Summary

• The original Ghostbusters movie is still considered the best, launching a successful franchise for decades to come.
• Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, with an all-female cast, rebooted the franchise but didn't capture the essence of the original.
• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire expands the story with new elements, juggling nostalgia and new directions for the franchise.

The Ghostbusters franchise is still expanding, with each new movie release making it more extensive to rank the Ghostbusters movies from worst to best. The supernatural comedy series launched in 1984 under the creation of Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Dan Aykroyd. The original Ghostbusters proved to not only be an excellent blockbuster, but it ignited widespread fandom for the ghost-hunting team, so much so that it could become a massive movie franchise for Hollywood to continue to develop. This was immediately seen with the development of Ghostbusters II, even if the franchise took a hiatus after.

In the decades since the original movies concluded, Sony has relaunched the property twice. 2016 brought Paul Feig's Ghostbusters: Answer The Call and the all-female cast, which rebooted the franchise and did not exist in the same universe as the original movies. It then took five years for another installment to come, only Ghostbusters: Afterlife returned audiences to the original continuity under the direction of Jason Reitman and a story revolving around the Spengler family. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire continues that story, increasing the franchise to include five films. Here's every Ghostbusters movie ranked from worst to best.

5 Ghostbusters (2016)

Otherwise known as Ghostbusters: Answer The Call, Paul Feig's all-female reboot of Ghostbusters - as part of a reinvigoration of the IP that would also have seen a Chris Pratt/Channing Tatum-led alt-team movie - was never a bad idea. For all the bleating online about "wokeness", that was a hollow complaint from people who don't really need to be listened to. But that doesn't mean the movie was a good reboot.

Fundamentally, Feig's reboot never quite felt like it understood the tone of the original - which was never quite the slapstick SNL-fest some cynics still bafflingly seem to believe - it was a straight movie with comic relief and snark. Ghostbusters 2016 is, in contrast, a garish farce, more like Eddie Murphy's Haunted Mansion than Ivan Reitman's original vision. The movie fully leans into its comedic elements, with known comedians Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig leading the way.

None of the cast is bad, with Leslie Jones and SNL's Kate McKinnon offering game approximations of the characters they're clearly riffing on (Winston and Egon), and Chris Hemsworth is delightfully idiotic as Kevin. But the film is never bold or new enough, and its nostalgic anchor never quite understands the iconic original. Beyond the casting, the story is weak and stumbles to find real momentum. The villain is also frankly terrible, and it flirts way too hard with being obnoxious.

4 Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

The second installment of Sony's modern relaunch, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a bit of an enjoyable mess. The movie continues on from Ghostbusters: Afterlife by fully revolving the story around Mckenna Grace's Phoebe Spengler and the current state of the Ghostbusters. It's not afraid to make major franchise revelations and changes, showing a boldness to push the lore in new directions, which is refreshing at this point. This helps create some exciting moments in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire's ending and shows promise that there are still new ways to explore this universe going forward.

There is plenty of nostalgia bait included that will either delight or anger audiences depending on their personal preference. The familiarity of the New York setting is welcomed after the Summerville location for Afterlife, but Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire doesn't simply retread familiar ground. It explores the essence of being a Ghostbuster, the responsibility, the team's legacy, and more. All these elements are included in the film's narrative if you look close enough and disregard a fairly lacking antagonist in Garraka.

The knock on the film is that it juggles more than it can handle. Outside of Phoebe's story, the rest of the characters do not get that meaningful of storylines, including the original Ghostbusters cast returning for mostly minimal parts. While it is smart for the sequel to lean into the newer characters, it attempts to still please original viewers by keeping Venkman, Ray, and Winston involved - when it might have been better off if they were absent. It is due to this that the film loses a bit of the charm that Ghostbusters: Afterlife had.

