Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Jason Reitman’s 2021 film follows Callie moving her children Trevor and Phoebe to the Oklahoma farm left by her estranged father, original Ghostbuster Egon Spengler. Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two films, trades Manhattan for a farm town and, in his words, ends on a hug rather than an explosion; Venkman, Stantz and Zeddemore only arrive for the finale. Summerville was built in southern Alberta, Canada, with Fort Macleod standing in for the town, and Sony pushed the release from July 2020 into 2021 over the pandemic. The ghostly Egon is a digital recreation of Harold Ramis, who died in 2014. Bob Gunton played the role on set, and MPC character supervisor Dan Zelcs says from the neck down it is Gunton. MPC built a young Ramis, tested him in a shot of the 1984 film, then aged him, using scans of previously unseen footage and alternate takes. Reitman says Ramis’s wife Erica and daughter Violet read the script, visited the set and editing room, and reviewed the final cut. A good fit if you know the 1984 film and accept a finale resting on the old team’s goodbye to a digital Egon. Not for viewers uneasy with a dead actor’s face rebuilt in software, or hoping for the original team throughout.