Update 4/9/16 - 6/14/18: We've entered a whole new age of Ghostbusters on home video since I made this post...
Ghostbusters in 4k! Not just "mastered in 4k" 1080p, but both films have now been issued in 4k Ultra HD...twice! No doubt to rebuild fan interest in anticipation of the upcoming fourth film, Sony has just released a fancy, brand new 5-disc UHD boxed set of
Ghostbusters 1 and
2, with even more special features to boot.
So now I trust you're all familiar with
Ghostbusters, so I'm not going to describe or review the film. I want to just jump right into the releases. The famous Criterion laserdisc with extras that still haven't been released anywhere else, the DVDs and remastered DVDs, the remastered blu-rays and the now the UHDs. And to make this an even bigger post, I'm going to go ahead and throw in
Ghostbusters 2, too. It's definitely not as great a film, it's a more children-friendly rehash that was surely influenced by the cartoon series that hit the market first. But it's still got some good jokes and the same great cast, so as long as you keep your expectations tampered, ant fan of the original should find it at least enjoyable.
We start out with the 1989 Criterion special edition laserdisc. Now, this was not the first time the film had been released on disc. RCA/ Columbia had released it as a generic, full-screen disc all the way back when the film was a new release in 1985. And they reissued it as a widescreen disc later. But Criterion's release is the first one that's still of interest to fans today, because it has extras on it no other releases do to this day. And I should point out, too, that there are two Criterion laserdiscs. The 2-disc "red band" one, pictured above, and a single-disc one with a blue Criterion logo along the top, that doesn't have the extras, and is presented in CLV instead of CAV.
As you can see, the picture is widescreen and pretty nice quality - excellent for a laserdisc of its time... Especially when you bear in mind the caveat that all laserdisc screenshots have to be imported through composite cables, as opposed to DVDs and blus which can be read directly off the disc. So you always have to give laserdiscs a little 10% or so credit. The blacks look a little blacker, for instance, on my television. Anyway, it's labeled as being 2.35:1 on the cover, but it's really more of a 2.14:1. And as I said, it's CAV, which allows you to study the film frame-by-frame (most laserdiscs were CLV which blends frames to save space).
So this laser comes in a nice gatefold sleeve with a printed letter from
Jon Mulvaney of Criterion. There's a bunch of extras, but mostly vintage stuff. There's the original featurette and massive stills galleries, including behind the scenes photos, sketches and looks at the special effects. There's also the trailer, the original screenplay - if you can imagine clicking "Next" over 400 times to read the full text right off of your television - and storyboard comparisons to the film.
But the reason why this laserdisc still sells to this day is the exclusive extra.
Despite Sony's claim of their latest blu featuring "all previously released legacy content," they missed some things, including a deleted
scene where the Ghostbusters argue over which of them would be most
deserving of a Nobel Prize. Sony finally got it right and included the Nobel Prize scene in their latest, 5-disc UHD set! But there are special effects comparisons, showing footage from the original workprint tape in split screen with the finished film. And they had the promo trailer, which is notable because it uses the original
Ghostbusters theme song that was later replaced by the
Ray Parker Jr. song. That teaser is the only way to hear it. Finally, there's also some fun screen test footage of the actress who plays the
library ghost repeatedly turning evil and running at the camera.
Now, admittedly, at this point it's pretty minor. I can see most casual fans saying, well, I could live without any of that. And yeah, it's not a huge deal unless you're a hardcore devotee. Since they've finally recovered all the deleted scenes, I wouldn't recommend anybody back-dipping for the laser now. But some of us hang onto the laser because it's still collectible.
Anyway, this is already a full-sized post, and we're just now getting to the first DVD. Don't worry; I'll try to keep it concise and stick to just the pertinent bits that are still of interest in 2019.
So,
Ghostbusters debuted on DVD in 1999 with a nice special edition from Columbia Tri-Star. For being such an old disc, it was anamorphic, non-interlaced and it even improved on the framing. This one says 2.35:1 on its case, but is actually even better at 2.40:1, bringing in additional picture on all four sides, but primarily on the left, where we see a lot had been left out. It's a bit red, though. It has a 5.1 audio mix, optional English subtitles, a fold-out insert with notes, and even a contest form with some design sketches on it, where you could win some original artwork.
