deerstalker
https://blacknerdproblems.com/a-paracausal-ludonarrative-dissonance/
Ludonarrative dissonance – When the non-interactive elements and the narrative told through the game mechanics are at odds with each other.
Ludomaniacal
The Titan stops sifting through their Vault and looks over to the Hunter in their fireteam also doing the same.
“You ever wonder who names all of our guns?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about Chim.”
“Like, Submission, Deliverance. All of the gear we got from the Pyramid was clearly named by the Witness as a way to promote their ideology.”
“Uh huh.”
“And all of the foundry weapons and Black Armory were clearly named by their respective designers, and the stuff we salvaged from Clarity Control has Clovis Bray’s egotism baked in.”
“So, it sounds like you know who names all of the guns.”
“That’s the thing though. Some of the gun names are weird. Spoiler Alert, with a data tag of ‘Someone is going to die’? Pardon Our Dust? Whose dust? Why are we pardoning it?”
“Oh that reminds me, can we stop by Xur’s Treasure Hoard for a second? I need to turn in some keys…”
The Illusion of Choice
Video games are a unique medium because of their intrinsically interactive nature. Movies, television series, books, theater, all of these present character, setting, and story to the watcher/reader/consumer. Different people may have different takeaways from the experience, but their experience will be relatively consistent to one another. Or at the very least, the same set of elements are readily available to the consumer.
This does not hold true for games. Two different people can have drastically different experiences because of the choices that they make and the resultant consequences. And game developers try to account for this. We see in visual novels and point and click adventures. We see it in the expansive linear sandbox that is Baldur’s Gate III. Developers plan for a wide range of possibilities and do their best to make sure that the narrative unfolding is consistent with the gameplay that the player experiences, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
Darkest Days
“Sweet, a red box. I think I can craft a BXR now.”
“You mean you are able to see the Deepsight Resonance intrinsic to this paracausally gifted weapon at the mysterious machine that manipulates time?”
“Oh, you’re still on this.”
“Yes, I’m still on this. We’re currently in a treasure hoard connected to a pocket dimension of sentient space dust talking to their envoy who previously only shows up between Friday and Monday like clockwork. We’ve been going to this tentacle faced husk for the better part of a decade, and we’ve just never questioned it.”
“…This is about Crow isn’t it?”
The Titan sighs.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.”
Traveler’s Chosen
The Destiny franchise in many ways is built around trying to resolve one of the most common examples of ludonarrative dissonance: infinite respawns. In many games, we take it for granted that we manage to pop back into existence. Destiny has the impetus baked into the narrative.
The Traveler gave us Ghosts, and Ghosts are able to bring back to life, again and again and again. True deaths are hard to come by, although not impossible. But the game is structured around this loop and the fact that we are constantly in a loop of activities. Sometimes, there is a narrative justification for the repetition like how the Leviathan raid had us beating up Calus’s robots on a weekly basis until we ran the stock out by the time Spire of Stars came around. Sometimes, it’s calling the activities Meditations and saying the repetition is because we are reliving our myth to hone our skills. Sometimes, it’s because we have to tithe to our friend turned into Hive god for a good three months in order to engineer a complex gambit to figure out a solution to get access to the triangle shaped portal in the Traveler.
That’s not to say the game is perfectly aligned from a narrative and mechanical process. We have been told not to kill a Techun (Tech witches, us Guardians call them), but to cleanse them… with bullets and explosives. Our powers suddenly change without a clear narrative reason due to balance passes. Weapons that are clearly meant to bespoke are available en masse (although it’s fun when the weapon is specifically said to be produced en masse).
Which brings us to the titular paracausal ludonarrative dissonance that inspired this article: the delay of The Final Shape, the conclusion to the decade sprawl of the Light and Dark Saga.
An Inscrutable Amygdaloid Eigenstate
“Every Tuesday for seven weeks or so, we got news of some Ahamkara egg in the leyline and were tasked to find it and every week we did. And made the pact with the Wish Dragon and Crow went through the portal, and I don’t know… it feels like we should have gone in by now y’know?”
