Better Late Than Never? Fritz Babbles About That Movie All The Rest of You Saw Months Ago
On March 22, 2024, the fifth movie of the Ghostbusters franchise, and the fourth set in the continuity of the original, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was released into theaters.

I...didn't get to see it.

On June 25, 2024, GBFE was released on DVD, BluRay, 4K etc. On July 5th I purchased a DVD copy at a Walmart (they didn't have the DVD/BluRay combo, and the DVD was cheaper anyway).

So finally, on July 13, I got to sit down and watch it.

My brother and proofreader Ogre watched with me. Since he hasn't been hanging around a message board marinating in spoilers for the last four months, he went into it cold and I tried to note his reactions.

Thankfully, we didn't get an opening caption "THREE YEARS LATER", because that would get us started on the "Take a swig any time you see something that reminds you of a previous movie" drinking game right off the bat. (Spoilers: The game will probably get you buzzed, but it won't completely murder your liver and make it scream for death like Afterlife did). Instead we got a Robert Frost quote about whether the world ending in fire or ice would be worse. Suitably sets the cheerful mood, doesn't it?

Anyway, our story opens at the Hook and Ladder No.8 Firehouse...

...in July 1904.

The firefighters are called to the Manhattan Adventurers Society, one of those usual Victorian (technically post-Victorian by three years) men's clubs where they stuffily preen and talk about nonsense.

Weird thing is...despite it being the middle of July...all of the club members are frozen solid, and shatter as the firefighters notice an odd woman in ornate brass armor, holding a mysterious brass orb covered in glyphs. That are moving.

There's no way any of that will be important later, right?

So anyway, we then find ourselves in 2024, and the ECTO-1 roaring down the streets of New York City in pursuit of the Hell's Kitchen Sewer Dragon, who is chucking manhole covers at them left and right. (Ogre:"If I were a dragon living in the sewer of a place called Hell's Kitchen I'd be pissy too") The ECTO-1 has been restored to pristine condition, with a couple of new red stripes added to the hood just to make sure you have to buy new merchandise because the clean ones without stripes are now outdated.

Driving the car is seismologist Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) with his love interest of three years, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coons) in the passenger seat. (What, they didn't have them break up and have to fall in love all over again, or have Callie suddenly dating a complete loser for no discernible reason? What kind of Ghostbusters sequel is this?) Sitting in the back are Callie's two children, son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace). They're all in Ghostbuster flight suits, all but Gary's nametag reading "Spengler"

(Digressing On A Rant: Which kind of annoys me. I can understand Callie going back to her maiden name. I can even understand Phoebe adopting the name to feel closer to her grandfather. But Afterlife basically said Trevor and his father got along fine. Honestly, it feels a little lazy--"We wanted to tell this great story where Egon is a deadbeat dad and Callie is divorced with kids but we're not going to put much or any thought at all into Callie's Mom (other than not making it the fucking obvious already-established character) or her ex-husband. We're not even going to reveal Trevor and Phoebe's full birth names! Because that would be putting more thought into it than we want to." Even worse, it fits an unfortunate pattern set thirty-five years earlier with "We want to tell this great story where Venkman and Dana broke up and she married someone else, had a baby, and divorced the other guy but we're not going to put much thought into it and won't even reveal Oscar's full birth name because we don't want to think about it that hard!" We'd have nothing on that one at all except for the commentaries confirming it's "The Stiff" and the name they gave him in Richard Mueller's novelization. (Andre Wallance, if you're the kind of obsessive nutjob that keeps track of that stuff.) Sheesh. Okay, I'll climb off the soapbox and get back to the show.)

Everything's all honky-dory for our four heroes...well, except Trevor is bitching about being stuck in the back seat because he's eighteen now! (Thus confirming in-story that it's three years later: Trevor was fifteen in the summer of 2021, and would turn 16 "next February", meaning he was born February 2006. They can get stuff right sometimes.) Phoebe's in the gunner seat, and keeps asking if she can use it and gets told no. She also tells one of her weird jokes to try to calm down her brother, but it doesn't work. She calls her mom by name at one point, and gets chewed out--just making her feel more disgruntled. This is a theme for her in this movie--she's fifteen now, and like any fifteen year old she has issues with just about everything.

We also meet a couple of cops that will make sporadic appearances throughout the movie. I nicknamed them Rivera and Frump.

