. If it finds its second horn it will be able to 'recruit' all of New York

Expand on the Possessor using the Ghostbusters’ own gear to fight them. It steals the Ecto-1 and all the old Proton packs

The new generation of Ghostbusters have to use the new tech they’ve been developing to defeat the old stuff.

Nadeem and his Grandmother finally call a truce and work together to play defence bending the proton streams. She grumbles about how bad this generation of ghost-hunters is

Trevor's bond with the Possessor causes it conflict when it tries to kill him- it fights itself, the equipment it's possessing self-destructing

From here it’s a race to stop Garraka collecting its horns. Garraka successfully finds the first, increasing the scale and power of the big freeze

In the final confrontation Phoebe lets Garraka pull her spirit from her body to loosen its hold on Melody. Melody lights her match: Her unfinished business wasn't to summon Garraka, it was to finish destroying him as she tried to when she died. Nadeem and his Grandmother incinerate the thing.

Again taking a good idea from Ghostbusters (2016), Phoebe is given the choice go to the Other Side with Melody, to finally discover and understand what happens next. Her family ask her to come back, hold on. Melody says that Phoebe should accept their love and support, as she was never loved or supported by her own family

Melody kisses Phoebe goodbye, because not following through on that (when we’ve seen ghosts make similar physical contact with people before) is taking the coward’s way out. They should've cast a minor!!

Nadeem's Grandmother gives her blessing to the ghost-hunters who inherited her family's responsibilities. Then she leaves his body and offers to guide Melody to the Other Side, apologizing for her death on her mother's behalf

We end with Podcast and Lucky finally arriving in New York for a summer internship with the Ghostbusters.

Dr. Lars has returned as a ghost to be an 'ambassador' to the Other Side (playing a ghost would really unleash James Acaster's weird and whacky side), and the Possessor is even working with them as a new team mascot.

Ray has settled into a role as the team's full-time researcher, rather than working in the field

[princelink]

Pls share more of your thoughts on ghosts

oh hello anon!

sure I can ! I hope you're ready for me to just ramble my ass off. I also cannot guarantee a coherent thought process.

The reason I believe in them first off is because I've dealt with... a few things in the realm of the supernatural. I had a few experiences more so when I was growing up than anything recent. I feel like sometimes you're just more susceptible to sensing them in general when you're younger and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the way our brains are still developing.

Either way.. my thoughts are they can vary significantly in what they are as a whole. And I don't have a clue as to what could be an actual reason as to why they stick around. I'm sure there's those typical ideas we have of them where something tragic happened and they can't move on. where they're tied to the place they died. But also how long do they stay? Forever? Is there a limit to how long they can exist in that space? Do they get weaker as time moves on? Will they eventually dissipate? Where do they go? We always tend to tie stuff to something traumatic for the reason they stay but is that really the only cause? Maybe a grudge? What else could make something linger? I felt my dog in the same spot where she died in our house for many months afterwards. Like the impression of her soul was still there long after she ceased to exist. I always stepped over the spot until I could no longer feel her there anymore. What kept that part of her there? Love?

Sometimes I feel like it's not anything like that at all for why they're there. Almost like maybe it's just a glimpse of a memory. A time loop from a part of history that got stuck alongside us. There's all those old hotels where folks will catch glimpses of people just walking the halls. Is it just an old memory of what once was? An imprint that for some reason loops over and over again? What causes it? Was there perhaps some kind of like weird rift in the universe that caused something to leave an impression for years to come of someone at the time just walking down the hall? Captured it like a video and hit repeat? I think it'd be neat if there was. Because really who's to say that ghosts are really ghosts at all? What if it's just another dimension crossing briefly with ours? A place where the veil just happens to be thin? You ever just been in a place where you know something feels off but can't place it? I think anywhere can be like that even just for a moment. I've felt it before even if nothing happened.

There's also the ones that can full on interact. And I think there's a few types to this variance and even though some of them can be..... challenging to be around.. I believe that they deserve our respect. (I mean all of them do in my opinion but these entities are.. complicated? Because I feel like they actually want something even if we don't know what it is. Some I think just want to still exist, some I think want to have some fun, others.... well?????)

I liked watching ghost hunters because I always found it fascinating! And there's a reason I bring this up. And it's because deep down it felt like in a way it just wasn't something we were meant to hunt for. I believe in not disturbing them the best we can. And while I always thought it was cool that there were people out there who also wanted to know, I was always kind of frustrated with their methods. (Especially some of the newer shows for this because I feel like those ghost adventures guys are just kinda assholes) And the reason I get upset is because of respect! Would you like anyone bothering you like that? Lmao like any time I watch a horror movie (and I know it's just a movie!) where they purposely mess with whatever could be residing there I wanna yell. To me it seems like a blatant act of disrespect and there's a reason they'll lash out in return. And I feel like that concept just applys to the spaces we share with them in general out of the context of a horror movie.

And I don't think any are necessarily like.. evil or anything (maybe some can be???) but I do feel like there's a fine line they can walk. And I say that because I definitely feel like you can get different... vibes from something. Like you can know something is there and it's not really gonna hurt you or is enjoying messing with you. Playful. Or you know something is for sure there because it WANTS you to feel it and you get this.... almost sinister energy or something similar radiating off of it. And that's when stuff can definitely get scary. those are the ones I believe movies are based off of. Like if I really wanted to I could completely go hog wild and base a whole horror movie off whatever the fuck was in my closet as a child. It gave those vibes and it absolutely wanted me to know it was there in an unsettling way. I don't know what it wanted and I don't really like to talk about what happened. And I'm sure someone could try to logically explain what occurred but it was definitely A THING in there and it was scary as hell. And I remember it following me briefly to another place when we moved some years later. My point is even the ones that are unsettling as all hell deserve some form of respect because really do you want to piss that thing off more?

Besides all of that I think it's hard to tell just what the ones that interact are exactly. Were they people once? Something else? It's almost like you can feel the human element sometimes and then other times it's too muddled. why are they there? why does it seem like they can make more choices than the ones that just kind of blip into existence? Why do they become something more than the ones that loop? What's there that causes more of a consciousness? I don't know if we're meant to understand and I don't really think we ever will.

Anyway I got stuff to do and this was a nice procrastination for a while jfdkdj I hope my weird tedtalk on the ideas in my head is to your enjoyment nonners lmao thanks for asking tho!! it's been a while since I got to just yammer on here 🥰