Metal Muncher: Ghost Version

Yet another Ghostbusters movie. Yet another Ghost-related blog post. I enjoyed Ghostbusters Afterlife. It’s not mainly about ghosts or ghostbusting but about family and friendships – relationships by blood or forged by working closely together. The kids who helm the movie give it a touch that’s missing from the previous movies in the franchise. The narrative of the movie unwinds slowly, but keeps the viewer engaged. There are hokey parts that pay homage to the original movie, but are overall well done.

 

I won’t say much more about the story arc of the movie, so as not to spoil it. Instead I will focus on a side character, the ghost known as Muncher. Unlike Slimer, Muncher doesn’t have much personality. Muncher just munches on stuff, particularly if it’s metallic. It allows Muncher to shoot bullets in self-defence when threatened. Instead I’m interested in mulling over the corporeality of Muncher and iron, complementary to my previous posts on the interaction of ghosts and matter.

 

Ghosts are thought of as ghostly, typically interacting little with matter as we experience it. This is true of the Harry Potter ghosts who glide through walls, people and other seemingly solid objects. Interacting with matter might be possible although difficult, as illustrated by the pantless politician in the comedic BBC series Ghosts. In Ghostbusters, such interaction is not a problem. Muncher does not fly through any walls, and in fact, carefully avoids running into solid objects at high speed. The ghostly entities in this movie seem to be able to wear material corporeality like a garment. They sort of dissolve when forced into a Ghostbuster trap. They seem to travel either as smoke or as photons of lights or some combination thereof.

 

Muncher seems to have an appetite for metal, eating through it faster than a strong acid can dissolve it. Why? I don’t know. While Muncher is luminous, Muncher’s body is not transparent so it’s unclear where the metal goes. At the very least, it gets broken into smaller pieces that can be egested like shrapnel. Is it waste? Can Muncher transform one metal into another type of metal? Can Muncher break down a chunk of metal all the way down to the atomic level, and what happens then? I don’t know. These are perhaps questions a Ghostscientist might try to answer. Hopefully as Phoebe, the protagonist of Afterlife, grows up, she could pursue such questions.