Dear Troy,
Hey, it's yourself from the future. Take a minute from trying to reconnect to AOL after your parents picked up the phone and kicked you offline to read this for a quick second.
Today is Wednesday, June 17, 2015. I know that date has to seem pretty crazy to you, and to answer your first question: no. Cars don't fly yet. It's kind of bullshit, sorry. But I wanted to send you a letter from this date today to let you know that a new Ghostbusters movie is finally in front of cameras as of today.
Let's see... being 1997 you're probably super excited about Extreme Ghostbusters right about now. If my records are right, you're probably hearing rumors that Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Chris Rock are circling being a part of a new Ghostbusters film. But some heartbreak is on the way as you're soon going to tragically lose Farley, and several years later are going to lose a few other people that will break your heart too.
I'm not going to lie to you, the next eighteen years are going to be a little tumultuous in terms of your love for a certain property called Ghostbusters. There are going to be false starts, multiple casting rumors, and plenty of head scratchers between the time you're reading this to the time that a new movie is actually becoming a reality. You're going to hear rumors that make you geek out like you never have before, then there'll be rumors that will make you squint and ask nobody in particular, "Wha?" But ultimately what Paul Feig and the cast he's assembled for this film almost twenty years later from the date you receive this is the only way that it can be done.
Take careful notice of a movie called Blues Brothers 2000 that's going to come out next year. You and your good friend Drew are going to go see it and, while both of you are going to want to immediately buy Ray-Ban sunglasses because you think they're cool, you're not going to be over the moon about the movie. You're going to notice that the filmmakers made some concessions in order to get the movie made, but ultimately what you're going to notice is that the story is continuing the storytelling of characters that aren't there, and can't be there for many reasons. And it's going to feel odd. It's going to feel like a Beethoven Symphony where a piano wasn't available for scheduling purposes. The music is still good, but you can't help but feel that something crucial is missing.
What the production crew filming in Boston, then later in New York are working on is a retelling. Sort of like what the original Ghostbusters was to those Bob Hope films it so lovingly paid homage toward. I'm sure you're a little disappointed that this isn't the sixth movie in an ongoing story but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's extremely funny people in front and behind the camera, just as there was back then. It kind of sucks but there's going to be a lot of attention paid to the gender and the weight of some of the actors, a result of the strange snarky judgmental cacophony that pop culture becomes in the internet age. (Yeah, that's also something that you're going to find... your tried and true entertainment news sources are going to turn into gossip tabloids, and the internet is going to turn into a bunch of blogs - including yours - that feed people the news so that they can be upset about anything and everything down to the tiniest detail, it's really tough to explain and I'll have to save that for another letter to you when I can explain it myself).
There's a good chance that you may not like the end result of what they're doing starting today. But then again, there's also a good chance that it'll entertain you. You'll have just seen a fourth (yes, fourth) Jurassic Park movie in the same week that filming begins on Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (2016) and it's going to put things in perspective. Nothing can really ever be as good as the lightning in a bottle that was captured in that 1984 film. To think that you can recreate that is foolishness. But if there's a way to recapture the spirit of what made the original so fun and put it into a two-hour film that you enjoy, that makes you forget about the real world outside that movie theater for a couple hours, and makes you feel like a kid again, then it's all going to be worth the effort of the filmmakers.
But while you're watching that Jurassic Park sequel, there's going to be a little girl sitting no more than six seats down from you. She's going to be standing and jumping up and down (much to the dismay of her parents trying to control her), bonkers excited for the movie to start. She's going to be scared during some of the scarier moments, and she's going to leave the theater making dinosaur noises and begging her parents to see the film again. And for her, that movie is going to be a similar ride as when you were sitting by yourself in a darkened Greenwood Village theater in 1992, and is going to have the same impact.
There's a good chance this new Ghostbusters is going to do the same. It's going to capture the imaginations of an entirely new generation that's too young to moan and groan about the good old days or how they think the movie could have been done far differently and been successful. It might not have the same effect on you as those original movies did when you were a kid, but it might have a similar effect on someone that twenty years from now will be writing a similar letter to their past self.
If they're smart about it, and I'm fairly certain and confident that they are, Feig and Co. are going to make that movie for both of those audiences in mind. A movie for the new generation that's a little too young to get all the jokes but loves the premise and their imaginations are sparked with the possibilities. And a movie for you, the thirty-something (yeah, you become a thirty-something... spoiler-alert) who gets the jokes and just needs to escape for a couple hours.
Hang in there pal, it's all going to be worth it eventually.
Best,
The Troy of 2015
PS: Oh yeah, before I forget: there's going to be a guy offering you a pre-order for a hardcover comic book at some in the next couple years... don't do it.