Delayed and/or Deferred Gratification
Destiny as a live service game has relied on a steady cadence of content. Content is what brings the players back day to day, reset to reset, season to season. The player base feels disruptions in that cadence even though we understand it. Guardians are familiar with delays. Beyond Light was delayed because of the pandemic. Witch Queen was delayed in order to ensure a specific standard of quality, and Bungie managed to compensate with a special 30th Anniversary DLC which got wonderfully meta with Xur and the Loot Cave dungeon. Lightfall came out at the announced February date which was great because the year of the Witch Queen had ended with one of the most hype cinematics in the franchise’s history.
Whether or not Lightfall lived up to the expectations (we’d argue that from a narrative it didn’t, even if from a mechanical perspective it brought many good toys), it did set the stage for the final confrontation, and the announcement that we’d see the end of the Saga come February 2024 was exciting-ish. But then, the worst possible news came when Bungie laid off a bunch of their staff in what was apparently a prelude to the rest of the game industry participating in mass layoffs, and after an uncomfortably long silence, the news broke that the conclusion to the game was delayed until June.
Four months. Fourteen weeks. A lot of downtime for the biggest big bad in the franchise to apparently just meander in the Pale Heart of the Traveler while we twiddle our thumbs.
Shigeru Miyamoto is reported to have said “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad,” which we can argue about the origins of the quote and the various examples and counterexamples, but the point stands. If Bungie felt like they needed to delay the game, it probably was in the best interest of making the best experience possible.
However, this does put in the weird situation where all narrative momentum has been lost. We were supposed to be engaging in one final confrontation with the Witness. And now we are just meandering in the Dreaming City, doing odds and ends, collecting trinkets where it’s becoming increasingly harder to justify using new gear over old reliables. To say nothing of the content creator cycle becoming a desolate wasteland of rehashed rehashes as they desperately try to keep afloat during a non-existence news cycle.
And yes, there is new content on the horizon. Into the Light may help smooth over this disconnect of narrative and… non-ludology as it were. But until that arrives, we are left waiting and wanting. And it’s not the first time this has happened, but it’s definitely the most impactful time for the franchise.
Prophetic Visionary
A Titan sits on the derelict looking at a holographic Ahamkara skull. They go on comms, “is anyone else coming to see the rumors of the refurbished gear the Nine apparently tucked away in Unknown Space” and wait.
It’s something to do to pass the time. It’s not like they actually want to race to the end of the story. They mostly just want to have reasons to spend time with their fellow Guardian.
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The post A Para-causal Ludonarrative Dissonance appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Ludonarrative dissonance – When the non-interactive elements and the narrative told through the game mechanics are at odds with each other.
Ludomaniacal
The Titan stops sifting through their Vault and looks over to the Hunter in their fireteam also doing the same.
“You ever wonder who names all of our guns?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about Chim.”
“Like, Submission, Deliverance. All of the gear we got from the Pyramid was clearly named by the Witness as a way to promote their ideology.”
“Uh huh.”
“And all of the foundry weapons and Black Armory were clearly named by their respective designers, and the stuff we salvaged from Clarity Control has Clovis Bray’s egotism baked in.”
“So, it sounds like you know who names all of the guns.”
“That’s the thing though. Some of the gun names are weird. Spoiler Alert, with a data tag of ‘Someone is going to die’? Pardon Our Dust? Whose dust? Why are we pardoning it?”
“Oh that reminds me, can we stop by Xur’s Treasure Hoard for a second? I need to turn in some keys…”
The Illusion of Choice
Video games are a unique medium because of their intrinsically interactive nature. Movies, television series, books, theater, all of these present character, setting, and story to the watcher/reader/consumer. Different people may have different takeaways from the experience, but their experience will be relatively consistent to one another. Or at the very least, the same set of elements are readily available to the consumer.
This does not hold true for games. Two different people can have drastically different experiences because of the choices that they make and the resultant consequences. And game developers try to account for this. We see in visual novels and point and click adventures. We see it in the expansive linear sandbox that is Baldur’s Gate III. Developers plan for a wide range of possibilities and do their best to make sure that the narrative unfolding is consistent with the gameplay that the player experiences, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
Darkest Days
“Sweet, a red box. I think I can craft a BXR now.”
