Things You May Have Missed in Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Taking A Second Pass

As a result of doing 1,550 Blu-ray framegrabs from Ghostbusters: Afterlife for the Spook Central VIPs, with some extra movie framegrabs and behind-the-scenes images for the Spook Central Facebook page, I became intimately familiar with the movie on a shot-by-shot and frame-by-frame basis. This familiarity has lead me to discover things about the movie that you may have missed from a normal viewing, and thus I am writing a series of articles to present these discoveries to you.

It should be noted that, for the most part, these "Things You May Have Missed in Ghostbusters: Afterlife" articles will not discuss the myriad of references and Easter eggs in the movie, most of which are illustrated in the "We Got One! Easter Eggs Revealed" featurette on the Blu-ray release. Also, it probably doesn't need to be said at this point, but just in case some of you still have not seen the film, let's just say SPOILER WARNING if you read any further. Finally, all images can be clicked on for the original Blu-ray framegrab. Now that all of that is out of the way, let's get to it...

One of the highlights of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the Muncher chase. It's an outstanding scene, but it's not without it's faults. The last Missed article showcased two film flubs. Today, I will show you two more that take place during this scene. Both flubs involve the chase passing by the same buildings twice. Before I get into this, I need to point out that if I were to really go into this chase shot by shot, I could point out how Muncher and the Ecto-1 jump around many times in regards to the spacial reality that they're in, but that's more work than I want to put into this. I'll just focus on two specific buildings.

At the start of the chase (58:42), as Muncher causes the fire hydrant to explode, we see The Empress Theatre (235 24 Street in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada) in the background on the right. (Fun Fact: In real-life, the "thrift store" from a previous Missed article is located five stores down from The Empress Theatre. You can see it with it's original ATB Financial signage in the shot below, between the two blue "ATB" banners. A few shots later, after the logo on the car gets washed, it's in the background with the movie's "thrift store" signage now on the building; and again behind Muncher in a close-up. Yes, this is also another reveal of it being in Canada and not Oklahoma, as "ATB" stands for Alberta.)


As the chase proceeds down 24 Street, we get a better look at the Empress. It's hard to miss with its distinctive marquee.


Phoebe didn't have a hard time missing it. She nearly destroyed it with her errant shooting. That's what happens when you let kids play with nuclear weapons. Remember kids, the Proton Pack is not a toy.


The Ecto-1 and Muncher DO go past the Empress. Quite clearly past it.


Then they're back in front of it, even though the "Empress" on both the horizontal and vertical signage has been digitally erased.


Just as Muncher is about to turn around and blast the kids with some metal, the Empress is now ahead of him. So much for having gone past it.


Now the Empress is slightly behind the Ecto-1, with its signage digitally erased. I assume the signage was erased in an effort to hide the fact that it pops up again and again, but it's not fooling anyone. Otherwise, why erase it when it was quite visible earlier, and was even part of a pyrotechnic gag?


At this point, Muncher ducks into some buildings in an effort to escape those meddling kids. We don't see the Empress Theatre anymore at this point.


The other building that I noticed popping up twice occurs after Muncher has exited those buildings, and putting a slimy damper on Callie and Gary's date.

At 1:00:00 - Muncher exits the buildings, and hightails it down the street. Muncher comes out of the window on the left in the frame below. That's actually the Bank of Montreal at 95 3 Avenue West in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. That's not the important building though.


In the background on the right is a building with a yellow sign that says "Pioneer Trail" on it. That's the Pioneer Trail Seniors Centre (160 3 Avenue West). (FYI: This is down the block from the Naiper Theater at 20 3 Avenue East, which was playing Bingo and Cannibal Girls when Podcast interviews Phoebe outside of it.)


It's very important to note that the Ecto-1 turns the corner from 1 Street West onto 3 Avenue heading AWAY from Pioneer Trail. This means that the chase should never pass the Pioneer Trail building since at no point do they turn around.


As the chase continues, Phoebe zaps Muncher in front of the Badlands Gallery (50 3 Avenue West). So far, so good.


The kids are excited. I'm excited. Podcast puts out the RTV, which makes it even more exciting. Then the excitement ends when we get this great street level shot of the RTV in front of the Ecto-1 and we see that the car has jumped backwards down 3 Avenue and is now just a little past the Pioneer Trail building.


The next shot, which has been reprinted in various magazines, shows that the Ecto-1 has just crossed past the intersection with 1 Street West that it originally turned from to get onto 3 Avenue at the start of this part of the chase. Pioneer Trail is circled on the left. In what may indicate that this scene took a long time to film, the corner building at the center in the background has blue awnings on it (which say "RBC Royal Bank" on them in real life), but those awnings weren't there when the car first turned onto the street. Unless the filmmakers digitally removed them, just as they erased the text on the awnings.


Then Muncher is back in front of the Badlands Gallery and adjacent buildings.


We don't see Pioneer Trail anymore, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the next shots of Ecto-1 making a hard left have actually been shot with the car TURNED AROUND on 3 Avenue heading towards Pioneer Trail.


In fact, the car makes the hard left from 3 Avenue onto 1 Street West, which is the road it originally turned off of at the start of this part of the scene.


When the shot changes to show the car passing the Summerville Post Office, the car has switched directions yet again. That "post office" is actually the store on the corner of 3 Avenue and Centre Street, diagonally across from the aforementioned Napier Theatre. It's in the same direction AWAY from Pioneer Trail that the car was originally heading before the "hard left" switched directions for two shots.


The chase then continues at another part of Canada where Spinners is located....but this isn't a filming locations rundown, so I'm stopping here. All of this "movie magic" bullshit with the Muncher chase is why I may never do a filming locations rundown of Afterlife as I did with the other three films.

Join me next time as I look at more Things You May Have Missed in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.