Afterlife showing respect for the dead

Ghostbusters II is a really great film to watch on New Years Eve, pairs up great with the disaster classic, The Poseidon Adventure, although I'd watch GB second to ensure you go to bed after a more happy ending.

One of the things that was so great about, Ghostbusters Afterlife is how it was respectful to the 2nd Ghostbusters film, it didn't mention it at all, in fact, if you didn't know any better, Afterlife would have you think that II didn't even happen, but also, they didn't say it didn't happen.  Too many people condemn Ghostbusters II, as sequels go, it could have been a lot worse, at least the Titanic finally arrived (awesome scene)!

The entire focus of Afterlife was on their film and the effects of the original movie alone.  There was absolutely no reference to the second film at all, none.  They also left it open that it could have happened, there was just nothing about it that held over for the new generation.

It ticked me off that when they released, Superman Returns, they made a HUGE deal out of denying the 3rd and 4th Superman films, it was made an issue, publicly and it was one of the dumber ideas in film history.  But here, they passed over a sequel with class and dignity, but left it open to being part of the GB world.  Maybe Oscar was running Ray's store while he went off to Oklahoma to help the kids?

In the next film, hopefully they do one, we could meet a character named Oscar, maybe the manager of a coffee house haunted by Slimer, or just a quick glimpse of that painting in a post credit scene, where Janine says something like, "oh good grief, take that awful thing down" from the walls of the firehouse.

The post credit scenes of Afterlife certainly did act as if they were going to make another film and move the crew back to NYC with Winston as the financial backer, which I thought was a great spin for his character.  No matter what, Afterlife will go down as one of the best sequels of all time, and sets up a TON of possibilities for the future of the franchise.