“You mean you are able to see the Deepsight Resonance intrinsic to this paracausally gifted weapon at the mysterious machine that manipulates time?”
“Oh, you’re still on this.”
“Yes, I’m still on this. We’re currently in a treasure hoard connected to a pocket dimension of sentient space dust talking to their envoy who previously only shows up between Friday and Monday like clockwork. We’ve been going to this tentacle faced husk for the better part of a decade, and we’ve just never questioned it.”
“…This is about Crow isn’t it?”
The Titan sighs.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.”
Traveler’s Chosen
The Destiny franchise in many ways is built around trying to resolve one of the most common examples of ludonarrative dissonance: infinite respawns. In many games, we take it for granted that we manage to pop back into existence. Destiny has the impetus baked into the narrative.
The Traveler gave us Ghosts, and Ghosts are able to bring back to life, again and again and again. True deaths are hard to come by, although not impossible. But the game is structured around this loop and the fact that we are constantly in a loop of activities. Sometimes, there is a narrative justification for the repetition like how the Leviathan raid had us beating up Calus’s robots on a weekly basis until we ran the stock out by the time Spire of Stars came around. Sometimes, it’s calling the activities Meditations and saying the repetition is because we are reliving our myth to hone our skills. Sometimes, it’s because we have to tithe to our friend turned into Hive god for a good three months in order to engineer a complex gambit to figure out a solution to get access to the triangle shaped portal in the Traveler.
That’s not to say the game is perfectly aligned from a narrative and mechanical process. We have been told not to kill a Techun (Tech witches, us Guardians call them), but to cleanse them… with bullets and explosives. Our powers suddenly change without a clear narrative reason due to balance passes. Weapons that are clearly meant to bespoke are available en masse (although it’s fun when the weapon is specifically said to be produced en masse).
Which brings us to the titular paracausal ludonarrative dissonance that inspired this article: the delay of The Final Shape, the conclusion to the decade sprawl of the Light and Dark Saga.
An Inscrutable Amygdaloid Eigenstate
“Every Tuesday for seven weeks or so, we got news of some Ahamkara egg in the leyline and were tasked to find it and every week we did. And made the pact with the Wish Dragon and Crow went through the portal, and I don’t know… it feels like we should have gone in by now y’know?”
Delayed and/or Deferred Gratification
Destiny as a live service game has relied on a steady cadence of content. Content is what brings the players back day to day, reset to reset, season to season. The player base feels disruptions in that cadence even though we understand it. Guardians are familiar with delays. Beyond Light was delayed because of the pandemic. Witch Queen was delayed in order to ensure a specific standard of quality, and Bungie managed to compensate with a special 30th Anniversary DLC which got wonderfully meta with Xur and the Loot Cave dungeon. Lightfall came out at the announced February date which was great because the year of the Witch Queen had ended with one of the most hype cinematics in the franchise’s history.
Whether or not Lightfall lived up to the expectations (we’d argue that from a narrative it didn’t, even if from a mechanical perspective it brought many good toys), it did set the stage for the final confrontation, and the announcement that we’d see the end of the Saga come February 2024 was exciting-ish. But then, the worst possible news came when Bungie laid off a bunch of their staff in what was apparently a prelude to the rest of the game industry participating in mass layoffs, and after an uncomfortably long silence, the news broke that the conclusion to the game was delayed until June.
Four months. Fourteen weeks. A lot of downtime for the biggest big bad in the franchise to apparently just meander in the Pale Heart of the Traveler while we twiddle our thumbs.
Shigeru Miyamoto is reported to have said “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad,” which we can argue about the origins of the quote and the various examples and counterexamples, but the point stands. If Bungie felt like they needed to delay the game, it probably was in the best interest of making the best experience possible.
