Paul Feig's 'Ghostbusters' Reboot Almost Included An Unnecessary Slimer Origin Story

Over the weekend, the reviews for Paul Feig's reboot of Ghostbusters hit the web, and it turns out the movie is solid. It's not perfect, not as good as the original, and suffers from adhering to the usual blockbuster formula, but it's apparently thoroughly entertaining and very funny.

Of course, as any conspiracy theorist out there will tell you, the 75% that the film has on Rotten Tomatoes just shows that Sony Pictures spent a lot of money to get 77 positive reviews (of those recognized by the aggregation website) at the time of this writing. Throwing a wrench in that theory though is the fact that our own Peter Sciretta really didn't like it, so just let that soak in a bit.

But despite the surprisingly good reviews for Ghostbusters, there is one other criticism that has been fairly consistent across the board. It seems there are too many fan service references and cameos in the movie. But thankfully, one particular element of the reboot was left out of the final draft, and it concerns the origin of the ugly little spud known as Slimer. Get the details on the cut sequence after the jump.

Speaking with Cinema Blend, screenwriter Katie Dippold (who previously teamed with Paul Feig on The Heat) revealed that there was once a part of the screenplay that revealed a Slimer origin story. Here's what Dippold had to say about the axed origin of Slimer:

We debated showing the creation of Slimer. There was even a scene once where they are battling an old Italian ghost, but they're still figuring out the proton packs. So when they fire at it, he just becomes Slimer... It was just like, 'I don't know if it feels right to answer what Slimer is when it was created before.' So that didn't feel quite right. But then it was like, 'Okay, so then do we take it out?' And then it was like, 'Well, I just want to see Slimer, so...'

It's for the best that this origin was left out of the movie. As minor of a character Slimer is in the Ghostbsuters universe, he's also a beloved one, but that doesn't mean we need to know where he came from. Reboots, prequels and sequels have this obsession with creating new origin stories for things that don't really need it, and I'm glad that Paul Feig and Katie Dippold were smart enough to realize this wasn't necessary.

In a way, this alternate origin story for Slimer could have been seen as a bit of a slap in the face of John Belushi. Why? Well, Dan Aykroyd has reportedly referred to Slimer as "the ghost of John Belushi." So in a way, Slimer already has an origin story. That's more of a little personal joke about Aykroyd's beloved friend who left us way too soon, but that's about as close as we get to a canon explanation for what Slimer was before he became a ghost.