Pissed off, Phoebe activates the gunner seat anyway and blasts the entity; Trevor tries the remote trap, introduced in the last movie, to catch the Sewer Dragon but it flies out of its range.

Callie then fires up the new piece of technology, the reason the ECTO-1's roof rack is now sporting a dome: the drone trap, a drone carrying a ghost trap. With that, they successfully capture their quarry.

And then the grateful city of New York applauds them on a job well done.

Ha ha no. Take some drinks--the media reminds us all about the Statue of Liberty waltzing down the street in 1989 and the Mayor now is Walter Peck (William Atherton) the former EPA hatchet man who shut down the containment unit forty years earlier and tried to blow up Slimer in a cyclotron a couple years later. He's not happy with all of the destruction (kind of understandable) and really chews them out for taking a minor on busts. I...gotta agree a bit with that one. I don't know New York's labor laws exactly, but at the now basically dead retailer I worked for for eight years, by Indiana law we couldn't hire anyone younger than sixteen and their work hours were restricted until they were 18.

Phoebe is basically grounded from ghostbusting, which is sure to have a wonderful effect on her teenage angst issues. No way that will turn around and bite us in the butt, right?

Gary and Callie take the ghost trap and some laundry downstairs (hey, they had the washer/dryer in the basement in the cartoon also!) and Callie is a bit critical of Gary's step-parenting skills, telling him he needs to be tough with the kids once in a while (like he wasn't with Phoebe) Gary tries to empty the ghost trap into the containment unit...and it's a lot harder than they anticipated. Considering that three years ago the thing looked like it was about to malfunction, maybe it's time to do something about it? Too bad the guy who designed it and understands it best is dead...

We shift scenes to Ray's Occult, where original Ghostbuster Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) is, with the help of Phoebe's friend from Oklahoma "Podcast" (Logan Kim), hosting an episode of his Youtube show "Repossessed". At least in Podcast's case, we know he has a real name that they haven't bothered to reveal. He examines a watch a lady claims is haunted by her husband; after Ray uses a PKE meter to determine that nothing supernatural is going on, Podcast smashes it with a hammer ("It gets the views" he explains to the distraught woman).

So Phoebe shows up to give Ray a mood slime sample and Podcast explains to her that he lied to his parents and they think he's at Space Camp (...Hey, I went to Space Camp in 1983. It was a blast. You're missing out, kid) But on the other hand, he's got some MiniPufts crashing with him in the basement, and they don't have those in Huntsville. (Gotta keep the merchandisers happy, right? And take another drink...) Interestingly, the little shits get agitated when a new customer enters Ray's shop.

His name is Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani). He's brought a whole box of knicknacks from his now-deceased eccentric grandmother that he hopes to sell to Ray; among the item in the box is a brass orb covered in glyphs--you know, a lot like the one that was seen in 1904. Probably not a coincidence, especially after it blows out the PKE Meter (the things were known to explode in the 80s) and causes what feels like a minor earthquake. Ray buys the orb.

Gary shows the new cracks on the containment unit wall to Grandma Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts). She tells him she'll notify Winston Zeddemore's engineers; Gary guesses they might be working on "super secret Ghostbusting stuff" and the woman who should have been Gary's future mother-in-law basically confirms that.

Hm...

Trevor, meanwhile, is trying to find the source of the drippy green slime and stolen food. Okay, not gonna leave you in suspense here--he finds Slimer living in the attic with a trash heap of junk food wrappers. Trevor doesn't have any more luck catching the Spud than Venkman did; he gets slimed and everything.

There's a nice little tone scene just after this, where Callie, Gary, and Trevor go on a job, with Phoebe being left behind, then a few seconds later Ray is examining the brass orb when the ECTO-1 drives by, and he watches it wistfully.

With no one there to actually stop her, Phoebe leaves Ghostbusters Central and ends up in Washington Square Park. She sets up the chess set maybe hoping to contact Deadbeat Grandpa, but instead meets a Class 4 entity, a deceased girl about her own age named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind). Melody is confused by, then pleased, that this living person didn't run away screaming in terror--hey, Mel, Phoebe's stared down Gozer the Gozarian. Compared to that, you just. Ain't. Scary. Melody explains she died in a tenement fire, and the two bond over chess (Melody keeps winning) and sarcasm.

