Discuss all things Ghostbusters here, unless they would be better suited in one of the few forums below.
By chorleydave
#4828502
In the hotel scene where the ghostbusters blow up the maids trolley,I only just just noticed her trying to put out the fire on the floor with a spray bottle.
By Phasmatum Fractor
#4828565
I just rewatched the movie for the first time in a few years. During the climax, I realized what "the destructor" really was, and how close Shandor's project came to fruition.

Egon Spengler invented portable particle accelerators that shoot beams of relativistic particles all over the place. They don't do much damage, but any intersection of the beams could lead to "total protonic reversal," "all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light." I imagine Egon calculated a non-zero chance that the of the beams would produce an exotic particle that flips the charge of quarks. Negatively charged atomic nuclei would no longer be bound to their electrons, and every molecule would explode. This would probably be slower than the speed of light, but Egon's scenario is imaginative, not literal. Still, an incredible amount of energy would be released, and it would certainly happen faster than anyone could react. If this effect were self-propagating, it would rip the planet apart. Compared to everything else in the film, the Ghostbusters are (potentially) the most destructive force around.

Gozer itself might have known this. As a Sumerian god, she was surely aware that humanity can be its own worst enemy. The Mesopotamian flood myth is one of overpopulation, sickness, and famine--the flood is mankind's unacknowledged savior. Gozer has always been a technological god; what is a flood, but turning the foundational technology of ancient Mesopotamia, the canal system, against itself? Modern technology provides much greater opportunity for destruction. "We have the tools, we have the talent." Gozer would use what humanity itself provided.

Consider Gozer's incarnation: It's a big, lumbering, marshmallow man. It shows up and walks around Manhattan for a little bit, walking directly toward the Shandor building. At first, it doesn't seem to have any purpose, its point of origin and direction of travel almost random. It doesn't cause any intentional damage. It doesn't show much intention at all. When it sees the Ghostbusters, it goes after them. That's the only purposeful action the marshmallow man takes.

At that point, Egon becomes "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought." Bereft of reason, he makes what could have been the deadliest decision in the history of the world: they will cross the streams, initiating the chain-reaction that could destroy all life on the planet. This was the decision that nearly wiped out humanity. Shandor's cult and Gozer's sugary emanation only served to push Egon into an act of mundicidal desperation. It didn't matter what form the Destructor took, because the Destructor's only purpose was to spur humanity into self-destruction.

Fortunately for mankind, the destructive energies liberated by crossing the streams seem to have been mostly directed through the dimensional gate into Gozer's realm. They destroyed Gozer's high temple in the spiritual plane and apparently severed the god's control of the marshmallow man, which lost cohesion and collapsed into a sugary goo (or perhaps a sugary ectoplasm). It was not, as one might suspect, burned away by the explosion; traces of it can be seen on the rooftop, uncaramelized.



The other thing I noticed is that the Gozer story is either complete bunk, or Peter gets it wrong. He says Zuul was worshipped by Sumerians, Mesopotamians, and Hittites in 6000 BC. Sumerian history doesn't begin until about 3000 BC, and they are Mesopotamians, albeit speakers of a weird language isolate. Hittite history doesn't begin until about a millennium later. We have theories about prehistoric religion, but not enough to make bold claims about the names of deities and their relationships with each other. Of course, the Ghostbusters being who they are, they could have gotten all this from a medium channeling a dead Sumerian.
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By roguespectre
#4828582
When Dana first visits the Ghostbusters to discuss Zuul living in her fridge, aside from visiting the hall of records, Egon and Ray volunteer to look through books like Tobin's Spirit Guide and Spates Catalog. Considering their profession and areas of study, they probably possess or have access to more archaic and occult reference materials that would provide that information (within the Ghostbusters universe). It is possible that they spent a fair amount of time, between busts, researching Zuul, Gozer, Ivo Shandor and Dana's apartment building. In context of the movie, I don't know that Peter necessarily gets it wrong.
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By Ivo Shandor
#4828648
roguespectre wrote:When Dana first visits the Ghostbusters to discuss Zuul living in her fridge, aside from visiting the hall of records, Egon and Ray volunteer to look through books like Tobin's Spirit Guide and Spates Catalog. Considering their profession and areas of study, they probably possess or have access to more archaic and occult reference materials that would provide that information (within the Ghostbusters universe). It is possible that they spent a fair amount of time, between busts, researching Zuul, Gozer, Ivo Shandor and Dana's apartment building. In context of the movie, I don't know that Peter necessarily gets it wrong.
Bingo.
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By Phasmatum Fractor
#4829059
roguespectre wrote:When Dana first visits the Ghostbusters to discuss Zuul living in her fridge, aside from visiting the hall of records, Egon and Ray volunteer to look through books like Tobin's Spirit Guide and Spates Catalog. Considering their profession and areas of study, they probably possess or have access to more archaic and occult reference materials that would provide that information (within the Ghostbusters universe). It is possible that they spent a fair amount of time, between busts, researching Zuul, Gozer, Ivo Shandor and Dana's apartment building. In context of the movie, I don't know that Peter necessarily gets it wrong.
Peter absolutely got it wrong, unless the Ghostbusters universe presupposes a radically different history and prehistory than what we have in the real world. Not just the insertion of a few deities, but major changes to the history of civilizations, moving landmark events and peoples around by millennia. It is more likely that one of the writers knew that written records go back six thousand years, and that was unintentionally changed to six thousand BC at some time in the writing or filming process.

