Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Ghostbusters

Speech and Dialogue

Just like in pretty much every film since silent movies got left by the wayside, the way the characters talk in Ghostbusters is a big part of how we know who they are. The characters are all so well drawn and specific that there are a billion great examples from the movie.

When Ray excitedly says things like this;

RAY: Sir, what you have there is what we refer to as a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor. Real nasty one, too!

We know he's both a total nerd when it comes to ghost stuff and that he geeks out over it so much that he's almost like an over-enthusiastic little boy.

Egon, on the other hand, is the uber-nerd and handles everything with a cold, clinical attitude. When he explains the dangers of crossing proton pack streams, he does so with highly technical talk like this:

EGON: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

The most emotion we ever get out of him is when fighting Gozer he admits

EGON: I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

But even this is delivered in high-falutin' language and a near-emotionless tone.

Then there's Venkman, who's mostly defined by his sarcasm and the random weird stuff he says. For example, when trying to convince Dana to go out with him, he inexplicably starts narrating the situation:

PETER: And then she threw me out of her life. She thought I was a creep. She thought I was a geek, and she probably wasn't the first..."

Hmm. No wonder it takes him so long to get that date.

Speaking of dating, we'll round this section out by giving Louis a shout-out for worst impress-a-girl conversation ever. When has any lady ever been charmed by this kind of talk;

LOUIS: I always have plenty of low sodium mineral water and other nutritious foods in the house. But you already know that."

Wow, Louis. You might as well wear a nametag that says, "Hello, my name is Geek."

Actions

None of the characters in Ghostbusters would be what they are without the things they do. Walter Peck makes himself out to be the main earthly antagonist by shutting off the power grid of the containment unit and getting our boys arrested. Venkman shows himself to be a borderline sexual predator by trying to prey on a young college student and having to wrestle with the decision of whether or not to have sex with Dana when she's possessed. (Amazing that he still manages to be loveable, right?)

And, of course, Gozer earns its reputation as the malicious Destructor by doing its darnedest to destroy the city. We could just keep going like this, but you get the point. In every drama, characters are defined by what they do.

Type of Being

In Ghostbusters, we've basically got three levels of being. On the bottom rung, we've got your average ordinary humans… which almost all of the characters classify as.

Next up, we've got the ghosts, like the phantom librarian and the crowd favorite Slimer. There are lots of classifications within the ghosts as well, but only Ray and Egon could give you all the details on that. Most of the ghosts don't seem all that powerful. They're only being able slime things and knock stuff around a bit.

At the top of the food chain, we've got the gods. There are the demigods Zuul and Vinz Clortho who appear as horned terror dogs. Most deadly of all, we have the god Gozer who materializes as a red-eyed Serbian model in a shiny white suit and (most famously) as the colossal Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Even though Gozer and its minions occupy the most powerful rung in the world of Ghostbusters, they are defeated by four lowly humans. Score one for the human race!