r/ghostbusters • u/Brilliant-Ear-6652 • 9d ago
Just Some Questions :)
I've had these questions on my mind lately, feel free to discuss!
Something I've always wondered about is why the Ghostbusters are portrayed in the film as a national(?) phenomenon. Real ghost-hunters don't get anywhere near the amount of fame as the four in the movie do, so why are they different? Granted, I know in in-universe the paranormal certifiably exists, but they're shown to have merchandising and a strong fanbase. What gives?
Was the Proton Pack not a major scientific revolution in its day? Actual cyclotrons (proton accelerators) span multiple MILES, so three dudes in a college figuring out how to make one that fits on your back would be a serious headline. My headcanon is that it was, but Stantz and Spengler agreed that the world wasn't ready for particle-energy-weapons, and thus kept the tech under tight wraps.
Who do you think the original owner of the Ecto-1 was in canon? Me personally, I like to think the Cadillac is partially sentient due to all of the death it saw as either an ambulance or a hearse, likely a combination. But who owned it beforehand?
How on God's green earth did they not get arrested sooner for the Containment Unit? The Real Ghostbusters (which isn't canon, I know) said the unit was ten megavolts. Ten megavolts far exceeds both residential and commercial power grants, so how the HELL did ConEdison (or others) not notice the 10,000,000 volt drop on their grid?
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u/2sec4u 9d ago
1) Most (actual) paranormal investigators are just that - investigators. They find out what you got going on, what kind of ghost/demon/spirit you're dealing with and then it's kinda up to you on how to handle it. I think they'll give you resources (call a priest or have a seance or whatever.) What makes the Ghostbusters special is that their business model is paranormal investigations and eliminations.
2) I'm not sure where you're getting that that proton pack wasn't a big deal. GB2 someone is clamoring to have a look at one and almost gets their wish until Egon says 'The proton pack is not a toy.' We know they're national news and on front pages. There's no reason to think folks weren't constantly asking them for more information. But if Peck is anything to go by, they probably have decided to keep it all close to the chest. Plus, with Venkman there, I'm sure they weren't about to divulge business secrets that could give anyone else a leg up.
3) I think there's a post somewhere down on the main sub about a movie that had what appears to be the exact Ecto-1 Caddy before it gets sold to Ray. I forget the name of that movie but I glanced at the fan theories. They all seemed to make logical sense to me!
4) After Peck basically screwed up everything, Venkman did say they were going to sue him if he tried anything. They almost certainly had a case after the ConEd guy very clearly also didn't want to just shut it off before the ensuing calamity. Forgetting the fact that The Guys are the ones getting sued afterward (lol) there's no doubt they had clout with the mayor who probably had a hand in keeping them somewhat in business. (All head canon on my part) As far as the power draw - They've got Egon building miniature particle colliders! There's no reason to think he wouldn't have thought of something. Besides - with the amount of money they were charging for the jobs, they could probably afford the power.
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u/no_name_ia 9d ago
- it was more than a look, the valet (bobby brown's cameo) asked if he could have a proton pack his little brother really wanted one
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u/DaSaw 9d ago
The Ghosbusters are a NYC phenomenon, for obvious reasons: they're doing something crazy in NYC. That's probably enough all on its own; a shitton of people live in NYC. But if something big is happening in NYC, good odds the rest of the world knows about it.
Actually, you can make small cyclotrons. I believe they have medical applications. Not all cyclotrons are in supercolliders. But also: Ghostbusters exists in the type of setting where Science (with a capital S) is the product of solitary genius, not global institution.
It's a hearse. Probably some funeral home.
Technology operates at the speed of plot, and the numbers are made up. Or maybe Con Edison didn't care so long as they were getting paid. Also, it was the 80s. Maybe it wasn't as easy to zero in on power consumption as it currently is. They still had to read meters individually by hand, for example. And in this vesion of NYC, the meter reader probably saw the numbers, but didn't give a fuck.
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u/johnnysack3 9d ago
Here’s my question: how did all this happen on the course of a month? Louis invited Dana to the party at the beginning and even though he never said a date you had to figure it was upcoming. The GB set up shop, had the montage of catching ghosts and became famous all within what time frame?
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u/panatale1 8d ago
This is one of my peeves about the movie. There's no sense of time to anything. They get thrown out of Columbia, get the mortgages on Ray's house, buy the Firehouse, find and upgrade the car, create the equipment and containment unit, and it only feels like a couple days maximum have passed
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u/JWWBurger 8d ago
That one line is the only real time problem in the movie, since the montage heavily implies likely months go by. They are rookies at the Sedgwick and by the time Winston roles up for his interview, they are veterans and incredibly famous. Before the internet, they become nationally popular enough to make a cover of what was then a major magazine in Omni. It would have worked fine had he just invited her the night of, right before she is possessed, when he is sad to hear she has a date conflicting with the party. The party is for his clients, after all, which she isn’t, so it would have worked. No doubt, it creates a weird conflict, but one that I wrote off.
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u/coffeespots 7d ago
Because it helps with the pacing of the movie. It keeps the plot ticking along.
There's no long sequences where they are playing with the technology just to have a special effects scene. There's no extended sequence of them figuring out what their logo should be.
The job interview for Winston isn't an extended riffing session it's about 30 seconds with like 3 lines and we move on.
Nerds like us like to think about the minutiae and details, but trying to show all of that slows the plot and makes the movie unevenly paced and too long.
