Ghostbusters Through the Years

"There they were, eating Cheez-Its while debating different kinds of spirits and comparing supernatural energy to giant Twinkies."

“He slimed me.”

It echoed through schoolyards everywhere in 1984. The line, uttered by Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, probably delighted young boys all over the country. The movie was released in early June, but even by the following September, we were still talking about it. Some even had t-shirts with that ugly green ghost on it, who had been christened Slimer, even though he is never named in the movie. My mother wouldn’t allow such a thing to be worn to school, but I remember a lot of kids had them.

The funniest part about the whole phenomenon was perhaps the fact that it was basically a throwaway line in the movie, and Murray had way funnier lines that we could have quoted. But, what can I say? Kids just loved slime back then.

Even beyond my school, the movie was a huge success that some say redefined what a blockbuster could be. It combined comedy, action and horror, and the studio could market it to kids and adults, thus maximizing the box office potential. The term “busters” was suddenly everywhere, as was the red circle with the line through it. I feel like marshmallows even experienced a rise in sales, but that may have been a rumor.

I don’t recall the first time I saw Ghostbusters, but it was one of those movies I saw a few times in the theater and then taped off cable when we had one of those free HBO weekends to try and lure custoomers. Remember those?

I may have been too young for a lot of the bawdy jokes, but that didn’t bother me. I loved the fact that these guys had simply thrown together a ghost-catching business, and there they were, eating Cheez-Its while debating different kinds of spirits and comparing supernatural energy to giant Twinkies.

I eventually realized was that the original Ghostbusters never really felt like a franchise movie. The Ghostbusters weren’t superheroes or chosen ones. They were just regular guys starting a business, eating junk food in the office while trying to figure things out as they went along. The ghosts and special effects were memorable, but what made the movie stick was how grounded the characters felt underneath all of it.

Over time, kids moved on. Ghostbusters 2 was a bit of a disappointment, and the various cartoons that spun off of it somehow made it feel less special. In my mind, it was a movie not really meant for kids, but now the studio was marketing it to them with not one, but two cartoons, one of them calling itself The Real Ghostbusters, even though none of the characters from the movie were in it. My young brain just couldn’t process all of it. Plus, it wasn’t really forbidden fruit anymore, so my interest waned.

However, when I was 18, just after graduating high school, I would go to my friend John’s house, and Ghostbusters would be playing on HBO nearly every day. After a couple of viewings, I asked him why HBO kept showing it. He surmised it was because it was the ten-year anniversary.

It may have been my first real experience with nostalgia. By then, Ghostbusters wasn’t about slime anymore. It wasn’t about cartoons or merchandise or hearing kids quote a line on the playground. The hype had faded away, and what remained was just a genuinely funny movie.

Watching it again at eighteen, I realized it was actually better than I remembered.

Years later, when Hollywood began rebooting nearly every franchise from my childhood, an all-female Ghostbusters was announced. I didn’t think it was necessary, but the cast was talented and I hoped it would be funny.

Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me, and not because of the female cast. There were many reasons, really. Because of the liberal use of ad-libbing during production, the humor felt a little low-brow. The shoe-horned cameos just took me out of the story entirely. And yes, the fact that the Black character was once again the only non-scientist in the group did bother me. Did they not think Leslie Jones could pull it off?

Some of the backlash surrounding the movie was ugly and ridiculous, and I wanted no part of that. I was mostly just disappointed by it in general. The movie didn’t make me love the original any less. It mostly reminded me that what I loved about Ghostbusters couldn’t really be recreated.

I thought the hoopla was over once again, but a few years later, there were more Ghostbusters movies. Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021 and then Frozen Empire in 2024 continued the storyline of the original movies, with Murray, Dan Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver all returning to reprise their roles, and the descendents of Harold Ramis’ Egon were the heroes. Audiences were happier with these two installments, and there was an expectation that there would be more on the way.

I never saw them, and probably never will. I mean, I keep watching every Star Wars movie and Disney+ series they release, but more Ghostbusters sequels don’t interest me.

To me, they had crossed the streams.

Ghostbusters already found me at exactly the right moments in my life: once as a kid swept up in the hysteria, and again as a teenager rediscovering the movie underneath it.

I didn’t need the franchise to keep growing.

I had already been slimed. That was enough for me.