1. There were no written records in 6000 BC, so we don't know for certain who or what was worshipped then. The first historical records are scanty and unreliable, and don't tell us much about the pre-literate period--mostly lists of kings who are probably mythical anyway. For Peter (or Tobin or Spates or anyone) to associate the name "Zuul" with the year 6000 BC, the invention of writing must have taken place 2500-3000 years earlier. We must also assume the 6000 BC style of cuneiform and dialect of Sumerian are intelligible to today's Sumerologists.

2. Sumerians were Mesopotamians. The pairing of "Mesopotamians and Sumerians" doesn't make sense, unless the 6000 BC Sumerians were located somewhere else. That changes both the time and the location of the invention of writing, and upends the whole "cradle of civilization" thing.

3. There were no Hittites in 6000 BC. There might have been Hattians, in the land that would later be occupied by the Hittites, but they left no written records. The people who would later become the Hittites were probably still located in or near the Indo-European Urheimat, and would have had little or no contact with Mesopotamian religion.

The only way for Peter's statement to make sense in the context of the movie is to read a ton of stuff into the movie that wasn't really there. It's much simpler just to say he was wrong about something. (Or a writer or actor was wrong, or it was an intentional error as a kind of in-joke aimed at people who pay attention to such things.)
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By EctoPrimer
#4829060
"Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable.
You are a poor scientist Dr Venkman"

I'm gonna guess his notes were just written down half a+!!, and he's a psychologist, not a historian. A part of the fun of Gb is the fake mythology. Like Vigo the Carpathian. It's a made up country, Vigo is basically Vlad the Impaler combined with Rasputin
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By Spengler02
#4829077
EctoPrimer wrote:Vigo is basically Vlad the Impaler combined with Rasputin
Ra ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen...
Last edited by Kingpin on March 12th, 2015, 6:30 am, edited 1 time in total.Reason: Removed extraneous quote code
By Phasmatum Fractor
#4829130
EctoPrimer wrote:"Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable.
You are a poor scientist Dr Venkman"

I'm gonna guess his notes were just written down half a+!!, and he's a psychologist, not a historian.
Were Venkman here, he would point out he has doctorates in psychology and parapsychology. And he's an experimentalist, so even if his methods are sloppy, he must take pretty good notes to transform his sloppy methods into publishable research (how else would the dean know his conclusions were unsound?). But, if we are to take the dean's statements at face value--and I'm not sure I do--that supports the idea that Venkman saw "six thousand years ago" and thought "six thousand BC." It seems to be an unlikely mistake for someone with Venkman's obvious intellectual acuity, but maybe he was distracted that day.
A part of the fun of Gb is the fake mythology. Like Vigo the Carpathian. It's a made up country, Vigo is basically Vlad the Impaler combined with Rasputin
Vigo was the ruler of "Carpathian Moldavia." That might not have been the name of an actual principality, but it's geographically and historically feasible. References to the "scourge of Carpathia" and "the Carpathian" are clearly references to the Carpathians, or Karpati. The English rendering doesn't quite work, but it gets the point across, and includes a clever pun ("Vigo the Mountain").
By roguespectre
#4829139
If you want to take the historical accuracy route, then yes Peter is wrong. There would also be no Gozer, Gozer was in fact a Chevrolet dealership in New York and a name that appeared on the walls and other objects in a document haunting in England.

The reason I said "in the context of the movie" was because it is a work of fiction and liberties were taken to make the story work. What they state as fact can't and shouldn't be taken as completely accurate as a result.

Within the Ghostbusters universe, they have access to information that may not really exist in the real world.
By Alex Newborn
#4829148
roguespectre wrote:Gozer was in fact a Chevrolet dealership in New York and a name that appeared on the walls and other objects in a document haunting in England.
You mean 'documented haunting'. As soon as I saw your above sentence, I recognized it from a footnote on p. 97 of Making Ghostbusters by Don Shay.