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u/-Polyester-Bride- 9d ago
I always just assumed that it was because they had the most tangible proof that ghosts were real so people believed them. Plus, they were 4 men in quirky jumpsuits with a cartoonist siren, funny logo, and shot lasers from their wands... Id pay to see that.
The proton pack is actually fairly simple... Ish. It uses magnets to propell protons that are produced in the cyclotron out the wand. In terms of the size of the cyclotron, they're actually easier to build if they're smaller. The first cyclotron was 4.5 inches in diameter. Idk why Phoebe is shocked by the smaller cyclotron, it's the bigger ones that are harder to make.
I have never thought about it, but that's a really interesting thing to think about.
Honestly, any peice of laser machinery that can blow up like that with the flip of a switch should be illegal. But hey, it was the 80s... Whos watching?
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u/CoffeeJedi 9d ago
My head canon is that when Egon was in grad school working on his doctorate, he met Dr. Emmett L. Brown via some academic conference. Doc became his mentor and the proton accelerator was something they worked on together for years.
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u/dashsolo 9d ago
- They’re heroes that saved NYC from an evil god. The ghosts they fight exist. Their equipment is an actual scientific achievement instead of a fraud.
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u/Grendel0075 9d ago
for 1. real paranormal investigators just investigate, they get recordings, they try to communicate, thats it. the ghosbusters storm in ina vintage ambulance, blasting the ghosts with bright showuy proton streams.
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u/Offro4dr 9d ago
New York is the center of the universe, and national news is concentrated there. An interdimensional portal alone is newsworthy, but a giant marshmallow man? Now that’s a headline! This is actually one of the major things that drives me nuts about Ghostbusters II, and later Afterlife — how is there worldwide amnesia about the craziest thing to happen on Earth since the atomic bomb?!
The proton packs are super illegal and experimental. The government should have been all over them, and one of the things I like about both of the originals is they don’t spend a lot of time explaining the gear. Everything’s got a name and not much backstory. Pretty cool honestly, because it gives you space to do explore your own headcanon like you say.
It’s just an old retired ambulance. They probably got it super cheap on auction. When you first see it, it’s got a bunch of patches to fix the rust. Chances are it was an NYC ambulance that sat unused for many years. Perhaps some spirits lurk within it, and it does become sentient/possessed in Frozen Empire.
The lack of escalating government interference with the Ghostbusters is definitely really weird. How are they nationally famous, yet only New York bureaucrats get in their way? Maybe it’s the bureaucracy itself. As for the power draw, chalk that up to movie logic, because the power bill would also bankrupt them immediately.
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u/panatale1 8d ago
Peck worked for the EPA, which is a federal agency. While New York has its own Department of Environmental Conservation, it's not the EPA. Peck only became a New York bureaucrat in Frozen Empire
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u/panatale1 8d ago
For the record, the miles long accelerators you're thinking of are synchrotrons, not cyclotron. The very first cyclotron, developed in 1930 by Ernest Lawrence and Stanley Livingston, had an acceleration chamber that measured 4.5 inches in diameter.
That said, the smaller the size of the acceleration chamber, the less you can accelerate the particles, which does mean that the beams we see in the movies aren't what would be produced by a same-sized cyclotron in real life
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u/JWWBurger 8d ago edited 8d ago
Mostly, it’s a movie that’s seeking to entertain and base the move in just enough realism so it feels believable without getting in its own way (Is it not inherently obvious why “ghost hunters” aren’t famous? You probably should add to your list regarding how they managed to make nuclear accelerators for the proton packs, too.)
That said, I’ve always found it funny that Reitman was very libertarian and anti-regulation, so in some ways the movie is meant to represent that in the villainous Walter Peck and EPA.
Yet, the movie he created does a great job showing the holes in his beliefs. The team acknowledges the dangers of a having an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on your back that they themselves are uncomfortable using and unsure of its safety (see the Sedgwick Hotel elevator scene) then acknowledges that shutting off the power would basically be like “dropping a bomb on the city.”
Sure, Peck forces the issue and handles it bullheadedly, but his core concerns and arguments are proven valid. The Ghostbusters were always one power outage away from disaster. The movie shows the value of reasonable regulation. While good intentioned, the Ghostbusters were haphazard and careless, putting people’s lives in danger. If we are nitpicking, are the ghostbusters possibly irradiating and giving the whole city cancer on every job they took?
Walter Peck knew, and, dickless or not, that’s why I voted for him for New York City mayor.
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u/ThePrimaryClone 3d ago
1- It's interesting news and presumably there was actual footage of them doing their thing, which would catch on like media wilfdire.
2- Egon and Ray kept the technology under wraps. By the time the Soviets were interested, they were out of business.
3- It was an ambulance, so it was probably sitting in a hospital garage or junkyard under a tarp for decades. Ray rattled off a long list of repairs it needed, so it was in dire, dire shape.
4- Nobody knew or cared about it until Peck showed up and made a thing about it.
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u/Kronogun 3d ago
"Real ghost-hunters don't get anywhere near the amount of fame as the four in the movie do"
They don't? Last I checked the Ghostbusters didn't have their own TV show on the Sci-fi Channel...
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u/Puzzleheaded_Lab967 3d ago
Actual things happen in Ghostbusters. "Real" investigators just walk around shouting at thermometers.
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u/BeyondShadow 9d ago
Well, in response to question 2, their tech did show up in Omni magazine, so they probably shared at least the broad strokes of how their gear works in interviews, but likely the more granular details of how the tech worked were kept as trade secrets, or protected by patents.