The official trailer for the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife has arrived to almost overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, son of original director Ivan Reitman (who returns here as a producer), Afterlife appears to keep the promise of ignoring the hideous 2016 feminist remake everyone hated (here’s my review) to work as a direct sequel to 1984’s Ghostbusters and 1989’s Ghostbusters II.

See for yourself:

Paul Rudd is an excellent addition to the franchise, someone who will fit right in as a ‘Buster.

This particular trailer focuses only on the child stars, and is obviously meant to give off a Stranger Things vibe. However, the surviving original stars are all rumored to be returning, including Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd,  Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts.

Harold Ramis, who died in 2014, will live on through his character’s grandchildren.

Akroyd, who came up with the concept for the original 1984 mega-hit and co-wrote that script (with Ramis), and who was not a fan of the failed feminist reboot, said of the Afterlife script: “Jason Reitman wrote a beautiful, heartfelt script that takes the real DNA from the first two movies and transfers that directly to the third, the next generation. It hands the legacy off to a new generation of stars, and players, and actors, and characters.”

Another nice change is the setting. After three features set in Manhattan, we are now on a farm somewhere, in rural, small town America — which is a big win for anyone who believes in true representation.

Afterlife hits theaters next July, and we just won’t know until then if the horrible, partisan, divisive, man-hating, failed, and universally-hated 2016 reboot has indeed been disappeared as though it never existed. What we do know is that Afterlife is definitely not the sequel the horrible, partisan, divisive, man-hating, failed, and universally-hated 2016 reboot threatened us with in a post-credit scene.

The franchise would of course be wise to forget the horrible, partisan, divisive, man-hating, failed, and universally-hated 2016 reboot ever existed and to remember that the horrible, partisan, divisive, man-hating, failed, and universally-hated 2016 reboot cost $144 million to produce and flamed out at $229 worldwide, which means it lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tee hee.

Above all, franchises require the goodwill of the fan base, and the only thing the  horrible, partisan, divisive, man-hating, failed, and universally-hated 2016 reboot busted was that goodwill.

Anyway, this new trailer is also effective in how it holds back. No comedy. No Ghostbusters music. No glimpse of the iconic characters, other than news footage from the 80s. Sony is going to roll this sucker out slowly, wet its finger, and with each step see which way the wind is blowing.

Ghostbusters is a crucially important franchise for the franchise-starved Sony, and if this summer’s catastrophic Terminator reboot taught us anything, it is that you can only strike out with your franchise reboots so many times before the public gives up completely. This is probably Sony’s last chance with this one.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.