However, this does put in the weird situation where all narrative momentum has been lost. We were supposed to be engaging in one final confrontation with the Witness. And now we are just meandering in the Dreaming City, doing odds and ends, collecting trinkets where it’s becoming increasingly harder to justify using new gear over old reliables. To say nothing of the content creator cycle becoming a desolate wasteland of rehashed rehashes as they desperately try to keep afloat during a non-existence news cycle.
And yes, there is new content on the horizon. Into the Light may help smooth over this disconnect of narrative and… non-ludology as it were. But until that arrives, we are left waiting and wanting. And it’s not the first time this has happened, but it’s definitely the most impactful time for the franchise.
Prophetic Visionary
A Titan sits on the derelict looking at a holographic Ahamkara skull. They go on comms, “is anyone else coming to see the rumors of the refurbished gear the Nine apparently tucked away in Unknown Space” and wait.
It’s something to do to pass the time. It’s not like they actually want to race to the end of the story. They mostly just want to have reasons to spend time with their fellow Guardian.
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The post A Para-causal Ludonarrative Dissonance appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Superhero comics are probably the most prominent genre within the broader category of comic books. They have a long history of exploring themes of justice, power, responsibility, etc., that resonate with readers on a deeper level, beyond all the surface action. There has rarely been a comic book imbued with the complexity and the depth of ethical questions as that of the X-Men, which, ever since their inception in 1963, have often served as an allegory for the civil rights movement.
In truth, many of the narrative philosophies of X-Men embody the ideals and struggles of historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey. The latter, a Jamaican political activist, believed that Black people needed a separate state and country from their oppressors. Those beliefs mirror the ideology of Magneto —an X-Men supervillain— who advocated for a separate state for mutants. This parallel now invites us to reconsider the ethical foundations of mutant separatism in the Marvel Comics Universe.
Author Andrew Smith said that humans fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t conquer, and history has taught us that this is one of the few less pleasant but universal truths. We tend to judge and fear things we don’t understand. Even when we do understand, we tend to discriminate severely if they’re even remotely different from what we deem acceptable. Our collective treatment of marginalized groups is often a really accurate, albeit sad, historical example of this.
At the core of Magneto’s beliefs is the conviction that mutants won’t find peace and equality among humans. These beliefs, fueled by the horrors of the Holocaust and the fact that humans fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t control, have taught Magneto that those in power will always oppress those who are viewed as different or inferior. So, his push for a separate mutant state is actually rooted in the desire to protect his fellow mutants from hate crimes, prejudice, genocide, and denial of basic human rights.
These issues remain painfully relevant in today’s society and only fuel Magneto’s argument for mutant separatism, which, in this case, is an ethical stance towards self-preservation and dignity. From this perspective, mutants would be allowed to govern themselves and cultivate their own culture without the fear of aggression from the rest of humanity. Sure, it’s a radical solution, but perhaps the only viable one for mutants who live in a world that hates and fears them for merely existing and being different.
However, the idea of a separate mutant state raises other complex ethical questions. Is segregation, even if it’s self-imposed, truly a path to equality? Krakoa, a living mutant island that has become a new home for mutant kind in X-Men, proves that Magneto was right all along. The inhabitants of Krakoa have managed to disrupt all major human industries, especially Big Pharma, and powerful countries all over the world became dependent on Krakoa and its life-saving and life-extending technology.
The unity of mutant-kind allows them to amass power and even conquer death. However, all of these accomplishments don’t result from co-existence and equality between mutants and humans. Quite the contrary, they result from mutant separatism and affirmations of mutant superiority over humans. So, while proving that Magneto was right, Krakoa also proves he was wrong because the separation led to further marginalization and inequality. If you really need an example, just look at our own history and the events that preceded World War II.
Some of the greatest technological and medical advancements humans have made in the shortest amount of time can be credited to the proponents of and the responses to crimes against humanity that took place during WWII. So, no, separatism is never the answer to the question of true equality among the different. The response lies in integration, which emphasizes mutual understanding, empathy, and the belief that our shared humanity can help us overcome fears and prejudice towards the things that we don’t understand.
