The Ghostbusters franchise has been running for 40 years, with two hit movies in the 80’s, then introduced to a whole new generation with three more movies from 2016 onwards.
Unlike my Transformers Movie rankings where it was easy to rate all 8 movies in order from worst to best, I found this list of 5 Ghostbusters movies quite hard. There is a general consensus about what constitutes the worst Ghostbusters movie and which was the best, but the middle three could arguably be swapped around according to the individual viewers proclivities. So just because one movie is listed here at 4 and another at 2, there isn’t a gigantic gap between them.
So lets rank them – the 5 Ghostbusters Movies from Worst to Best!
Number 5 – Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
There is a contingent of fans who loved this movie and still do, and more power to them. Unfortunately for the movie itself, it came out during a year with a Presidential Election in the USA. When one candidate professed their delight at the upcoming movie and the other their disapproval, before it even hit cinemas the flick was dragged into a political culture war which gave it a handicap it didn’t deserve.
However, even observed dispassionately without the lense of US culture war politics, this was not a good movie. Ghostbusters movies are almost always comedies, but even in films where people get doused with liquefied Marshmallow Man or Mood Slime, the jokes have always been more character and situation driven. Answer the Call treated the franchise like one long SNL sketch, trying to play each scene for big laughs which inevitably always fell flat. The characters were one dimensional and uninteresting, the CGI was cartoony, the plot uninspired and overall this felt like a parody of the Ghostbusters franchise instead of a reboot. The majority of fans didn’t like it, and neither did the film critics, resulting in a poor box office showing.
There was the odd highlight here and there; the characters of Erin Gilbert and Jillian Holtzmann were amusing on occasion, and the idea of Ghostbusting knuckle-dusters was an interesting concept. The movie did try to pay homage to what had come before, with cameos by many of the original cast as well as Slimer and Ecto-1. But none of this was able to save what was a poorly executed and lampoonish take on a beloved franchise. At least the comics have retroactively made Answer the Call a different universe from the original, thereby placating some of the more rabid fans who saw it as a stain on the Ghostbusters cinematic legacy.
Number 4 – Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
(If you have not yet seen this movie then spoilers ahead – you’ve been warned!)
Now remember at the start when I said spots 2, 3 & 4 could be swapped around according to your proclivities, and also when I said Ghostbusters movies are almost always comedies? Well if comedies are your thing then Frozen Empire could easily be moved up from it’s 4th spot into 3rd, being a far funnier film than Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
The latest film of the franchise serves as a sequel to Afterlife and the 4th film of the original universe. This movie is a true blend of the original cast and the newest characters, and whilst the focus of the movie remains on Pheobe and the other descendants of Egon Spengler, the like of Ray and Winston get a proper outing and there are plenty of side characters to enjoy.
This film runs at a good pace, has lots of laughs threaded throughout, plenty of action and does it’s best to bring the Ghostbusters franchise into the 21st century. Add to that a splash of other original characters such as Peter, Janine and Slimer and a new bad guy who can control other ghosts as well as literally turn fear into ice, and you’ve got yourself one entertaining movie!
Where this movie lets itself down is trying to cram in too much. There are some side plots that don’t go anywhere and seem to have only been included so that all the members of the huge cast have something to do, whereas other side plots take up a ton of screen time for very little payoff. The stakes never feel particularly high – even Walter Peck shutting down the Ghostbusters is solved in mere moments with the picking of a padlock and a van full of new equipment arriving. And whilst all the movies are about ghosts, they always approached the spiritual realm from more of a scientific standpoint than magical, thus the inclusion of someone who can bend fire like they are out of an Avatar cartoon feels as out of place as aliens did in the Indiana Jones franchise.
All this said, it is still a really fun movie, and perhaps the most funny we’ve had since the 1980’s. While fans on the internet are still divided on how they feel about this latest installation of the franchise, if you love Ghostbusters it’s highly recommended that you get to your nearest cinema while it is still showing.
Number 3 – Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
If you watch Ghostbusters primarily for a laugh, then shift this movie down your personal list to at least Number 4. However if you love the franchise as a whole, then Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the movie that is going to tug at your heartstrings and make you go ‘The world still remembers!’
Afterlife is, more than anything, a love letter to the original movies and the departed Harold Ramis. It is set decades after the events of Ghostbusters 2, with the Ghostbusters being disbanded by Egon Spengler having abandoned the team to live on a dirt farm in order to prevent the latest coming of Gozer. However we find all this out via, after the subsequent death of Egon at the start of the film, his estranged daughter and her family coming to pick through the remnants of his life.
The star of the movie is Pheobe Spengler, Egon’s granddaughter and the similarities between the characters are played up from the get-go. She is an awkward but incredibly endearing character and she is guided by the ghost of her Grandfather to thwart Gozer once again, along with the help of her family and some new friends. We see Ecto-1 resurrected along with all the old equipment Egon scarpered with, a good analogy for the original Ghostbusters cinematic universe being dusted off and made use of once again This film also contains a million Easter Eggs for fans – everything from the dancing toaster to Egon’s collection of Spores, Mould and Fungus!