"Gozer is based on several things. For one, there's a Gozer Chevrolet dealership in upstate New York. A little more to the point, though, is the fact that Gozer was a name that related to a documented haunting in England -- the one Poltergeistwas based on, in fact. During this particular haunting, the name Gozer appeared mysteriously throughout the house, written on walls and things. So we figured we might as well take something that had been reported in the public domain as an actual occurrence and use it in the film as our main demon and supernatural force." ~ Dan Aykroyd

I did a little digging online this morning and located a summary of the book This House Is Haunted by Guy Lyon Playfair, about the Enfield Poltergeist in Middlesex England from August of 1977 to April of 1979.

http://www.varietyportal.com/enfield-poltergeist/

I can't find any corroboration for the name being written on walls, but found this reference to Gozer on the second page of this online article. It states that a medium named Annie Shaw was brought in and while in a trance she moaned, "Gozer, Gozer, help me. Elvie, come here."

After waking from her trance, Annie explained that 'Gozer was a user of black magic and Elvie was an elemental (a form of lower spirit who is generally used by other spirits to do things for them) who was being used by Gozer.'

That certainly seems in keeping with the way the fictional Gozer uses subordinate creatures like Vinz and Zuul.

Alex
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By Ivo Shandor
#4830062
Phasmatum Fractor wrote: There were no written records in 6000 BC, so we don't know for certain who or what was worshipped then. The first historical records are scanty and unreliable, and don't tell us much about the pre-literate period--mostly lists of kings who are probably mythical anyway. For Peter (or Tobin or Spates or anyone) to associate the name "Zuul" with the year 6000 BC, the invention of writing must have taken place 2500-3000 years earlier.
Or Tobin or Spates found a Sumerian text that no one else has access to that states that Zuul and Gozer were worshipped 3000 years earlier. Is that an acceptable alternate explanation?
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By ghoulishfright
#4834424
Don't know how I ever missed this, but I just noticed that when Venkman first visits Dana-as-Zuul, her apartment walls are oozing with ectoplasm. It's kinda hard to see on a smaller screen, but I thought it was a cool touch. I'm not sure how the slime got there, though. Maybe from some more of Gozer's minions stopping by…

Also, I just noticed--in the scene where Janine and Egon question Vinz Clortho--that Janine claims she's psychic. She says, "Listen, I'm usually very psychic, and I have a terrible feeling that something awful's gonna happen to you. I'm afraid you're gonna die." . . . I always wrote that off before, but now I'm wondering if she was actually serious about it. Does Janine actually have some kind of psi ability? And is that why she was hired as the Ghostbusters secretary? It would kinda make sense, and add another dimension to her character...
By Alex Newborn
#4840269
Trying to find good reference pics of Peter's Motorola holster, I am chuckling over the continuity in the hotel scenes. When they fire upon the maid's trolley, his MT500 is in the holster the right way. When he tells her "We thought you were someone else", the walkie-talkie and holster disappear completely. And when he sees Onionhead and draws the MT500 from the holster to say "Come in, Ray" it's now in there backwards, so Bill wouldn't have to rotate it to speak into it.

Alex
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By Heroic35
#4840681
ghoulishfright wrote:Don't know how I ever missed this, but I just noticed that when Venkman first visits Dana-as-Zuul, her apartment walls are oozing with ectoplasm. It's kinda hard to see on a smaller screen, but I thought it was a cool touch. I'm not sure how the slime got there, though. Maybe from some more of Gozer's minions stopping by…

Also, I just noticed--in the scene where Janine and Egon question Vinz Clortho--that Janine claims she's psychic. She says, "Listen, I'm usually very psychic, and I have a terrible feeling that something awful's gonna happen to you. I'm afraid you're gonna die." . . . I always wrote that off before, but now I'm wondering if she was actually serious about it. Does Janine actually have some kind of psi ability? And is that why she was hired as the Ghostbusters secretary? It would kinda make sense, and add another dimension to her character...

As a paranormal investigator in real life, I find this to be Dan's approach to be a take on people who claim to be over "in with the paranormal" but also dramatic when it comes to the paranormal. She's THE expert who jumps to the WORST possibility which Egon writes off with kind of a shock reaction. He's like "okay, there's things that are real but she's crazy" with his reaction.