However, we’ll say this: Magneto isn’t as bad a guy as X-Men make him to be. While his notion of separatism being the only way for mutants to live peacefully is fundamentally wrong, he has been far more tolerant than the X-Men ever were. While he advocates for a separate state, knowing that mutants will always face persecution, Charles Xavier and then X-Men advocate against it. This issue divides mutantkind, and a divided nation is destined to fall. So, all of Magneto’s efforts to create a mutant nation end in catastrophe (apart from Krakoa), which he co-founded with Professor X.
The policy towards humans isn’t the only difference between Magneto and the X-Men. The latter always claim to be supportive of other mutants, but are reluctant to recruit mutants with undisguised mutations until Nightcrawler joined. Magneto is generally much more tolerant of his fellow mutants compared to X-Men, as evident by the fact that he was often accompanied by Mystique and Toad, two mutants whose mutations are very much undisguised in everyday life.
In the end, Magneto’s dream of a mutant state, though radical and filled with moral and ethical complexities, does make one think about the realities of oppression and the lengths to which the oppressed would go to escape it.
Studio Ghibli Fest is back in theaters in its biggest year yet! Now, coming off the triumphant Oscar® win for Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature The Boy and the Heron, celebrate this iconic studio with an all-new selection of fan favorites and iconic titles alike.
This year’s lineup highlights the works of studio co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, as well as directors Yoshifumi Kondo, Hiroyuki Morita, and Hiromasa Yonebayashi. In celebration of Hayao Miyazaki’s recent Oscar win, Studio Ghibli Fest 2024 kicks off with the acclaimed director’s previous Academy Award-winning feature, Spirited Away, which took home the Oscar in 2001.
The lineup also includes special celebrations for the Howl’s Moving Castle 20th Anniversary, Kiki’s Delivery Service 25th Anniversary, and Pom Poko 30th Anniversary.
Studio Ghibli Fest 2024 Full Schedule
Spirited Away
- Saturday, April 27 at 3:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, April 28 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, April 29 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, April 30 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, May 1 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 40th Anniversary
- Sunday, May 19 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Tuesday, May 21 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Castle in the Sky
- Monday, May 20 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, May 22 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
The Secret World of Arrietty
- Sunday, June 9 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Tuesday, June 11 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
When Marnie Was There 10th Anniversary
- Monday, June 10 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, June 12 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Princess Mononoke
- Saturday, July 13 at 3:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, July 14 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, July 15 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, July 16 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, July 17 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Ponyo
- Saturday, August 3 at 3:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, August 4 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, August 5 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, August 6 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, August 7 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Whisper of the Heart
- Sunday, August 25 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Tuesday, August 27 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
The Cat Returns
- Monday, August 26 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, August 28 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Howl’s Moving Castle 20th Anniversary
- Thursday, September 26 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Friday, September 27 at 7:00 (DUB)
- Saturday, September 28 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, September 29 at 3:00 and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, September 30 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, October 1 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, October 2 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Thursday, October 3 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
Kiki’s Delivery Service 35th Anniversary
- Saturday, October 26 at 3:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, October 27 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, October 28 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, October 29 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, October 30 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
Pom Poko 30th Anniversary
- Sunday, November 24 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Tuesday, November 26 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
- Monday, November 25 at 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Wednesday, November 27 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
My Neighbor Totoro
- Saturday, December 7 at 3:00 PM (SUB)
- Sunday, December 8 at 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM (DUB)
- Monday, December 9 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
- Tuesday, December 10 at 7:00 (DUB)
- Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 PM (SUB)
In related news, The Boy and the Heron will return to North American theatres starting March 22, 2024 and include exclusive bonus content!
This was a film that I reviewed for the site and wrote that “The Boy and the Heron is a film that I want to revisit and rewatch. It is clear that it is from the house of Ghibli, and yet it is uniquely its own creation. I believe that it should be watched by fans of animation and Ghibli purists, alike.”
If you missed watching the film before it won its Oscar, you can catch it this time on the big screen!
See more about Ghibli Fest here on the GKIDS website. Follow the conversation online on Twitter (X), Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok.
Love anime? So do we! See what else we have to offer on the site via anime here!
