Ishkur: I hate articles that view every movie through the lens of their particular political filter. This article is about a socialist's interpretation of UHF, but the libertarians are the most insufferable at it.

"Ghostbusters is really about the struggle of intrepid entrepreneurs against draconian government regulations..."

I hate that shiat too.

You know why Ghostbusters features the EPA as a villain?  It's not because it's a libertarian treatise on the rights of entrepreneurs (as many have noted, Dickless had a point), it's because if you sit down and brainstorm a list of potential sources of conflict for a small business, one of the things you're going to write down is "government regulators."  Another thing you'll write down is "obnoxious customers," and the film has got one of those too.  "Banks" are another, and while the conflict is more implied than shown, we get a famous line that lets us know the banks took their turn screwing the heroes too.

Stories are about conflicts.  Conflict, conflict, conflict.  To have conflict, you have to have antagonists.  Sometimes you start with an antagonist and find your hero by figuring out who could stop this fiend.  Other times you have a protagonist with a goal, and you find your antagonists by asking "who would oppose this goal?  who would stand in their way?"

Nine times out of ten, the choice of antagonists -- especially secondary and tertiary antagonists who are only intended to be obstacles and threshold guardians -- has nothing to do with making subtle allegories or spinning complex metaphors.  Often the choice is driven by necessity and the fictional context and nothing more.  Often a cigar is just a cigar.