The next day at GBCentral, there's a black van with a Ghostbuster logo on it. Inside, we meet Lars Pinfield (James Acaster), wearing a black flight suit with a modified Ghostbuster logo--it has cogwheels on it. This dapper chap with the English accent works for Winston, and is all science and waves around familiar looking equipment near the ailing containment unit. In two minutes he's acted more like a Spengler than Callie has in two movies.

Lars brings in his boss, the aforementioned Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and as revealed last movie, Winston is now making a lot more than $11,500 a year. Lars unrolls the original blueprints of the containment unit, as drawn up by the deceased Egon. Trevor asks the obvious question: "Why don't you just build another one?"

Lars looks at Winston, who admits "We already have".

We're then introduced to the Paranormal Research Center, housed in a former Tri-bourough aquarium stuffed with scientists and a lot of the junk Ray's been buying. We later see a ghost that possesses stuff and a blue Class 5 known as "Pukey" kept in proton-charged fish tanks. Trevor is surprised by a familiar face: one of the PRC employees is Lucky Domingo (Celeste O'Conner), the young lady he was lusting after in Afterlife. She's testing a new compact proton thrower worn on her lower right arm (a lot like one seen in the IDW comics. And for some reason her nametag reads "Lucky". I mean, did they fucking forget they gave her a last name in the previous movie?!) Trevor is shocked to see her--all he knew is that she was interning somewhere.

Lars then demonstrates something that will be important later: he sticks a Sony Discman possessed by an evil Spin Doctors CD (aren't they all?) in a device they call the Ionic Separator: it extracts the possessing entity and it's sent into a second chamber which puts it into a ghost trap. Lars then empties the trap into a new, shiny containment unit--the only negative is that it doesn't look like a big round red boiler. Phoebe asks a strange question: has the Separator been used on a living subject? Lars answers no.

Callie asks an obvious question: how long would it take to transfer all the ghosts from the firehouse to here? "About three to seven years" Lucky answers. Damn, that's a lot of ghosts for only being in business for a short time in the Eighties and then the early Nineties.

Afterwards, Gary tries to bond with Phoebe. It isn't going too well and then they get a Ghostbusting call, and Gary's gotta leave.

Phoebe is brooding when GBCentral gets another call--she and Podcast answer it. Yeah, there's no way this will go bad. (Podcast just writes his pseudonym on a flight suit like he did last time. He's not a GBI employee, so no complaint on that one.)

Back at the PRC, Lars and Lucky put the brass orb in the Seperator; it resists extraction and causes the center's electrical power to shut off. Including the proton fields keeping the ghosts in their fish tanks. Uh-oh. Fortunately, he manages to get the power back on before any of the ghosts escape. Unfortunately, when he tries to remove the orb from the extractor, it starts to freeze his hand until he drops it. A lot like all those frozen adventurers 120 years earlier.

Phoebe and Podcast arrive at the Melody Diner and the ghost that they were called for...was Melody. Phoebe is slow to fire and then misses, much to Podcast's consternation. When she gets home, the confused young lady hides her proton pack under her bed instead of putting it back in the charging array. You think this may pay off later?

Just then. Melody shows up outside Phoebe's window, and they talk again. Phoebe takes the ghost down and shows her the containment unit. Melody wonders what happens when she finally passes on; Phoebe tells her what she saw at the end of Afterlife when her grandfather did just that. Melody also reveals her anchor, a book of matches from which she extracts the last one--but then when she opens the book again the match is back. Phoebe hears her Mom, and then Melody is gone.

From the orb back at PRC, a wave is spreading out over the city. Stuff starts freezing.

We see Melody walking down a street as one of those waves of cold catches up to her. "I'm going as fast as I can!" she tells the growly voice speaking in some language we don't know. What's this about?

Callie wakes Phoebe up--there's trouble in the basement. The wall by the containment unit now has holes in it. Phoebe has no idea what it means. I guess the wall isn't actually part of the ECU, because if it was the ghosts would all be flying out right? Right? And what's with all the frost on it, I asked ominously...

Ray and the kids go to PRC, where we discover that the orb is basically at absolute zero--and it's having some kind of effect on the nearby ghosts, including a tank of MiniPufts. Trevor once again asks a really good question: "Where the hell did you guys get this thing?"

