Ghostbusters 2

Plot synopsis

After the defeat of Gozer, the Ghostbusters were sued by city, county, and state agencies in New York for the property damage caused during the fight. A judicial restraining order bars them from paranormal investigation, which puts them out of business. Five years later, Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore scrape by as entertainers at children's birthday parties, Egon Spengler runs a lab studying human emotions, and Peter Venkman hosts a psychic-themed television program, The World of the Psychic.

Dana Barrett, now a single mother to her infant son Oscar, is restoring paintings at the Manhattan Museum of Art when Oscar's stroller rolls away on its own and stops in the middle of a busy intersection. She turns to Egon for help, and the old team reunites. Investigating the spot where the stroller stopped, Ray descends into the street and discovers a river of pink slime flowing beneath the city. The slime reacts to negative emotion, and the accumulated bad temper of New Yorkers is feeding it.

At the museum, Dana's supervisor Janosz Poha is possessed by the spirit of Vigo the Carpathian, a tyrant trapped inside a self-portrait. Vigo intends to be reborn in a living child and selects Oscar, with Janosz acting as his agent. The Ghostbusters, put on trial for breaking the restraining order, are saved when the slime erupts in the courtroom and releases the ghosts of two executed murderers, the Scoleri Brothers; capturing them publicly gets the charges dropped and the order lifted.

The team's warnings about the rising slime are dismissed by Mayor Lenny and his aide Jack Hardemeyer, who has them committed to a psychiatric hospital on the eve of a citywide paranormal eruption. Once freed, they animate the Statue of Liberty using the positive-charged "mood slime" and walk her through Manhattan to lift the city's spirits and break Vigo's hold. They reach the museum, drive Vigo back into the painting, and destroy him for good as the New Year crowd's good cheer drains his power. Peter and Dana reconcile, and the city celebrates the Ghostbusters once more.

Development

Columbia Pictures wanted a sequel almost immediately, but Reitman and the principal cast were reluctant. They had considered the first film conclusive and wanted to pursue other projects.¹² A sequel was being discussed by December 1984.³

When David Puttnam became head of Columbia Pictures in 1986, he had no interest in a follow-up, at one point weighing a sequel made with a new, lower-salaried cast.⁴ Columbia executives in New York tried to set up a secret deal that would shield the project from Puttnam, but it never materialized because Aykroyd, Murray, and the others could not align their schedules.⁵ There were rumors as early as 1986 that Aykroyd was writing a script,⁶ and he completed a first draft on his own in September 1986, titled "Ghostbusters: The Seed."⁷

Dawn Steel took over Columbia in 1987 and made the sequel a priority; getting it off the ground had been one of the first things she raised in her job interview.⁸⁹ A long lunch in early 1988 at Jimmy's in Beverly Hills, attended by Murray, Ramis, Aykroyd, Reitman, and CAA representatives, was meant mainly to see whether the team would reunite at all. By the end of it, they had laughed enough to decide they wanted to work together again.¹⁰¹¹ The film was made on a budget in the range of $25 to $30 million; the cast deferred their usual salaries to keep the cost down, which studio sources estimated would otherwise have approached $50 million.¹²¹³¹⁴

Scripting

An early, discarded version of the story was nicknamed "The Last of the Ghostbusters" by Murray, partly to ensure there would be nothing resembling a third film.¹⁵ Once Aykroyd and Ramis began co-writing, the story shifted. They brought Murray two ideas, one of which involved Sigourney Weaver returning as Dana.¹⁶¹⁷ The first idea introduced the river of slime, built on the notion that negative human emotions have consequences and can build up in big cities; Vigo was eventually created as the force behind it.¹⁸ The second idea grew out of an image of an infant who suddenly wakes with adult agility and focus. Ramis initially thought the baby would belong to a married Peter and Dana, but found the marriage angle a creative dead end and reworked it so that Dana was a divorced mother.¹⁹

Ramis also drafted other versions, including one in which the Ghostbusters had become a successful worldwide company, Ghostbusters Inc., and another that picked up directly from the end of the first film. He scripted alone in early 1987 while Aykroyd filmed The Couch Trip, after which the pair worked on rewrites in Aykroyd's bungalow on the Universal Studios lot.²⁰²¹

