A new trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife has arrived that's got fans poring over footage with the same fervor as Egon Spengler analyzing ectoplasmic residue. Up to this point, Sony Pictures has been pretty tight-lipped with the marketing of this movie, and it's frankly impressive how much restraint the studio's shown to hide Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver from trailers. But this most recent morsel has given fans their best indication yet as to what this film is actually about, and it appears a familiar foe is coming back.
The Destructor, the Traveler, the nimble little minx with the baddest flat top on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it's Gozer the Gozerian. In the trailer, Phoebe and Trevor Spengler head down into the Shandor Mining Co., where they see a statue that unmistakably resembles Slavitza Jovan, the original Gozer actress, flanked by Terror Dogs, Zuul and Vinz Clortho. Then, a flat-topped woman with sharp fingernails reaches an arm out through a swirling, nightmarish gateway, seemingly confirming the villain's return.
Worshipped by the Sumerians, Hittites and Mesopotamians starting around 6000 BC, Gozer's cult of magic practitioners devoted to the malevolent deity came to be known as "Gozerians." But after a lengthy war with Tiamat, the God of Chaos, Gozer was banished from Earth to another dimension, and it wasn't until 1984 that it managed to escape.
Long after the Sumerians had died out, a new brand of Gozer worshippers was formed led by Ivo Shandor in 1920. Shandor, a quack doctor and genius architect, established the Cult of Gozer and amassed thousands of followers and designed 550 Central Park West as a super-conductive antenna built for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence. On the roof, the group erected the Temple of Gozer, where they practiced bizarre rituals hoping to bring about the end of the world. The Ghostbusters blew up the doorway in New York by crossing the streams in their first outing and stopped the villain's second coming in its Stay Puft form, but it appears the Shandorians set up a similar location in Summerville, Oklahoma.
Gozer's true power has yet to be unleashed, but its known powers include telepathy, great agility and stamina, lightning blasts, invisibility, intangibility, pyrokinesis and weather control. And while it takes the form of a female at the end of the first Ghostbusters, Gozer can also take on any form it wants. In fact, after its banishment from Earth, Gozer took on the name of the Traveler and hopped from dimension to dimension, conquering worlds as it pleased. Upon arrival, the Traveler would allow a hero from that world to choose the form that would bring their civilization to ruin.
The only way to summon the villain, though, is by using its two demi-god minions, Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster, and Zuul, the Gatekeeper. They take the forms of Terror Dogs, as seen in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer, until they possess a human host, and these two harbingers of doom are coupled, they can open a doorway through which Gozer can enter and bring destruction. The only problem with that, however, is that Gozer needs the portal to get to full strength, and if it's destroyed before its arrival is complete, it loses a great deal of power and can be easily defeated.
To see how Gozer returns to wreak havoc, Ghostbusters: Afterlife arrives in theaters Nov. 11.
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