Ghostbusters III

First of all, I should fully disclose that I never actually hated this movie to begin with like many others did. I love Kristen Wiig, and I feel okay about the other leads, except maybe Leslie Jones. I went into the theater with an open mind and came out only slightly disappointed. I thought it was okay. However, it was never laugh out loud funny, and more importantly, I felt it was a huge departure from the first two films.

But wow! This is a fantastic fan edit. There are some people who will always hate this highly divisive movie no matter what, but I think it's primarily because this film never found it's audience. Nerds had been waiting 25 years for a sequel to the Ghostbusters franchise, and instead they got something their mom might like instead--something that depicts nerds as sociopathic freaks I might add.

But that isn't the film's fault, and that isn't fixable by the fan editor. The truth of the matter is that there is a definite diamond in the rough here, and TM2YC has proven the haters wrong through his efforts. So thanks, TM2YC. You made an okay movie into a good one.

Again, this a is a phenomenal fan edit. Given the amount of cuts that were made, it's amazing just how much the viewer DOESN'T notice. TM2YC is a real pro, and I'm interested in checking out his other fan edits due to the quality of this work alone. I particularly liked how he executed the removal of the very juvenile fart/queef joke. I actually thought he had replaced it with an alternate take in the Blu-Ray extras, but nope, he actually reconstructed a new joke all on his own. It's so much more clever and funny and befitting these characters. The fart joke made me cringe; the new joke made me laugh out loud. Inspired.

I think in terms of what TM2YC set out to do, he succeeded fully. I think the pacing starts to drag slightly in the latter half before the climax, but I think I would prefer the added scenes be there than not because they carry some emotional heft. One choice I don't understand, however, is the removal of the candlestick trick. It was a clever misdirect in the original film, and removing it didn't really serve the faneditor's overall purpose, so what was the point?

Other than those minor nitpicks, the only complaint I have is that this fan edit left me wanting more. When you actually take all the silly improv out, a movie with the feel of an actual Ghostbusters film starts to materialize. That was a huge surprise to me, and a pleasant one at that. But it wasn't fully formed. Holtzmann still needed to be reined in a bit more. As wacky as she is, she still needed to conceivably be a real person--just like the others. In a scene at the end of the movie, she stands and says something very open and heartfelt to the others--and has a very difficult time saying it. Here you learn that Holtzmann isn't just some slapsticky cartoon-like character. You learn that she's keeping a lot of her true self buried. There's nuance and complexity there, and more than one way to look at her, despite the stupid grunt she lets out to ruin the moment.

Along the same lines of wanting more, the climax is just too silly. With most of the improv removed, most of the film works well tonally, but the end just hurdles towards the furthest reaches of ridiculousness, and I just wonder if a clever faneditor couldn't pull it back just a little to keep it in line with the first two films.

Beyond that, the films colors are oversaturated. The movie has some legit scary parts, and they would be scarier if the film was drained of some of it's color and made to look like the other two films and a horror film in general.

I think putting Ghostbusters III in line with I and II is perfectly doable, and TM2YC's edit really sheds a spotlight on those possibilities. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anyone out there who will take up the cause. It's a miracle that anyone bothered to do anything with this much maligned movie.

But again, a great fan edit. Musings aside, probably one of the best I've ever seen, so I don't want to detract from what we've already been given. I think anyone who watches this film with an open mind will find a lot to enjoy and laugh at thanks to TM2YC.

I was really curious to check this edit out, since Ghostbusters (2016) was among my least favourite films of the year. Happy to report that TM2YC has performed some sort of miraculous feat of fanediting magic and turned it into an enjoyable film. The added material works extremely well (although I did feel the pacing was a tad sluggish at times), and anchoring the characters so that they are not ALL trying to be funny one all the time worked really well.

Highlights included hearing the Ghostbusters theme properly as the girls went into action, and toning down some of the more egregious stupidity of the original release. Here's looking at you, Bill Murray. I would have liked even more of Kevin's idiocy cut out, but it didn't ruin the enjoyment of the movie.

I can say with certainty that this is the only version of this film I will ever watch in future.

I kinda liked Ghostbuster 2016, despite all the parts that didn't really work. I got the impression that the movie got a bit warped in the wake of all the controversy surrounding it, and in the end got caught up in meta-jokes about internet trolls and a mish-mash of brands of humour (and that godawful cover version of the song). Every character did every kind of comedy, and more often than not it just felt hysterical instead of hilarious or coherent. But hey, kids loved it, right? And there were parts that were IMHO great, like the visual effects, Chris Hemsworth, Holtzman and the new Ghostbusters cast overall.

Anyway, this edit by TM2YC imho improves, I would say a lot, upon the theatrical release. It tones down the jokes, which of course diminishes the movie of some opportunities to get a laugh out of the audience (there were one or two gags I missed that I liked in the ThCut, but humour is subjective, so that is to be expected) but, and that's important, creates a much more coherent tone for the overall movie. The characters feel more natural, and don't get me wrong, there's still a lot to laugh. It just doesn't try to get a joke in every single scene, and most of the more infantile gags (farts and the like) and running gags that went on one or two times too often are gone. Plus the soundtrack got very smoothly edited and feels now very Ghostbuster-y (the original score is back on! No more cringeworthy new version! Yay!). And I don't know whether I just missed it in the ThCut, but the emotional arc between Abby and Erin felt for the first time complete to me. The theme of "embracing your weirdness, despite being rejected from most for it" came out nicely, which is imho one of the strong points of the movie - and yes, especially because the protagonists are women, which I think can indeed inspire young girls to take an interest in science and other "nerdy" interests which they don't really get encouraged to do by the bulk of other movies. But that's just my take on it.

Cuts an audio was edited seemlessly, by the way. TM2YC obviously knows what he's doing.

That said, this is my definitive version of the new Ghostbusters, and if I would want to introduce someone to the new crew, I would certainly show them this cut instead of one of the official versions.

I have to preface my review by saying I've never watched the original. I picked up the Blu-ray on clearance and never even took off the shrink wrap.

I watched this edit with my wife, and the quality was good enough that she didn't know it was an edit until I told her when we finished. The video and audio cuts are excellent.

The narrative was a bit hard to follow. People don't act like real human beings, and I'm not really clear on when Leslie Jones joined the crew, she was just suddenly part of it. But maybe that's the fault of the original material.

I had heard a lot of bad things about over-the-top gags and poorly improved lines, but for the most part the comedy that was still left in this edit did work for us. And I do appreciate the relatively short run time.

Overall, though, I have to say I didn't enjoy this movie. Even edited, it still feels like a pointless remake of a classic comedy, that copied the format and major story beats but lost everything that made the original fun.

Ghostbusters (2016) wasn't a horrible movie when I first saw it in theatre many years ago. I started to dislike it little by little as years went by, but nowadays I think the movie is just extremely fine. It's nothing special or unique, it's the worst Ghostbusters movie and it did leave a bad impact on the franchise on many people's hearts.
But when I found out that TM2YC made a edit of the movie that removes many bad improv jokes and scenes from the extended version of the movie, I decided to finally watch it. Was it good?

In shorter terms, it was. It did fix the pacing of the movie, it did remove the cringey scenes and dialogue and left the best parts that did work and enhanced them. This edit doesn't fix everything, though. The story is still kind of simple, but I can forgive that because Ghostbusters movies don't focus a lot on the narrative. I recommend this edit to those who want a lot better version of the movie and also to those who want to give Ghostbusters (2016) a second chance.

Well done, TM2YC! You edited this movie to be best it could be!