“American politics are scarier than ghosts. And it’s more dangerous,” laughs actor Paul Rudd, whom People magazine named the sexiest man alive in 2021 and who presents the new film in which he stars, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a new installment of the saga that began in 1984 and premieres this Friday. A saga that has abandoned the most caustic tones of the beginning for others of a much more familiar adventure, but in which in any case, and after having walked through Oklahoma in the previous installment, the new ghostbusters return to the mythical fire station of New York where it all began to face an icy spirit. A fight for which they will end up counting on some of the original ghostbusters such as Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.
Notably, it is the first film in the saga made without its creator, Ivan Reitman, whose son Jason directed the previous film and is now the author of the script along with Gil Kenan (Poltergeist), who directs it and who to explain the success of the films Ghost and horror stories emphasize that “human beings have always been hungry for stories that make us feel, even more so when it is a collective experience, when we are sitting at the cinema in a group.”
“It is,” he continues, “as if we were around the bonfire, around a fire in which they are telling us the story of ghosts as children. It is how the cavemen told their stories. There is a shared feeling of humanity. and emotion. And a feeling that when you are scared, especially when you are told a scary story, there is something that makes you feel more directly connected, your senses are awake, like when you walk through a parking lot at night and you hear footsteps, your “Your hearing becomes sharper, your vision is clearer, your blood flows, you feel much more alive and I think those are the experiences we are looking for, we want to feel more connected to something that is authentic.”
And regarding the differences with the original film, he points out that “Ghostbusters is actually a tone, in its DNA it combines very solid characters, irreverent humor and a supernatural threat that must be taken seriously because everything is put at risk.” In that sense, Rudd reasons that in 1984 “things were different: they were a group of friends, they worked together, they were young, they were trying to do something different. And we’re talking about legends, we’re talking about Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd at the peak of their careers, and Ivan Reitman, the director who made the best comedies. So many brilliant elements in a single moment”, he evokes.
And speaking of nostalgia and the new installment of a saga like Ghostbusters and many others, he warns that he doesn’t know “if Hollywood has run out of ideas, but it seems increasingly difficult to pay for a new one,” that there are more afraid to take risks and that at least the studios can rely on nostalgia. “At least until artificial intelligence comes along and uses its power to eliminate us all. And then we’ll see what happens with all that energy, we will be the ghosts of artificial intelligence,” the actor smiles.