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The post Studio Ghibli Fest Returns to Theatres 2024 appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
When Ghostbusters: Afterlife came back to give the franchise new life, there’s a worry if a sequel could keep the baton in the running or drop it. It’s safe to say the follow up, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is keeping this franchise in the running. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has a hurricane of easter eggs and nods of nostalgia but the stand out factors of this film are the pacing and the theme of a family’s legacy. More specifically, the Spengler family legacy. We saw Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace) in the last film take the reigns to embrace the Ghostbusting life of her grandfather and now we see what it’s like when her mother, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), brother, Trevor Spengler (Finn Wolfhard) and Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) do the same. However, trouble arises for Phoebe when she’s put on the bench.
The film starts off with a prologue giving us a hint of what lies ahead with the film’s big bad. We then cut to current day New York as the Spenglers and Mr. Grooberson are chasing a sewer dragon ghost through New York. They Spenglers have traded in the cornfields of Summerville, Oklahoma for the concrete Jungle in the Big Apple. We get a good sense of the family dynamic between the Spenglers as well as Mr. Grooberson trying to know his place between being seen as the unofficial step-dad or mom’s “friend”. The team is doing a good job chasing down the ghost but once Phoebe pops out of the gunner seat and starts letting the proton pack unpack that beam, trouble arises. The damage caused in capturing the ghost gets Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) leeway in getting the Ghostbusters all the way outta here. Since Phoebe is a minor shooting a nuclear powered weapon on the streets of New York, she’s then sidelined by the mayor. Phoebe then has to watch the rest of her family be Ghostbusters even tho she is the one that got them all in the ghost busting game in the first place.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Has A Chilly Villain & Vibe
What I truly enjoyed about this film is the pacing. Kudos to Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan for really setting a story that is allowed to take it’s time on screen. The big bad boss that we are waiting for, Garraka (puppeted by Ian Whyte), has a steady build of terror as we learn more of his story and see his influence taking effect. What I enjoyed most about this villain is the lore behind him. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire truly did a great job of building this character up. Garraka spanning back multiple years and having few sightings added to the mystery and danger of the villain. However, seeing Phoebe dealing with feeling left behind by her family plays just a big a part as the major villain. Here we are seeing how life not being fair can be hard for a young teen to learn. Ghostbusting is what Phoebe excels at but she can’t do it now just because she is a minor. A great juxtaposition to Phoebe’s dilemma is seeing the just how large the next generation of ghostbusters has become.
Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) has been a very busy philanthropist. We see how he is not only keeping the Ghostbusters’ firehouse afloat but expanding the team and the possibilities. I don’t want to spoil what he’s been up to but it’s a great detail to give Winston more stake in the series and a larger role in the lore. We see the familiar faces of Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) becoming apart of the crew as well as newcomers like Lars Pinfield (James Acaster) and Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani). Nadeem plays a very important part in the movie that came as a complete shock to me. Again, I won’t spoil anything but Nadeem part in the movie opens the doors for Ghostbusters to move even deeper into matters of the occult instead of just ghosts.
Cause (Ghost)busting Makes Me Feel Good… to a Degree
While there’s a lot of good the movie does. Introducing a new cast and bringing in the old guard with Peter Venkman (Billy Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd), and Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) appearing again. There are some things I couldn’t help but think about for the sequel. There may just be little things but… I’m sorry fam, the fact that the Ectomobile hasn’t been updated to at least have power windows is crazy to me. i’m just saying, it’s 2024 and Winston is bankrolling the Ghostbusters, so why the proton backs still looking so DIY? Wires all visible looking like mad usb plugs charing devices. We saw some upgrades but I’m just saying shouldn’t things be a bit less heavy looking and shouldn’t the jumpsuits get an update too?
Visuals aside, there’s a lot of similarities we see between this film and the last in regards to family and everyone coming together. We get more of an index of types of ghosts which is new and exciting but there are certain beats and moments that feel as if we have already done this before. There so much potential for this Ghostbusters as a franchise to take off into different and new territory. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a step in the right direction that leaves us waiting for a leap in that same direction.
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The post ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ Keeps the Franchise Warm appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.