It's a subtle inside joke that might go missed. Or at least that's how I interpreted it.
By gold333
#4842162
Phasmatum Fractor wrote:
roguespectre wrote:When Dana first visits the Ghostbusters to discuss Zuul living in her fridge, aside from visiting the hall of records, Egon and Ray volunteer to look through books like Tobin's Spirit Guide and Spates Catalog. Considering their profession and areas of study, they probably possess or have access to more archaic and occult reference materials that would provide that information (within the Ghostbusters universe). It is possible that they spent a fair amount of time, between busts, researching Zuul, Gozer, Ivo Shandor and Dana's apartment building. In context of the movie, I don't know that Peter necessarily gets it wrong.
Peter absolutely got it wrong, unless the Ghostbusters universe presupposes a radically different history and prehistory than what we have in the real world. Not just the insertion of a few deities, but major changes to the history of civilizations, moving landmark events and peoples around by millennia. It is more likely that one of the writers knew that written records go back six thousand years, and that was unintentionally changed to six thousand BC at some time in the writing or filming process.

1. There were no written records in 6000 BC, so we don't know for certain who or what was worshipped then. The first historical records are scanty and unreliable, and don't tell us much about the pre-literate period--mostly lists of kings who are probably mythical anyway. For Peter (or Tobin or Spates or anyone) to associate the name "Zuul" with the year 6000 BC, the invention of writing must have taken place 2500-3000 years earlier. We must also assume the 6000 BC style of cuneiform and dialect of Sumerian are intelligible to today's Sumerologists.

2. Sumerians were Mesopotamians. The pairing of "Mesopotamians and Sumerians" doesn't make sense, unless the 6000 BC Sumerians were located somewhere else. That changes both the time and the location of the invention of writing, and upends the whole "cradle of civilization" thing.

3. There were no Hittites in 6000 BC. There might have been Hattians, in the land that would later be occupied by the Hittites, but they left no written records. The people who would later become the Hittites were probably still located in or near the Indo-European Urheimat, and would have had little or no contact with Mesopotamian religion.

The only way for Peter's statement to make sense in the context of the movie is to read a ton of stuff into the movie that wasn't really there. It's much simpler just to say he was wrong about something. (Or a writer or actor was wrong, or it was an intentional error as a kind of in-joke aimed at people who pay attention to such things.)
While you are right about the history, don't forget that there are plenty of (proto)writing systems from the 7th millenium (Neolithic) that have not been deciphered yet. The Vinca script, Jiahu, Dispilio, etc. all remain to be decrypted.

In addition, there is a slight nuanced differrence between Sumerians and Mesopotamians. The first civilization of Sumer was localised in South Mesopotamia (the Ubaidians) from around the 5th millenium BC. These people were however evolved from the preceding 7th millenium Samarra and Hassuna cultures of the Northern Mesopotamian region. So one could say Mesopotamian predates Sumerian.

Whichever way you look at it, it is the cradle of civilisation. It makes sense in a way too, seeing as the human race started in Africa, the bottleneck on the way out (Arabian peninsula) created the first real get together party with different tribes working and living together, jumpstarting civilisation.

PS: also the names make no sense:

-Vinz is Germanic short for Vincent (from Roman Vincere, to conquer)
-Gozer is Yiddish a Semitic language (Also Germanic) Meanin guy, (see English "Geezer", Dutch "Gozer"), from Hebrew Chatan, meaning the chosen one or husband.
-Clortho the Th digraph is Greek but is presumed to have gotten there from Punic, which is again a Semitic language.
-Shandor is a gypsy/Romani Hungarian form of Alexander, from Persian/Urdu Shandar
-Zuul, as far as I can tell, like Clortho, is meaningless but a telltale (English)Ango-Dutch-Germanic invention with the vowel doubling and "l" phoneme (Velarized Alveolar Lateral Approximant)
Anyhow this occurs in very few other European languages and appears to be an invention from the imagination of a native English speaker :p I hope I'm wrong on the Zuul explanation though.
If it was spelled Zu-l, it's from Arabic and means "posessor of".

