- March 5th, 2015, 3:28 am#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.
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.
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.
EctoPrimer wrote:Vigo is basically Vlad the Impaler combined with RasputinRa ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen...
EctoPrimer wrote:"Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable.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.
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 RasputinVigo 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").
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.
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?
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...
Phasmatum Fractor wrote: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.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.)
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.
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.
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.
Smog wrote:This may have been mentioned already, but I just thought about it the other day:Haha. That's pretty good! I've never made that observation before!
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.
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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