It has a screwy menu system. If you want to watch the trailer, should you click on "Spook Central," "Ghostbusters Grab Bag," or "Feature?" It's actually the latter. But once you get the hang of it, there's a lot to be found, including the original making of featurette, a new 1999 making of featurette, an "SFX" featurette interviewing the film's effects team in a big round-table discussion, deleted scenes (minus
that deleted scene, of course), a trivia subtitle track, storyboard comparisons, special effect workprint comparisons (but not the scenes from the laserdisc) the trailer and bonus trailers.
And the biggest extra of them all, was a new video commentary by
Ivan Reitman,
Harold Ramis and producer
Joe Medjuck. This is a lively and detailed audio commentary, but where the commenters are shown silhouetted at the bottom of the screen, a la
Mystery Science Theater 3000. Note: my PC had a little trouble playing this, so they're floating a bit in the center of the screen of my screenshot and stretched a bit wide. They're flushed to the bottom and a little thinner when watched on a television with your player on the old 4:3 settings. Anyway, modern releases have kept the audio commentary, but not the video component, which is frankly pretty fun and I miss it. I understand it's more to do with technical limitations (the footage of the commenters is actually a subtitle track that can't simply be slapped onto a blu-ray disc) than Sony deciding to "screw us over," but still. It's far from essential, but it always makes me reluctant to upgrade because I hate the feeling of losing something and taking a step backwards in an upgrade. So I hang onto this DVD just for watching the commentary.
Meanwhile, also in 1999, Columbia Tri-Star released
Ghostbusters 2 on DVD. This was not a special edition, no sir. The trailer and some bonus trailers is all we get. But at least they got the aspect ratio right. The old, equally barebones laserdisc was 1.66. This is anamorphic and 2.35:1. It looks and sounds pretty good. Oh, and there is one interesting thing about the original, 1999 DVD of Ghostbusters 2, it's a flipper disc with a fullscreen version on the other side. Let's look at that.
Oh my god! Wow, this is may be worst example of "chop off the sides" fullscreen framing we've seen on
DVDExotica yet! Key characters go right off the screen. If you were hoping for any open matte peering here, forget it. Also, strangely, the widescreen version is non-interlaced, but the fullscreen side has a huge interlacing problem. Maybe this was the DVD producer's middle finger response to consumer demand for fullscreen versions of widescreen films? Actually, I could kind of get behind that. Heh.
Now, jumping ahead to 2005. Sony took over
Ghostbusters' distribution and re-released it on a fresh, remastered DVD. Gone is the redness of the 1999 DVD, but thankfully not the 2.40 framing. The image is a little less murky, and some jagged edges and pixelation has been cleaned up. It's a genuine improvement, but no new extras. All they really added were multi-lingual options, including French and Spanish dubs and a bunch of foreign subtitle tracks.
And Sony did
Ghostbusters 2 in 2005, too. Compression's improved, this time the color is more yellowish and less red, and superior compression leads to a slightly clearer, better defined image. But there's a problem with this one, and I don't mean that it doesn't have a junky full-screen version on the other side of the disc (although that's also true). The framing is still roughly 2.35:1 (2.28:1), but it's zoomed in, losing picture on all four sides (look at the judge's microphone, for example). It's a trade-off, but I'd say the remaster does more harm than good, and the 1999 version is actually slightly preferable. And again, no extras, except, as a token gesture so as not to appear barebones, Sony threw in 2 episodes of
The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. Gee, thanks. Anybody who really cared about the cartoon would have the whole series on DVD anyway.
And now we enter the HD age! In 2009
Ghostbusters (but not
Ghostbusters 2) debuted on Sony blu-ray. This included the old extras (sans the Criterion stuff, of course) plus some new special features including an ad for the video game, a 'making of' featurette about the video game, a featurette on the Ecto-1 car, a video gallery of the car, and some different bonus trailers. Yeah, not too exciting. But wait, there is one cool new feature: Slimer Mode, a picture-in-picture version of the film. I know, that sounds like garbage, and on one hand it is. It adds a cheesy computer graphic over the entire film, and gives you lots of lame pop-up trivia like "this is a famous bridge in New York." But it also intermittently brings up all new video interviews with the cast and crew, which are great. Note to self: see if there's a way to rip those interviews off the blu so you can watch them without sitting through the entire film in "Slimer Mode."