On the whole a lot of Germanic/Semitic and no Sumerian sounding names, which usually end in a vowel like I or U. (Enki, Anu, Nisiku, Enlil, etc.)
By LandoSystem
#4842209
gold333 wrote:PS: also the names make no sense:
I always assumed these were just their names. Extra-dimensional in origin and not names given to them by natives / humans. Which may be why they were so hard to research. Zuul, Gozer and Vinz Clortho may be their true names, and not what the ancient civilizations, and thus ancient stories or tests, usually called them.
Vinz lists off a series of Gozer's aliases (so does Gozer later) and lists other tribes or entities from parallel dimensions. Zuul may not even be the name for a specific creature. I always took the "Zuuls and Shubs" line to mean they were an entire race Gozer had decimated or enslaved. (It's spelled "Zull's" in some supplemental material but that kind of irks me. It seems too similar)
This may also hearken back to earlier drafts (if I'm remembering correctly) where Vinz and Zuul are more sympathetic characters who are treated poorly by Gozer. Makes me think Vinz is the type who is brainwashed and raves about his new master and is allowed to keep his own identity. Where maybe Zuul had done something to lose hers. Sort of like saying, "This is John Smith, and this is a woman."
Also I don't believe Shandor was supposed to be Sumerian / Babylonian or whatever in origin.
ghoulishfright wrote:Also, I just noticed--in the scene where Janine and Egon question Vinz Clortho--that Janine claims she's psychic. She says, "Listen, I'm usually very psychic, and I have a terrible feeling that something awful's gonna happen to you. I'm afraid you're gonna die." . . . I always wrote that off before, but now I'm wondering if she was actually serious about it. Does Janine actually have some kind of psi ability? And is that why she was hired as the Ghostbusters secretary? It would kinda make sense, and add another dimension to her character...
There is a theory that the Ghostbusters all died at the end of the first film. The happily after ever ending was the start of their afterlife and they're doomed to repeat themselves for eternity... which explains Ghostbusters II.
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By Fritz
#4842232
gold333 wrote:-Shandor is a gypsy/Romani Hungarian form of Alexander, from Persian/Urdu Shandar
LandoSystem wrote: Also I don't believe Shandor was supposed to be Sumerian / Babylonian or whatever in origin.
The GBI supplement Tobin's Spirit Guide suggested Shandor was Albanian...which geographically does match up with what gold333 said about the origin of the name.
By LandoSystem
#4842234
That may be true but I disagree with the assertion that it should be lumped in with Germanic or anglicized names that "make no sense" in this context.
I don't think it is ever implied Shandor had ancient ties with Gozer.
So whether his name does or doesn't have roots in the region is kind of irrelevant. He could be Klaus Von Schmidt and it would make as much sense as anything.
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By Matt Campbell
#4845842
20 pages is a lot to read to see if someone else has noticed, so I apologize if anyone else has indeed pointed it out already.

I just finished watching Ghostbusters with my youngest son and I noticed that after they crossed the streams and blow up Stay Puft when Ray and Winston first emerge from where they wound up after the explosion Ray's back is almost completely covered in marshmallow and his front isn't covered as much, but seconds later as he walks out by the alter calling out for Egon he has just as much marshmallow on his front as he has on his back.
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By Smog
#4846466
This may have been mentioned already, but I just thought about it the other day:

Ray and Egon do not prepare Venkman at all for the Sedgewick. Ray goes in with the Ecto Goggles, and Egon gets the PKE, but they give Venkman absolutely no method or equipment by which to try and find a ghost. Obviously you could say they're all responsible for their own gear, but we all know Ray and Egon would know they'd have to babysit Peter and provide him with everything.

Just somewhat amusing to watch Ray and Egon walk around using equipment while Venkman just wanders the halls without purpose. He didn't even bring the sniffer.
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By below_radar_00
#4846483
Smog wrote:This may have been mentioned already, but I just thought about it the other day:

Ray and Egon do not prepare Venkman at all for the Sedgewick. Ray goes in with the Ecto Goggles, and Egon gets the PKE, but they give Venkman absolutely no method or equipment by which to try and find a ghost. Obviously you could say they're all responsible for their own gear, but we all know Ray and Egon would know they'd have to babysit Peter and provide him with everything.

Just somewhat amusing to watch Ray and Egon walk around using equipment while Venkman just wanders the halls without purpose. He didn't even bring the sniffer.
Haha. That's pretty good! I've never made that observation before!
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By Kingpin
#4846568
Alternately, they just had enough money by that point to make one set of Goggles (and not enough additional cash from getting the loan on Ray's house to build another PKE Meter).

Alternately alternately: Venkman either chose not to learn how to operate that stuff, or it may be on a technical level that is beyond his capabilities.
By CarpathianKitten
#4851393
Please excuse me if this has already been brought up (20 pages. Sheesh). But has it ever irked anyone that when Louis has his back to the restaurant window (in Central Park). The terror dog roars at him, and when he drops down you can't see the terror dog outside the winow? !
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By Kingpin
#4851396
I can't recall if I actually read it somewhere, of if it's just speculation that the Terror Dog wasn't yet finished for the confrontation at Tavern on the Green.
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By d_osborn
#4851398
Kingpin wrote:I can't recall if I actually read it somewhere, of if it's just speculation that the Terror Dog wasn't yet finished for the confrontation at Tavern on the Green.
Yeah, the Louis/NYC shots were some of the earliest of the production.
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