So Lucky, Trevor, and Lars go to the apartment of said where the hell--Nadeem Razmaadi. He lets them in as soon as he's sure they don't want a refund on the orb, and we find out about his grandmother--she was into some strange stuff (We also hear that Nadeem has an older brother who's an engineer). With some prompting, he takes the three GBI employees to his grandma's sex dungeon, where she kept all the "good stuff" including the orb; the room is full of brass, which as Lars explains is a "magical alloy" used to contain spirits. There's also a set of armor that looks a lot like the set worn by that lady in 1904...you think there might be a connection? Especially as Nadeem seems to be setting off the PKE meter?

Back at Ray's Occult, Phoebe is asking Ray if he'd ever wondered what it was like to be a ghost. Being Ray, he of course says "yes". While they're having that discussion Podcast's phone starts make really strange growly sounds as he watches the footage he took of the orb. Ray realizes it's some dead language but he doesn't know which one--he knows a guy who can help, though he seems reluctant.

We're introduced to Ray's motorcycle, complete with sidecar, named the "ECTO-C". I...kinda like this idea. "C" is the third letter, and the previous use of the name "ECTO-3" has been cursed. First it was a dippy little motorized unicycle with a sidecar for Slimer in the cartoon, while the toy was a gocart with big paddles. Neither much to write home about. Fan Fic Note: I may use this idea somewhere, as I've had GBI motorcycles before...the "real" ECTO-3 may be retconned into the Ecto-Interceptor's spiritual prototype!

Nadeem is being examined at PRC, and take a drink as he's fit with the same collander aura analyzer used on Louis Tully in GB1. Conducting the interview finally brings the other surviving original Ghostbuster, Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) into the story. Venkman asks a lot of weird and annoying questions, but the most interesting thing happens every time he throws a pen at Nadeem. When Nadeem gets pissed off, a nearby Bunsen burner flares up for a second or two. Hm.

Take two more swigs: We shift our scene to the New York Public Library, the same place at the beginning of GB1, and even have a cameo by the same library administrator, Roger Delacorte (Jason Rothman), who is perhaps understandably not happy to see Ray. Ray is here to consult eccentric historian Dr. Hubert Wartzki (played by brilliant comedian Patton Oswalt) Hubert says the language is pre-Sanskrit and there's only five people in the world who could interpret it.

Well, I like to think there were six, but one of them died three years ago. Just like there are only two people left who can read the Ragnarok runes.

When Podcast shows Hubert a picture of the orb, Hubert freaks out--he takes them below to the "real library" where he relates the story of Garraka.

I'll just copy-paste from the Ghostbusters wiki:

4000 years ago, around 1976 BCE, Samudari was a bloodthirsty king who wished to rule Asia. Garraka served Samudari and together, they conquered half of central Asia. One noteworthy military campaign was called the Battle of the Seven Armies. Samudari became suspicious of Garraka's ambitions and had him captured, branded, broken, and disfigured. His horns, the source of his greatest strength, were forcibly ripped from his head. Garraka waged war on humanity and went on a murder spree. He planned to raise an undead army, wage war with humans, and bring about a second Ice Age. He channeled human's fears into a weapon that became known as the Death Chill. A roving band of mythical spirit catchers known as Firemasters shattered the Death Chill then used fire and brass to trap Garraka inside an orb.

As a bonus, Hubert has the wax cylinder from the Adventurer's Society that they played to open the Orb of Garraka 120 years earlier.

And that's what the Possessor was waiting for.

The little jerk had managed to escape the PRC when the orb was riling up the MiniPufts, and jumps into the cylinder. A long chase scene ensues--take another swig, the Library Ghost from GB1 makes a cameo--before they're able to stop it with the proton gun in ECTO-C's side car, though one of the stone lions outside the library is destroyed in the process.

And then the cops show up. Oh boy.

Peck is ecstatic. He can now shut down the Ghostbusters! Phoebe points out what happened when he shut down the containment unit all those years ago--he basically tells her shut up or he'll have her arrested.

Phoebe does indeed get arrested.

Goddamn it tell me again how in the name of hell it makes some kind of sense that Janine isn't her grandmother?! (Though it is Peck we're talking about, who made even Egon lose his cool once.)