Production

Reitman and producer Michael Gross chose Industrial Light & Magic and effects supervisor Dennis Muren for the visual effects; because of his schedule, Reitman only spent three days at ILM shooting bluescreen.²² Principal photography began on November 28, 1988 in New York City,²³ with a tight sixty-seven-day shoot.²⁴ The runaway baby-carriage sequence was filmed early, during two weeks of New York location work.²⁵ The Statue of Liberty marching scene was among the last shot in the city; about 460 extras sang to an empty Fifth Avenue at 2 a.m. so the statue could be added later through rotoscoping, animation, and matte work.²⁶

After the New York exteriors, the production moved to Los Angeles, where most interiors were filmed at The Burbank Studios. A large duplicate of the Statue of Liberty was built on a sound stage, deliberately scaled up by about 30 percent so the actors inside her crown would read clearly; her head sat on gimbals for a walking motion, intercut with miniatures and an actor in a costume. Principal photography wrapped after about thirteen weeks.²⁷

Preview audiences showed that the slime, the ghosts, and Vigo needed to be tied together more clearly, and that the good-slime and bad-slime concept needed expanding.²⁸ Added scenes, including the impaled heads and the ghost train in the sewer, sent the crew back to New York for more location shooting only about three months before release.²⁹ Reitman also moved the release date up from late June to June 16, 1989 after learning Batman was opening on June 23; the change forced ILM's shot count up from around 110 to a final 180 and compressed an already brutal schedule, with nine units shooting at once for weeks.³⁰³¹³² Available Light, Visual Concept Engineering, Apogee, and Pacific Title were brought in to absorb overflow effects and optical work.³³³⁴ Four weeks before release, ILM could not convincingly complete a scene of ghosts pouring out of the old U.S. Custom House, so it was replaced with a new scene of Mayor Lenny describing a conversation with the ghost of Fiorello La Guardia.³⁵

Equipment and the mood slime

The film introduced the psychomagnotheric slime, a substance that responds to human emotion. It boils and lashes out in the presence of anger and abuse, but turns positive and energizing when exposed to good feeling and music; in one scene the team gets a sample to dance to a song played through a toaster. The Ghostbusters weaponized the positive form in the Slime Blower, a backpack sprayer used to charge the Statue of Liberty and to drive Vigo out of his host. Returning gear from the first film includes the Proton Pack, the PKE Meter, the Ecto Goggles, and the Ghost Trap. The original Ecto-1 appears alongside its refit, the Ecto-1A.

Theatrical release and box office

Ghostbusters II opened at number one in North America on June 16, 1989. By the end of its domestic theatrical run, the film had grossed over $112 million.³⁶

Criticism

On release, the film drew criticism for being less funny than the original and for a plot many felt rehashed the first movie. Some objected that the scarier ghosts made it less child friendly. Others disliked the romance between Janine Melnitz and Louis Tully, which cut against the Egon-and-Janine relationship that had developed in the first film and in the animated series, and which contributed to the franchise effectively splitting into two continuities: one built on the films and one built on the first film plus the animated series. Reitman pushed back on Murray's later remark that the story had been sacrificed to special effects, instead pointing to the third act with the Statue of Liberty as the part they never quite got right; he felt they could not top the first film's ending but had still made a worthy sequel.³⁷³⁸

Influence on The Real Ghostbusters

The Real Ghostbusters kept the franchise in the public eye through the late 1980s and helped sustain interest that fed into the sequel. According to producer Joe Medjuck, the cartoon's only real influence on Ghostbusters II was bringing Slimer back.³⁹

Several later episodes nod to the film, indicating that some version of the Ghostbusters II events happened in the animated continuity:

"Something's Going Around" gave Janine a hairstyle matching her Ghostbusters II look and marked Louis Tully's first appearance, already working with the team.
"Partners in Slime" uses mood slime that Egon says he collected the year before, right after the team defeated Vigo, though in animation it is yellow rather than pink and grants Peter ghost-like abilities.⁴⁰
"Mean Green Teen Machine" features slime briefly bringing the Statue of Liberty to life, echoing the film, and includes Winston referencing what happened "the last time we dug up the street."⁴¹
"The Treasure of Sierra Tamale" uses the term "psychomagnotheric," coined in Ghostbusters II.⁴²

Versions and releases

Over the years, Ghostbusters II was usually issued on home video packaged with the first film in box sets. Unlike Ghostbusters, the sequel's home releases did not include deleted scenes, production images, or interviews.

