On the 30th anniversary of the release of the 1990 blockbuster ‘Ghost’, Forbes published an article by Scott Mendelson which seemed to praise the romantic classic, while also calling it the “blockbuster Hollywood forgot,” citing that it led to “no sequels or spinoffs, nostalgic reissues, ripoffs or copycats” minus a lackluster West End musical in 2011.
Forbes, which focuses on finance, did point out that by earning $505.7 at the global box office, it was one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, trailing behind just ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ (and that’s ONLY with reissues added in; ‘Star Wars’ *only* made $503 in 1977) and ‘E.T.’. Literally. That’s it! As Mendelson pointed out, ‘Ghost’ made more than many massive hits that came both before and after it, including ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, ‘Twister’, ‘Mission: Impossible’, ‘Toy Story’, every ‘Rocky’ and ‘Rambo’, and perhaps most shockingly, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Return of the Jedi’, and all three original ‘Indiana Jones’ movies!
Is ‘Ghost’ really forgotten, though? How many times was that pottery scene parodied in other movies and TV shows? And how many people can’t hear The Righteous Brothers’ 1965 single “Unchained Melody” without thinking of it? And let’s not forget that Whoopi Goldberg became only the second Black woman in history to win an Academy Award for her role as medium Oda Mae Brown.
Then again… it’s a “chick flick.”
In reaction to the Forbes piece, Goldberg spoke to Deadline and this is in part, what she had to say:
“When I was reading it, and reading how much money it brought in, and how it had been bigger than all these other movies. I thought, but (Forbes) is doing the same thing other people have done. They sort of denigrated the fact that this was a terrific movie, and it was also really funny too, and in part, I did that. And we were a very mixed cast, and it makes you wonder, you know, 30 years later, was it because we were a mixed cast that nobody wanted to celebrate it, the way that, you know, had it been any other cast that happened to be maybe all white, people might’ve celebrated it?”
“I just thought, it made me sad that he called us a movie that people forgot, or whatever. I thought, well, you’re the reason, because you’re treating it like it was something odd as opposed to a really great movie that came out of nowhere, and captured people’s imaginations, and we didn’t have a superhero.”
With so many classics showing at drive-ins, shouldn’t ‘Ghost’ be one of them, especially considering that it’s its 30th anniversary? What do you think?
