Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Trailer is Perfectly Fine

Movies

Power up your proton packs because the Ghostbusters are back. Today, Sony released a trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (which is a lousy title, but still much better than The Dial of Destiny), the follow-up to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife and sequel to some 80s movie or other. This time, Egon’s daughter, grandchildren, and Paul Rudd move to New York City to team up with the remaining Ghostbusters and start up the business again. No points for guessing if there’s something strange in the neighborhood. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson reunite with Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, Celeste O’Connor, Carrie Coon, and Rudd; Patton Oswalt and Kumail Nanjiani join them. Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan return to write the script, but this time, Kenan is directing. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is supposed to open on March 29, 2024, but the trailer only lists it as “coming soon,” so that date could very well change. You can check out the trailer below:

What surprises me most about the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire trailer is how present the original Ghostbusters are. They’re being set up as the co-leads with the newbies, or at least as significant supporting characters. That’s enticing, but I find it a little hard to believe; maybe they’ll be around longer than in Afterlife, which they were barely in, but did Bill Murray really sign on to be in the bulk of another Ghostbusters sequel? My guess is that they’re in maybe twenty minutes total and act as background mentor figures. The plot seems okay; they’re going with an ice theme, with the villain feeding off people’s fear and using it to kill them, which manifests in freezing them. (This happens during July, which is neat, but it means this probably should’ve been a summer movie.) It’ll be fine if they don’t try to make it too similar to the pink slime in Ghostbusters II; one of the worst things about Afterlife was that it re-used so much from the first Ghostbusters. I liked that last visual of the villain in shadows; it looks creepy and menacing, and juxtaposing that with a goofy reaction from Paul Rudd is in keeping with the early films. I’m not thrilled with some of the special effects, though; I love the idea of the lions from the New York Public Library coming to life, but unless they clean up the CGI before the film is released, the execution is bad. Some of the ice spears that pop up look too cartoony as well. Overall… I don’t know. I’ll give it a try, but I thought Afterlife was mediocre, and I’m not exactly thrilled for a new Ghostbusters series.