In the United States, the film premiered on broadcast television on the ABC network on Sunday, February 16, 1992, at 9:00 PM Eastern, as part of "The ABC Sunday Night Movie." In the edited-for-television cut, Peter's line "There seem to be three million completely miserable assholes living in the tri-state area" was replaced with an alternate take: "There are about three million completely miserable wretched walking worms in this town."

Legacy in later films

Later entries in the movie canon reach back to Ghostbusters II. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), the Ecto-1A that Sony had kept in storage from the second film was one of the donor cars used to rebuild the Ecto-1 for the new movie, per production designer Francois Audouy.⁴³ Afterlife also carries the running gag about Egon straightening a Slinky as a child, with a straightened Slinky placed on Phoebe Spengler's nightstand. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) continues the same continuity.

References

Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, p. 118. Insight Editions, San Rafael, CA, USA. ISBN 9781608875108. Dan Aykroyd: "[The studio] wanted to do it immediately, but everybody had other things going on in their lives." ↩
Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, p. 118. Insight Editions, San Rafael, CA, USA. ISBN 9781608875108. Ivan Reitman: "Really, it was that we didn't want to do it. For the longest period we just found no reason. We felt very happy with the first film, and we all had other things we wanted to do." ↩
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever, p. 75. Lyons Press, Essex, CT, USA. ISBN 9781493048243. ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 54. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. ↩
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever, p. 96. Lyons Press, Essex, CT, USA. ISBN 9781493048243. ↩
Lowry, Brian (1986). "Return of The Real Ghostbusters," Starlog #111 (October 1986), pp. 11, 69. Starlog Group, Inc., USA. ↩
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever, p. 101. Lyons Press, Essex, CT, USA. ISBN 9781493048243. ↩
Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, p. 118. Insight Editions, San Rafael, CA, USA. ISBN 9781608875108. ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 54. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. Dawn Steel: "When I was being interviewed for this job, one of the first things we talked about was the Ghostbusters sequel and getting it off the ground." ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 55. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 56. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. Bill Murray: "But in the course of lunch we had so many laughs and so much fun that it became clear we'd really enjoy working together again." ↩
Bernard, Jami (July 1989). "Prime Slime with Ghostbusters," Fangoria #84, p. 30. Fangoria Publishing, Atlanta, USA. Michael Gross: "About $25 to $30 million. The stars are deferring their salaries in the interests of keeping the film reasonable." ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 54. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. ↩
Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, p. 54. Wenner Media LLC, New York City, USA. Studio sources noted that customary up-front salaries could have pushed the cost near $50 million. ↩
Spelling, Ian (1989). "Bill Murray Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!" Starlog #140, p. 32. Starlog Group, Inc., USA. Bill Murray: "I've suggested The Last of the Ghostbusters, to make sure there won't be anything like a Ghostbusters III." ↩
Spelling, Ian (1989). "Bill Murray Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!" Starlog #140, p. 32. Starlog Group, Inc., USA. ↩
Spelling, Ian (1989). "Bill Murray Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!" Starlog #140, p. 32. Starlog Group, Inc., USA. Murray notes Sigourney Weaver's return was one of the original ideas. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 5. Cinefex, USA. Harold Ramis: "We started out with the moral notion that negative human emotions have consequences... eventually we created a tyrant motivating all of this, Vigo the Carpathian." ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, pp. 5-6. Cinefex, USA. Harold Ramis on the possessed-infant idea and dropping the Peter-and-Dana marriage angle in favor of Dana as a divorced mother. ↩
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever, p. 102. Lyons Press, Essex, CT, USA. ISBN 9781493048243. ↩
