14 Pages of Ghostbusters: Hellbent Reviewed

I thought I would post my thoughts on the 14 pages of Dan Aykroyd's 1999 Ghostbusters 3 draft which were posted up on Proton Charging this weekend.  Read those here and here.

I write this knowing full well that had this script ever been optioned, it would have seen major overhauls with some time in Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman's hands. I trust they would iron out some of my qualms and these scenes could have been pretty worthwhile.

Proton Pros

• A bust at a bar. Sounds fun and has yet to be done!

• Accessing other dimensions, slowly with Glueball particles, something I've never seen talked about in a film before and which fits in great with the Ghostbusters world.

• Egon's line about socks.  Funny!

• Thinking about 20 years worth of soul storage and transfers.

• FRV... unexplained but we can assume it means 'Free Roaming Vapor'.  Love the lingo.

• Ghostbusters Jersey and the fact that it's totally gross. Awesome. I love how it sounds like a futuristic trash dump.

• It seems like this script is leaning towards a 'send the ghosts back where they came from' story and delving into the technological mythology far more than the second Ghostbusers. Feels new and less like a retread. I like that.

• "Ghostbusters, Ready to Belive You Since 1985" That just feels right.

Containment Unit Cons

• Could use a little more Venkman. We don't see him at all over the course of 14 on screen moments, wonder where he is or if he is even included in the script.  We know Murray wasn't too keen on a third film, so they were prepared for that, it seems.

• Those names! Franky, Moira, Carla? Ughh... then again names like Winston, Egon and Janine are kind of odd and we've come to accept them. Naming is hard. I'd rather we have Frank, Mora, and Carly.

• Franky and Lovell are completely ridiculous. Even in 1999, these characters would be laughed at. There's just a hair too much character in these descriptions, they all just come with too many accessories.

• "FRANKY: A pierced, purple haired, short, stocky, bulked up muscle builder, Jersey punker." That's just three ridiculous things too many. Just having a Jersey muscle builder is a bit much, without having him be pierced and purple haired. A pretty forced delve into youth culture. I think it would be enough just to say, he's from Jersey.

• "LOVELL: A cool, lanky, handsome FUBU devotee, with shades, dreads, and gold jewelery . He is attempting to grow a moustache." Ok, I'll accept the dreads, maybe the shades, but gold jewelery and FUBU?  Is this supposed to be worn along with Ghostbusters gear?  Add in sunglasses and now it's just silly.

• The Master GB Rap. What does Master GB even MEAN? Dear goodness. Leave the song writing to the Bobby Browns and Ray Parker Jr.s of the world.

• Aykroyd ditches the firehouse for a converted city sanitation garage.  While I'm totally willing to accept additional locations, especially converted city property, I wouldn't want to lose the iconic Firehouse. That should always be HQ, even if a car isn't running in and out of it.

Neither Here Nor There:

• The bartender has Ghostbusters on speed dial? Does this mean they live in a future overrun with Ghosts? It would seem so, considering the size of the Ghostbusters operation. A society overrun by Ghosts takes away from the reality of the series a bit though. Then again it also states that they are on hard times right now.  Maybe the bar just frequently haunted? Maybe don't have a fleet of mechanics working on 30 cars?

• Apparently Aykroyd calls the No-Ghost Logo a "Mooglie"

• Converted Buicks, Packards and 80's Cadillacs.  That would be a sight to see.  Toy makers would have loved it.

Overall

I was most excited about the next step for their technology. First we saw them develop tools to track, wrangle, capture and store ghosts. Then we saw them develop tech to change the polarity of ecto residue.  I got to play an early build of the Video Game and it originally had portal-esque dimension jumping gun, but I never knew how this would fit into their system as a useful tool for busting ghosts. We ended up with slime tethers, freeze rays and boson dart blasts, which worked great for gameplay but would be less interesting in a film.  Interdimensional tinkering makes some great movie fodder though, and I am all in on that respect.

The new characters don't say much here so it's tough to judge them properly.  The fleet of Ghostbusters sounds great in structure, but I don't feel that New York should possibly need that many Ghostbusters. 

I don't know about the rest of the script, it's known that Manhattan goes to hell, but the concepts seem a little too traditional hell for me. There are red devils and a king pin satanic character named Luke Sifler. Not exactly the original mythology I now expect from a Ghostbusters film.

Some of these ideas are really awesome and it wouldn't hurt to see them in some way in the next installment. Others need a reality check, but that's to be expected in an Aykroyd script.  Whatever the case, I'm excited to see what today's script looks like, especially if any of these technological elements are put to play.