Callie reads Phoebe the riot act, and Phoebe delivers just the sort of really hurtful remark an angry teenager would use.

Phoebe: If you weren't a Spengler you'd be answering phones!!!
Me: And the lady who does answer the phones should have been a Spengler and your grandmother, Little Missy

Winston, meanwhile, reads Ray the riot act. I admit, this doesn't quite work for me--Winston isn't even listening as Ray tries to explain about the cylinder. You know, the thing connected to that Orb that shorted out the equipment in your own fucking secret lab?! It seems an awful lot like a familiar sounding "But if he actually listened to his longtime friend it'd short circuit the story we want to tell!!!" twist we saw, oh, just one movie ago.

I'm really beginning to wonder if in the movie-only universe the Ghostbusters are all a bunch of stupid assholes.

The Firehouse is being condemned. The proton packs have been impounded. Gary and the Spenglers start packing. Nadeem, Lars, and Ray are there too--Lars gets a little (justifiably) pissy with Nadeem, as if he'd left his grandmother's stuff alone this whole clusterfuck might not be happening.

As Ray explains, Grandma was the last of the Firebenders...er, Firemasters, and it's up to Nadeem to try and find that power within himself. It may make all the difference as to whether global warming get a little too solved. Ray and Podcast start trying to help him find his power by using the flame from a lighter to move to a candle pyrokinetically.

Phoebe bolts--she goes to the now conveniently unoccupied PRC with Melody. Phoebe is feeling neglected and criticized for everything she does, so why not become a ghost and better communicate with what she sees as her only friend in the world right now?

Phoebe explains that the Ionic Separator will allow her to separate her spirit from her body for two minutes. That's the theory, anyway--as noted before, nobody's tried it on a living being yet...

Considering that Phoebe's grandfather was known for blasting himself into the Netherworld or getting turned into a werechicken once a week or so, I'd say she's fitting into the family tradition here.

It works. And this is exactly what Garraka's been waiting for.

Garraka can control ghosts. But he needs a living voice to speak the spell to free him. Now he can control Phoebe's ghost, and uses it to have her physical body speak the spell to release him. Melody is apologetic, but she sees Garraka as the only chance to open the gate to the Other Side and allow her to pass on.

Uh oh.

Garraka (voice of director Gil Kenan) appears just before Phoebe's two minutes are up, and she reawakens in the lab. Lucky shows up and shoots Garraka with a proton beam, but he freezes the beam and very nearly Lucky. (The trailer made it look like she came even closer to being flash frozen).

(I had to think about it for a sec...freezing a proton beam? But that's just it--it IS made of particles, either ionized hydrogen or alpha particles depending on which not-necessarily-canon source you believe, which I can see would be subject to being taken to zero Kelvin and thus no motion.)

Garraka, after murdering an innocent vape dealer who had the misfortune of branding himself "The Firemaster", busts into Nadeem's apartment and goes to the sex dungeon, reclaiming his horns--a significant part of his power--from the wall. The villain thus empowered, all the scenes of New York City icing up seen in the trailers (minus the Bananarama "Cruel Summer" soundtrack) start happening, because some sort of montage is sort of Ghostbuster movie tradition, after all. Rivera and Frump realize they better call this in.

Maybe in one of these centuries Peck will get the hint. "I fuck with the Ghostbusters and bad shit happens. Maybe I better stop doing that."

Everybody meets up at GBCentral; they know this is where Garraka's heading, to take every ghost in the containment unit and make it his army to Try To Take Over The World [/Maurice LaMarche voice. For some reason I keep associating that guy with Ghostbusters....]

The old packs are gone, but Lars has brought new ones, featuring redesigned ion arms, some yellow safety bumpers, and a neat caution tape design on the side of the power cell giving a slight visual callback to a certain cartoon where the Ghostbusters were able to attach the ghost traps there.

Lucky points out that she blasted the thing and it didn't work. Phoebe has an idea--couldn't they use copper in the colliders? Janine mentions that vagrants stripped all the firehouse's copper in the Nineties...but Phoebe and Ray realize they have plenty of brass that's been cooking in paranormal energy for the last fourty years: The fire poles!

As Phoebe explains in a voiceover, the normal packs use nickel and zinc in the cyclotron; but Garraka is different. By plating the nickel and zinc with brass (an alloy of copper and zinc) it could work. Phoebe retrieves the pack she hid under her bed (I suspect it's the same one that she found in Summerville, though it's been repaired since then), melts down a section she cut out of one of the fire poles, and gets to work.