"Later with Bob Costas," June 15, 1989. Harold Ramis describes drafts in which the team ran a worldwide franchise (Ghostbusters Inc.) and another that picked up at the end of the first film. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 6. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross on Reitman shooting bluescreen for three days at ILM. ↩
Spelling, Ian (1989). "Bill Murray Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!" Starlog #140, p. 32. Starlog Group, Inc., USA. ↩
Bernard, Jami (July 1989). "Prime Slime with Ghostbusters," Fangoria #84, p. 28. Fangoria Publishing, Atlanta, USA. Michael Gross references the "tight 67-day shoot." ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 6. Cinefex, USA. ↩
Bernard, Jami (July 1989). "Prime Slime with Ghostbusters," Fangoria #84, p. 28. Fangoria Publishing, Atlanta, USA. Describes 460 extras filming the Fifth Avenue Statue of Liberty scene at 2 a.m. ↩
1999 remaster DVD production notes for Ghostbusters II. "Principal photography was completed after 13 weeks of filming." ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 25. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross on early preview audiences and reshooting the good-slime/bad-slime material. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 23. Cinefex, USA. On the severed heads and ghost train being added after principal photography wrapped. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 25. Cinefex, USA. Michael Gross on moving the release to June 16 to avoid Batman. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 25. Cinefex, USA. Dennis Muren on the shot count rising from 110 to 180. ↩
Vas, M. & Duignan, P. (1996). Industrial Light & Magic: Into the Digital Realm, p. 304. Industrial Light & Magic, USA. Dennis Muren: "At one time we had nine crews shooting rubber ghosts, a river of slime, smoke clouds, the Slimer ghost character, and a walking Statue of Liberty." ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 26. Cinefex, USA. On Available Light, Visual Concept Engineering, and Apogee contributing effects work. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 26. Cinefex, USA. Sam Nicholson on interactive lighting for the ghost train plate. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex #40, p. 33. Cinefex, USA. On Apogee's New York location work; the Custom House substitution is corroborated by David Margulies' account of being recalled to shoot the Mayor's La Guardia scene. ↩
1999 remaster DVD production notes for Ghostbusters II, stating the film grossed over $112 million in its domestic theatrical run. ↩
Labrecque, Jeff (2014). "Ghostbusters: An Oral History," Entertainment Weekly. Ivan Reitman: "I just think we never got the last act right, with the Statue of Liberty. We couldn't top the ending of the (first) movie, but I thought it was a worthy sequel." ↩
Labrecque, Jeff (2014). "Ghostbusters: An Oral History," Entertainment Weekly. ↩
Medjuck, Joe, interview (September 15, 2014). Joe Medjuck: "We were aware of the cartoon show during the making of Ghostbusters II. Only the bringing back of Slimer was an influence." ↩
The Real Ghostbusters, "Partners in Slime" (1989). Time Life Entertainment DVD release. Egon: "I collected it last year after we battled Vigo the Carpathian." ↩
The Real Ghostbusters, "Mean Green Teen Machine" (1990). Time Life Entertainment DVD release. Winston: "Remember what happened last time we dug up the street?" ↩
The Real Ghostbusters, "The Treasure of Sierra Tamale" (1991). Time Life Entertainment DVD release. Egon uses the term "psychomagnotheric." ↩
Audouy, Francois, interview (December 6, 2021), describing the use of a stored Ghostbusters II Ecto-1A and a second 1959 Cadillac as donor cars to rebuild the Ecto-1 for Ghostbusters: Afterlife. ↩

Plot synopsis

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Ghostbusters 2

Plot synopsis

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Development

Scripting

Production

Equipment and the mood slime

Theatrical release and box office

Criticism

Influence on The Real Ghostbusters

Versions and releases

Legacy in later films

References

Plot synopsis

Plot synopsis

Sign up free to join the GBFans.com community.

Sign up free to join the GBFans.com community.

Development

Scripting

Production

Equipment and the mood slime

Theatrical release and box office

Criticism

Influence on The Real Ghostbusters

Versions and releases

Legacy in later films

References

Footnotes