I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan. I loved the movies since I was a kid, I watched the cartoon growing up and had several of the toys. I even had Ghostbusters bed sheets. I own the complete series on DVD, and have seen both movies more times than I can count. I bought the Ghostbusters video game and I was a Ghostbuster for Halloween. Were it an actual occupation, I have no doubt that I would be a ghostbuster. Finding out that someone is selling an Ecto-1 replica on eBay vexed me since it was well out of my price range. I know it gets a lot of flak, but I enjoy Ghostbusters 2. It's an over-bashed and under-rated film. I agree, it's not as good as the first one but it is still quite enjoyable in its own right.
One of the problems it had was that the villain was inferior. Sure, Vigo was inspired by and based on Vlad the Impaler, and he was fine as a villain on his own, but it didn't measure up when you consider that the villain in the first movie was Gozer the Gozerian, a Sumerian god who destroyed entire worlds. Gozer didn't have much in the way of screen time, letting the suspense build up to the epic confrontation on an apartment high rise. Gozer was an entity of few words, only asking Ray Stantz if he was a god, before blasting our heroes with powerful force lightning. Before the ghostbusters can regroup, she dissipates and challenges the ghostbusters to choose a form. That form is, of course, the now iconic one hundred foot Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
Sadly, this is where Volguus Zildrohar peaked. Gozer was mentioned a few times on The Real Ghostbusters, but that was usually to say, hey this villain is even more powerful. I'll buy it with an enemy like Cthulu, but they did it several times, giving the statement less and less weight. I also recall reading about one opponent who specifically stated that as far as gods go, Gozer was low on the totem pole. It didn't help matters that the cartoon somehow separated Gozer from the Marshmallow man, somehow making them two separate entities (Stay Puft was a good guy no less).
As I said earlier, I picked up and played through the newly released Ghostbusters: The Video Game. If you haven't played it yet I will be revealing some plot elements so consider this your spoiler warning. The game picks up and elaborates on a lot of elements from the first movie. The Gozerian cult, as well as Ivo Shandor are fleshed out quite a bit and it seems that even the library ghost from the beginning of the movie has a greater link than simply being another ghost who crossed over due to the heightened psychic energy.
It's been known since the game was announced that the early levels have you battling ghosts from the film, Slimer and Stay Puft specifically (Vigo's in the game but he's not one of the bosses as I originally thought he would be).
Unlike the cartoon, which made Stay Puft and Gozer into two separate entities, this time around, Stay Puft is in fact Gozer. You don't see it in the original female form as evidently, it's "locked" into the pre-chosen destructor form Ray picked in the movie. While a few levels are spent chasing the giant, and trying to figure out what he's after, he's beaten rather easily, especially in comparison to some of the other bosses in the game. Even the revealed mastermind states that he was disappointed in the so called destructor god for not living up to the title.
Perhaps I'm making too much of it, putting too much weight behind the word "god". I mean Thor's a god and that didn't stop him from getting smacked around by Hulk in the recently released Hulk Vs. double feature. The video game does show respect to the entity in many ways and Ramis and Aykroyd did a great job fleshing out the cultish elements as well as the back story of the followers.
Having Gozer tied to such a classic film does add a certain standard that was set. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to top the original appearance. Still, I can't help but feel that Gozer got kind of shafted as far as villains go.
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