And of course, the picture's improved in HD. You can finally read the Budweiser on those cans. I mean, you could always recognize the logo as Budweiser's, but not you can actually make out all the individual letters. The audio is now True HD 5.1, which is also true for the multiple foreign language dubs, and there's even more subtitle tracks. I could go into more detail, but I'll save that for a little later on, when I compare this to the newer blu. But it's certainly an upgrade over the previous DVDs. And actually, that Ecto-1 featurette was a little interesting, I'll admit.
Much more recently, in 2014, Sony brings us a new
Ghostbusters blu, this time mastered in 4k. And it's a package deal, including the blu-ray debut of
Ghostbusters 2... for the first time including extras that actually relate to the film! And it's surprisingly cheap! Now don't be fooled. a "mastered in 4k" blu is not an actual 4k disc.
Some of the advertising has been misleading, but while the transfer was
mastered in 4k, it was still then compressed down to a 1080p blu. This
is 4k in the same way that
God Told Me To was 4k. That's still a good thing. Just know that the actual 4k UHD discs are a different thing, and we'll come to those soon.
So how much have we gained from the 4k scan? Not a ton; it's pretty subtle. There's not way more detail or anything, and the framing's almost the same (we actually gain a sliver extra on the right side on the new disc). The colors are better, I'd say. The 2009 blu is heavy on the red, while the 2014 is more natural - compare the star card
Bill Murray's holding up in the two shots. The older blu also has a little more contrast, making the extreme brights flare out a bit. Look at the back of
Dan Ackroyd's chair or the lamps in the background. They're different and I prefer the new version, but you have to be a real blu-ray nerd to pick up on most of the differences, let alone have a strong preference.
But extras, oh, Sony did come through here. Everything from the older DVDs and previous blu are here except the video commentary (but they still have the audio track) and the video game stuff. You would think if they could do "Slimer Mode," they could recreate the video commentary. And the video game featurette was slightly interesting for die-hard fans, because it interviewed several of the film's cast members. But whatever.
Sony gives us a new, 25 minute interview with Reitman and Ackroyd, which is pretty good if a little superficial. There's also two minutes worth of alternate TV takes, where they replace curse words with broadcast safe language, Ray Parker Jr's music video, and there's a new stills gallery of funky
Ghostbusters artwork. Nothing spectacular, but some good stuff to have.
The biggest inclusion, though, is
Ghostbusters 2 on blu! It's certainly the best the film has ever looked, being its first time in HD. And thankfully they've corrected the zoom of the 2006 DVD, giving us back the complete 2.39:1 image. The colors are pumped a little high (Egon's not supposed to be wearing bubble gum lipstick in that shot above), but it's so much clearer and stronger than any previous version.
Ghostbusters had to improve over a respectable preexisting blu, and okay, it managed. But
Ghostbusters 2 only has to complete with DVDs, so it's a more rewarding jump. And both of these blus feature DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks.
And yes, finally actual extras! It's not loaded like the first
Ghostbusters or anything, but after the dearth we've been living with, I'll take it. The main feature is a continuation of the Reitman/ Ackroyd interview from the first film's disc. It's more interesting because we don't usually get to hear them talk about
part 2, so it's less stuff we've heard before. There's also a collection of never-seen-before deleted scenes, a music video for
Bobby Brown's theme song, and three trailers. It's packaged in a nice "digibook" which includes a substantial 26-page booklet part, plus a few inserts including a note from Ivan Reitman and a coupon for the Country Buffet.
🤠So the "Mastered In 4K" blu-ray set really was the best
Ghostbusters release up to the writing of the original draft of this post, especially for
Ghostbusters 2, but really for both. Best transfers, best extras. But three years later, and that's definitely changed.
Not blown away? That's okay, you shouldn't be yet. The above shot is from
the standard blu-rays packaged with the UHDs in the latest 2019 set.