This movie has funny parts, mainly provided by the interactions between Pheobe and her new friend Podcast, but it is much more of a nostalgic drama, thematically setting it apart from the rest of the movies.
What let this movie down more than anything, besides not a lot of busting going on, was the return of Gozer. In the original Gozer was exciting – controlling things from afar through his Keymaster and Gatekeeper only to eventually appear itself on a rooftop in New York, nearly blasting the Ghosbusters off said rooftop with lightning and then turning into The Destructor – in this case a gigantic Marshmallow Man! In this newest outing Gozer is already a known quantity, sits about in a cave when summoned and then has a less than thrilling fight with the Ghostbusters – both old and new. No rooftop lightning or candy-based kaiju here. The movie was stuffed with nostalgia already, it really needed a new baddie to fight to give it that fresh feel as well.
However it is this last fight that also really tugs on the hearstrings more than anything. The ghost of Egon Spengler materializes to help his granddaughter fight Gozer, and then does so alongside the other original Ghostbusters – Ray, Winston and Peter. Watching the four onscreen together for the first time since 1989 was by far the biggest tearjerker in Ghostbuters history, especially given that Harold Ramis passed many years ago. Even my wife who is just a casual fan of the franchise had tears in her eyes and I’m not sure I’ve ever shed so many watching a film myself since Optimus Prime died back in 1986.
So is this a great comedy? No. Is it startlingly original? No. What it served as was a perfect link between what Ghostbusters had been, what it had meant to the fandom, and what it could become moving into the future.
Number 2 – Ghostbusters 2 (1989)
If you are after a drama-themed and streamlined plot, Afterlife is better. If you are after a fast paced movie with lots of intertwining subplots and individual character arcs then Frozen Empire is better. If you are after awesome Ghostbusting action combined with hilarious cast interactions, then Ghostbusters 2 beats all the new movies hands down!
Ghosbusters 2 had Bill Murray and Rick Moranis at what could be argued were their comedic peaks. Combine those with the stellar performances of Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Sigorny Weaver and Dan Ackroyd – all from the first movie – and the highly underrated performance of Peter MacNicol as a new bad guy, and this brilliant ensemble of actors simply blow away anything that has come since in the Ghostbusters franchise. Nadeem and Podcast might be funny supporting characters, but they have nothing on Luis Tully. The interactions between the Spengler family might be interesting, but they pale in comparison when compared to the banter between the four original Ghostbusters.
Now this is not to say this movie was perfect, it was far from so. Despite having a new bad guy in the form of Vigo (cue angry man in painting) and his lackey Janosz, this movies plot mirrored the first flick far too much: Ghostbusters getting their business going (again), Peter pursuing Dana, the guys getting locked up by a mid-level government official only to be summoned and pardoned by the Mayor, then capped off by a giant figure stomping down the street. It’s like Ackroyd and Ramis went ‘Hey the first movie was a hit, lets just do that again!’.
Still, there was enough new stuff in this movie to make it entertaining, and the aforementioned fantastic cast make this a beloved part of the franchise.
Number 1 – Ghostbusters (1984)
“Who ya gonna call?”
A true pop-culture icon of a movie! A behemoth of sci-fi comedy! The film that has inspired 40 years worth of movies, cartoons, comics and toylines. The original Ghostbusters is still the best and still eminently watchable to this day. The storyline, the pacing, the jokes, the scares, the dialogue, the characters – everything about this movie works, everything!
I didn’t care much for the joke where Luis Tully gets dragged down the glass window of the restaurant, then all the music and talking starts up again. That’s it – that’s the entirety of things I can personally nitpick about this film – I have nothing else. Well, maybe all the cigarette smoking too, but it was the 80’s, you were hard pressed to find a movie or even TV show where half the characters didn’t smoke.
I was too young to see it at the cinemas so had to wait for it to be aired on TV and I still remember the excitement of watching it, even getting in trouble with my mother for telling the rest of the family off any time someone made a noise. This movie is full of iconic scenes, everything from the Library Ghost to the catching of Slimer, right up to the final showdown with a giant Marshmallow Man. And what other movie could make a giant Marshmallow Man not seem completely ridiculous? There are so many quotable lines in this movie; ‘What about the Twinkie?’ ‘I collect spores, mould and fungus’, ‘Are you a god?’ and of course ‘Yes its true, this man has no dick’.
It’s hard to critique a movie one loves so much and feels so passionately about. But perhaps it is a testament to how good the original Ghostbusters is that even in my own family, if asked if they would like to watch a GB movie that my wife, son and daughter will always want to watch the original above all others, and no one ever complains that we’ve seen it a hundred times before – we just grab the popcorn, plunk ourselves on the couch and prepare to be thoroughly entertained for the next few hours. This movie has a worldwide cult following and even 40 years later remains one of the most beloved films of its genre, helped by having perhaps the most catchy movie theme song in history.
“They’re the best, they’re the beautiful, they’re the only – Ghostbusters”
Would you list the Ghostbusters films in a different order? Pop it in the comments section below!