Not Toned Down At All

I never got the criticisms many have for this movie that it was toned down from the original and made more kid-friendly when it really isn't looking at it. it always felt darker and scarier to me in a lot of ways and more like an outright Horror film than the original. Moments like the subway tunnel with the ghost train and heads on the stakes (IMO the most frightening moment of either movie by a landslide), the ghostly apparition of Janosz abducting Oscar, the slime oozing in the bathtub, the photo lab and many of Vigo's scenes, definitely scary and even nightmare-inducing stuff as a kid. The tone to me always felt more serious than the first for some reason which even with the Horror and end of the world aspects to it was still lighthearted and comedic.

There's also still plenty of adult and raunchy humor that certainly isn't what I'd call kiddy stuff. Egon's remark about his epididymis and Venkman's quips about "exposing ourselves" and the being Statue Of Liberty naked under the toga, not to mention the incredibly dirty joke about Egon sleeping with the slime. The mood slime itself has a weirdly sexual aspect to it too when you think about it and let's not even get started about the blatantly phallic imagery of the Slime Blowers.

The only thing about this movie that ever felt toned down to me was the brighter, cleaner look it had which is to be expected given the half-decade gap between the two and how by 1989 filmmaking technology and techniques evolved a great deal, not to mention this was the very early days of CGI. It doesn't have the same rough, slightly hazy look the original always had no but tone-wise it's not different at all. I never got the ridiculous criticism of the characters not smoking as much either since in the original they didn't even smoke all that much.