David Bridges
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has quite a lot of characters it’s juggling, and probably the most vital wasn’t even really within the movie’s advertising. That might be Melody, performed by Gossip Woman’s Emily Alyn Lind, a 16-year-old who shortly strikes up a friendship with McKenna Grace’s Phoebe Spengler. The twist? She’s a ghost compelled to remain on Earth till she finds a method to reunite together with her household on the opposite aspect.
In a current Hollywood Reporter interview, Lind revealed that her ghost standing was one thing even she didn’t learn about till she’d locked down the position. Director Gil Kenan by no means explicitly mentioned as such throughout their talks, and features like “I get it. I’m like 100 years outdated,” she simply assumed that translated to Melody being an outdated soul. As for why it was saved secret, she reasoned it got here from her character being “a unique form of ghost” for the collection. As an alternative of being purely chaotic or malevolent, Melody’s “a ghost with a coronary heart,” just like Ghost Egon in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. “[She] has a full human relationship, so I believe that there was part of them that actually needed to catch folks off guard in that sense.”
Within the movie, Melody’s caught in limbo after her household died in a home fireplace she personally feels chargeable for. Her decisions within the movie all stem from that survivor’s guilt, and Lind was frannk in saying she’s glad her character noticed the error of her methods: for one factor, attending to group with the OG and new Ghostbusters on the finish had her “so giddy,” and he or she cherished sharing the display with collection veterans like Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts. But it surely additionally meant of us wouldn’t go away the theater calling for her head, “identical to they’ve hated me in different movies for fucking the story up.”
As for Melody and Phoebe’s friendship and all of the subtext within the film, Lind known as their dynamic one in all “two souls connecting.” Whereas she acknowledged components of it may be learn as romantic—and that Phoebe needed a closeness with somebody—each characters are “nonetheless two children in quite a lot of methods. They’re reduce from the identical material and ousiders in their very own methods. […] And now they’re connecting on this grandiose stage in two completely different dimensional planes, and so they’re simply making an attempt to determine this world collectively. I like that we didn’t outline it as one factor or one other. Generally, when folks try this, it ruins it. It’s too concrete and absolute, and so they’re so not absolute as characters.”
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is now enjoying in theaters.
Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the newest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on movie and TV, and every thing you could learn about the way forward for Physician Who.
Ethan Carter
Daniel Mercer
