10 Movie Franchises That Need To Ditch ONE Thing

Now to be fair, everybody's definition and tolerance of fan service is very different - what's affecting and genuine to one person feels cynical and unearned to another.

But by far the most vocal complaint about Ghostbusters: Afterlife is that, though unquestionably well-intentioned by writer-director Jason Reitman, the sequel used nostalgia-fuelled fan service as far too much of a crutch.

It's a film which holds the iconography of the Ghostbusters franchise with such sanctified reverence as to become overwrought, if not outright laughable. This is a series about a group of very funny people hoovering up ghosts - we don't need to give it a dew-eyed emotional backbone.

By the time CGI Egon (Harold Ramis) shows up in the climax, it feels like we're being manipulated to react emotionally to an Entertainment Product - an exercise in brand extension rather than a more earnest attempt to move the series on with a group of young new heroes.

And so, the Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel which just began shooting desperately needs to train its focus on the likeable new characters while keeping the one-note references to the previous films, and the inevitable cameos from legacy characters, to a minimum.

It'd be foolish to expect the filmmakers to follow this advice of course, but hopefully it'll at least feel a little less mawkish and sentimental than its predecessor.