{"id":38760,"date":"2023-03-09T17:15:07","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T23:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/?p=38760"},"modified":"2023-03-09T17:26:15","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T23:26:15","slug":"the-ghostbusters-real-enemy-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/the-ghostbusters-real-enemy-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghostbusters Real Enemy: Pt 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few years back I wrote a blog about the true enemy that the Ghostbusters<\/em> had to face in the first film. This of course was Walter Peck played by the legendary William Atherton. You can find that blog here<\/a>. In a nutshell, I argued that while Gozer the Gozarian may have been the \u201cbig bad\u201d of the film, the actions of Walter Peck helped speed up the process of Gozer\u2019s arrival. But now it\u2019s time to turn our sights to Ghostbusters 2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So who is the \u201creal\u201d bad guy of the second Ghostbusters<\/em> film? Could it be as easy as Vigo the Carpathian? Maybe Dana\u2019s boss the possessed Janosz Poha? Maybe even the conniving Jack Hardemeyer? No. In this blog I will argue that the true bad guy in this whole movie is none other than the character portrayed by the late icon David Margulies. The true villain of this movie is Mayor Lenny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At the end of Ghostbusters<\/em> the four titular characters saved the day and left the now trashed 550 Central Park West, aka Spook Central, to much fanfare. They were heroes. Fast forward five years and business is hard for the team because we learn that they got in trouble for the events at the end of the first movie. Not only that but they had a judicial restraining order placed on them to prevent them from practicing ghostbusting. They were blamed for what happened even though Mayor Lenny sent them. It seemed that suddenly everyone forgot ghosts existed. (Side note, this was hinted at in 2016s Ghostbusters: Answer the Call)<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what thanks do they get for saving not only the city but the whole world? Fines and restraining orders. Now out of everyone from the first film, who could have stopped this? Who could have helped the Ghostbusters? The Mayor. It\u2019s true that we don\u2019t know the full extent of what happened between the first and second movie. We don\u2019t know if it was a local court case or if something like that was bumped up to the federal level, but what we can piece together is that the mayor could have helped them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Too Late Lenny!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say something similar happened in real life. For a moment let\u2019s go on a journey into our imaginations. So some weird stuff is going down and this group of “ghost busters” supposedly save the day. God help us if the cast of Ghost Adventures are the only ones who can save us. But that joke aside, let\u2019s say that this group of ghost hunters were asked to help save the day by the mayor of New York City Eric Adams (as of 2023). They go and do so and, in the process, a good chunk of a building is destroyed and people are injured. The team is about to get into trouble for this but the mayor steps in and says \u201cwait, I asked them to help, they were working for the city<\/em>.\u201d That should be it. End of story. Even if federal prosecutors came in and tried to do something, which they can\u2019t because it\u2019s not a federal issue, but either way, say they did. Are you telling me the mayor of NYC couldn\u2019t talk to the justice department or even get a word in with Attorney General Merrick Garland and have this stopped? So Mayor Lenny asked the Ghostbusters for help when he pulled them out of jail in the first film and the did nothing to back them up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of you may be wondering why Jack Hardenmeyer isn’t the “real enemy.” After all, he did shoo them away from the mayor and then got them committed after the talk in the mayors office after the river of slime. But thing is that Hardenmeyer wouldn’t have even been and issue if Lenny hadn’t screwed them over in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Mayor Lenny drove them to this! To kids changing He-Man!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But Billiam, you\nmay be saying, I understand that Mayor Lenny screwed up, but can we\nreally blame the events of the second movie on him? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh my sweet summer\nchild, yes we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ghostbusters<\/em> weren\u2019t allowed to practice ghost busting for five years. If they had, if they were able to use their equipment for anything other than birthday parties (the most cringe worthy scene in the movie), then they may have noticed a building river of slime under the city. Maybe they would have noticed it being directed to the Manhattan Museum of Art and may have noticed the painting of Vigo the Carpathian. Do you see where I\u2019m going with this? If they weren\u2019t forced to hang up their proton packs there was so much more they could have done to prevent Vigo the Carpathian\u2019s plan to be reborn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hardemeyer may have them committed but it would have never come to that if they had support from Mayor Lenny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That is why Mayor\nLenny is the true bad guy of Ghostbusters 2. I rest my case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is going to be\nthe last Ghostbusters<\/em> related post of this sort. I tried\nthinking of who I could pick for 2016\u2019s Answer the Call<\/em> and\nGhostbusters Afterlife<\/em> but while I like both of those movies\nthe plots are pretty straight forward. There\u2019s no real outside\nforce that changed the way the movies went. Sure you could say the\nmayor was a bad guy in Answer the Call<\/em> but Rowan North, the\nbig bad guy, had everything planned out so even if the mayor had\nlistened I doubt anything could have been done to change North\u2019s\nplan. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Afterlife<\/em>\nthe main characters are children and there was no way they could have\nprevented any of it. Maybe you could blame Egon that he never reached\nout to the others for help and just tried to do it on his own? But\ndoes that make him a bad guy? No. So alas, this is my last blog of\nthis sort. Maybe onto another movie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years back I wrote a blog about the true enemy that the Ghostbusters had to face in the first film. This of course … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":38765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","latest_post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/somewhatnerdy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/JJ.jpg?fit=2000%2C2000&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35LLI-a5a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38760"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38770,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38760\/revisions\/38770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}