3 Ghostbusters II

1989's direct sequel to Ivan Reitman's original Ghostbusters has many detractors, and sits near the lowest on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bill Murray's seeming disinterest a hot topic of criticism. In reality, it's still a fun caper, with a great villain in Vigo The Carpathian who managed to achieve iconic movie status despite barely even moving in his scenes and a final sequence that outranks even the original for silliness. Yes, Venkman isn't quite his sparkling self - probably because Bill Murray claims he was tricked into making Ghostbusters II - but there are still good elements elsewhere.

The special effects remain great, with the new Muppet-like ghosts of the Scoleri brothers, and there's bags of cast charm and a pleasant New York mentality storyline. Perhaps the problem is that Ghostbusters II does very little new, with the same basic set-up - a conceit that required an improbable mass cynicism around ghosts despite the events of 1984. This makes portions of the film feel quite familiar, and not in the best way. Its a disappointing result for a sequel that had all the goodwill heading in to be as boldly original as the first.

Ghostbusters II is underrated and luckily remains warm, charming, and very entertaining, even decades later. The quibbles with its originality or even some of the cast performances are valid, but there is still more good than bad when it comes to the original Ghostbusters sequel. It remains one of the greatest cinematic tragedies that the original plan for Ghostbusters 3 never happened with the cast still very much in their comic prime.

2 Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Rather than a reboot or a direct sequel that follows the original Ghostbusters team, Jason Reitman made something that both continued their story and played into the affection in which the Ghostbusters universe is still held. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a legacy movie with a look to the future, but it crucially proves how well it knows its past while also looking to the future. It is through that lens that the film becomes a triumphant return for the franchise and an exceptional relaunch with promising signs for the future.

Arguably the most shocking thing about Ghostbusters: Afterlife is not its surprise character appearances (including cameos by JK Simmons, Josh Gad, and Olivia Wilde as Gozer), but is rather how little the original Ghostbusters actually appear. Afterlife actually works better for that intentional oversight, because this is a legacy story that balances the new with nostalgia perfectly. Criticism leveled at Jason Reitman's Afterlife bemoans empty fan service, but if you're choosing to watch this movie without expecting a nostalgic celebration of the original, you're watching the wrong movie.

The new cast is great without attempting to replace the original team, with Mckenna Grace, in particular, offering hints of how great her career can be. And of course, any vehicle for Paul Rudd's special brand of charisma is always welcome. The story, too, is very well-handled, calling back to 1984's timeline smartly, and the decision to frame the Spengler family's life in Summerville as a tribute to Harold Ramis' Egon is inspired. There might not be a lot of newness here, but ultimately, Afterlife is warm, funny, and uses its surprisingly sparse original Ghostbusters moments perfectly.

1 Ghostbusters (1984)

The original and still the best, Ghostbusters was and is a zeitgeist movie that took some of the biggest rising comedy stars of the early 1980s and built a high-concept, surprisingly scary comedy-horror mash-up around them. Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson are amazing, but Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and Annie Potts have all transcended the limits of the movie to become eminently quotable and perpetually cosplayed. Even the intentionally obnoxious elements - like Slimer - come off well because the tone is so masterfully handled by Reitman's directing.

The big fallacy about Ghostbusters is that it was always a slapstick, SNL-like comedy with a high joke rate, but that's not the whole story. Because, for the most part, three of the Ghostbusters play the whole thing straight - it's just that they're either oddballs in Stantz and Spengler's case, or they're perpetually baffled, in Winston's - while Bill Murray snarkily mugs in the most charitably written role in the movie. How different it would have been if Eddie Murphy had been cast in Ghostbusters as intended.

Anyway, the point remains that Ghostbusters is all about balance: it's scary when it needs to be, funny, packed with heart, and written so well that the lines remain quoted in heavy rotation decades later. There would not be the other movies in the franchise if it was not for the undeniable success of the 1984 original. Its ability to launch a franchise is merely icing on the cake in this instance. After all, the other films would never have happened if Ghostbusters wasn't so special and set a high bar for what they could be.