See, in 2016, a couple months after I made this post, both Ghostbusters
films were released on UHD, separately, and just in time to bolster the
hype for the Ghostbusters 2016 reboot. And we'll look at them in a
minute. But those UHD discs are exactly the same discs repackaged in
the 2019 set. Like, if you put the 2019 UHD in your player after the
2016, it will ask if you want to continue where you left off, because
they're literally the exact same discs. All the new extras and stuff in
the 2019 steelbook are on a the regular blu-rays and a fifth bonus
disc. That means that the 2019 1080p blu-rays are different discs, so that's what we're looking at here.
So they're technically different discs, with different encodes. They have to be with the different extras and all. But as you can see, the actual transfers are virtually indistinguishable from the 2014 blu-rays. Pixelation doesn't even appear to noticeably shift. It's the same transfer, just on adjusted discs. And it's the same deal with
Ghostbusters 2, as you can also see. I just wanted to post shots from those discs to be thorough, but now let's move on to the real story.
Now we finally have
Ghostbusters in 4k. Not just mastered in 4k, but genuinely presented in 3840 resolution. And this clearly isn't just the same 2014 master slapped onto a 4k disc; the new HDR color palette is downright hard not to notice. It definitely leans a bit green. Just look at the card in Bill's hand compared to the other shots. But you can definitely see the broader range of colors, which make the older discs look overly contrasty by comparison. And the resolution is a nice gain. As you can really see in the close-up above, grain is much more accurately captured, while the blu on the left still displaying pixelation and blockiness in the ultra-fine detail. We should be past the point where we're actually discovering new details in the image, because we've hit the resolution of the film. But we can still find details that have been pulled out and restored, like the fine print on the beer cans, while edges have become smoother and more photo realistic than ever. They've also added a new Dolby Atmos 7.1 mix, in addition to - not instead of - the 5.1.
 |
| the "Nobel Prize" scene |
And speaking of adding things, yes, there's new extras! Everything from the 2014 set is still here, but now there's even more. There's a fan commentary, which is alright. They're basically five podcasters who do have some good trivia to add and maintain a lively track throughout, but they step over each other a lot, interrupting interesting-sounding anecdotes to quote lines along with the film, talk about themselves and praise every obscure detail. And they really run out of things to say in the third act. But until then, it may be worth the listen, depending how big a fan you are. After that, yes the Nobel Prize deleted scene has finally been restored, as well as several other deleted scenes we've never seen before. We also get outtakes from the shooting of the in-movie TV commercial, an exhibitor showreel with an original introduction by Bill and Dan, several EPK interview clips, and additional galleries and trailers.
And then of course we have
Ghostbusters 2 in 4k. Again, color-wise, it has a slightly cooler and more subtle approach, which is great, because the blu definitely went a little too candy-colored. Here it's still quite bright and colorful, but Egon doesn't look like he's stepping out of a Nicki Minaj video. Shading is little more filled in and this time, even actual image detail, not just grain, is revealed - look at the face on that clown toy, for example. Not to mention grain and smoother edges, which got a bit blocky on the blu, are smooth and natural here. And again, they've added a new Dolby Atmos audio track in addition to the 5.1 from the previous blu.
And the same holds true in the special features department. The 2014 set finally gave
Ghostbusters 2 some quality extras, but still not on par with part
1. So again, there was more room to grow. This movie still didn't have an audio commentary, but now it finally does, with Reitman, Aykroyd and Medjuck. It's a little stiff, but so welcome. Then there's the original EPK featurette, but this one's quite hefty, clocking in at almost 45 minutes. And at the same length is the entire
Ghostbusters 2 episode of
Oprah, with all the stars (sans Moranis) in a lengthy chat. There's also a couple more trailers and even an original 4-minute "pitch concept pilot" for
The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show.
So there's no question, the 2019 steelbook has become the reigning definitive edition. One tiny little annoyance - the case is built so slim that the spindles literally pierce the paper insert with the digital code; it can't be avoided. But that's only nitpick of this genuinely perfect edition that trumps all other releases; and they even managed to wrangle that deleted scene from the Criterion laserdisc, so we can finally put that into storage. I couldn't be more satisfied.