While she's doing that, the other Ghostbusters suit up, including Ray, Winston, and, for the first time (in a movie anyway), Janine. She's armed with the compact thrower Lucky was testing earlier in the film.

Trevor and Lucky are doing lookout on the roof: Lucky's wearing the red parka that was quite a sensation on the message boards when it was first seen and is on half the cast in the movie posters/DVD box art. Something bangs on the door; take a deep breath, this is it...

Oh wait, it's Venkman. He knows how to make an entrance, doesn't he? It's apparently the first time he's seen Janine in the uniform too.

Lucky and Trevor see a tricycle rolling down the street on its own--Ray realizes it's the Possessor! It gets into the firehouse, possesses ECTO-1, nearly smooshes the original Ghostbusters, nearly takes out Trevor when it possesses Lucky's proton pack, and then gets eaten by Slimer when it makes the tactical mistake of possessing a pizza. Slimer saving the day got overdone a lot back in the day, but when done sparingly and well, it's pretty nifty. This was the latter.

I say Trevor "nearly" got taken out because Nadeem has his very first Big Hero Moment, using his Firemaster powers to divert the beam.

I dunno...this review/summary/snarkfest has drug on a long time already, so here's the gist of what happens next: after a lot of tense moments, fake-outs, and reversals, Garraka is defeated by a combination of Phoebe's modified pack, Nadeem's Firemaster powers (he even wears the armor), and Melody using that last match to help the above, which allows her to Cross to the Other Side. You want to know more about how it exactly went down? Go buy the disk or rent the stream.

(This one time chemistry major gives the movie props: the greenish color to Phoebe's modified proton stream does resonate with the greenish color of oxidized copper (as previously mentioned, a component of brass) and the blue/greenish flames it throws off when burned. Nice touch.)

All's well that ends well. The crowd is chanting the Ghostbusters name, and Venkman and Winston neuter Peck by painting the Mayor as their biggest fan in the eyes of, okay, take a swig if you want even though it's me saying this not the movie, millions of registered voters. Trevor gets to drive ECTO-1, Phoebe calls Gary "Dad". Cue Ray Parker Jr. and the closing credits.

Just one midcredit sequence where the MiniPufts steal a Stay Puft Marshmallows semi truck. Going home to spawn, I guess.

Show over.

Wow.

It was Kumail Nanjiani who said, in a tweet, that The Real Ghostbusters, the groundbreaking animated series that ran from 1986-1991, the most successful cartoon based off a movie ever even though network "experts" tried to ruin it, was a point of reference for the making of Frozen Empire. No wonder I liked this movie so much. We didn't have to sit through "The Ghostbusters go back into business!" yet again, instead basically coming into the story on a workaday bust, in a world where it turns out supernatural problems occurring aren't reliant on Gozer the Gozarian or Vigo showing up after all.

(Hah! See! They DIDN'T retread Vigo in this movie!!! Another point for GBFE!!!)

As my brother Ogre points out, this movie also canonizes good guy wizards. We hope our friend Vincent is happy about that.

I heard a lot of complaints about how "overstuffed" with characters this movie was, between the surviving originals, the Afterlife crew, and the new ones introduced in this movie (Nadeem, Lars, Hubert, Melody) but honestly I didn't feel that way. Everybody played a role substantive enough to justify them being there. As an Egon fan I liked Lars as basically his other heir apparent. Nadeem's story was funny and even a bit touching. And neither Hubert nor Melody seemed, to me, to overstay their welcomes.

My snap take after watching it? This just might be my new second favorite Ghostbusters movie. Nothing beats the original. Answer The Call was okay, but flawed. The other two had brilliant moments but also took turns assassinating the characters of my two favorites: GB2 degraded Janine while Afterlife not only turned Egon into a deadbeat dad, but said he'd been one the entire time we'd know him. Frozen Empire? A neat story, a suitably nasty villain, new faces that worked well, some touching moments, some great action and world building, and no character assassination of old favorites.

That may not hold--my original assessment of Answer The Call was far more positive than I see it now--but for the time being, it gets five Whacko Jacko Slimers out of five.

(GB1 would get six)

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