The only thing in the trailer I liked was the piano rendition of the theme. I like these actresses in other movies…but this just felt flat. Especially the Ecto 1 joke. It all just seems force fed.
Unlike the original “You can’t park that here” “Everyone can relax, I found the car” Then Venkman gets “gut punched” as Ray rattles off everything it needs and how much he paid.
I am hopeful the movie will turn out to be entertaining. This trailer doesn’t do much to reinforce that hope. I’m pretty indifferent to it, and I think there are some hints of good things, and some hints of bad things in equal measure.
What I miss most is a Venkman character. From the trailer, we have the nerd (Egon), the enthusiast (Ray), and the everyman (Winston) characters represented - but not the huckster. Without a Venkman type, I can’t see myself really enjoying the movie.
Brought to you by Smattery Film Reviews, the review that doesn’t waste time watching the actual film but just makes snap decisions based upon the collection of five second clips that appear in the trailer.
On the other hand, if they had a Stay Puft Marshmallow Woman wandering around Manhattan, people would complain that the filmmakers are just ripping off the original beat by beat. And they’d be correct. It’s worrying enough that they clearly attempted to map the characters in this film to the originals rather than allow them to be distinct. The repeated comment that McCarthy doesn’t have or can’t delivery Bill Murray’s Venkman lines underscores the problem; nobody is going to be able to give Murray’s deadpan, prematurely weary delivery; it’s a ridiculous standard to hold McCarthy–who has aptly demonstrated her own comedic and dramatic chops opposite Murray–against.
The film may or may not be good, but I don’t think that can be determined from this trailer. It is worth understanding that the filmmakers don’t typically have much input of what goes into a studio trailer; that is generally assembled by a marketing team which is trying to pump the film to a specific demographic, hence why many trailers either a) don’t actually represent the film, b) give away essential plot points that the filmmakers clearly intended as a plot twist, and c) all look and sound pretty much the same, because the marketing people are working from the same playbook.
Even if the film ends up being a rehash of the original film (and to be fair, there isn’t much you’re going to do with the essential premise that isn’t going to more or less follow the same plot) the casting is excellent and will likely do the best with the material they have; frankly, I could watch Kate McKinnon extemporizing in a wig for two hours by herself. And regardless of in what esteem you hold the original Ghostbusters it was the second highest grossing film of 1984 (just below the critically panned Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and basically created the film genre of ensemble science fiction/fantasy comedy-adventure to which films like Galaxy Quest, Men In Black, Back to the Future, and Guardians of the Galaxy owe a debt…and yet, almost none of these films feature women in anything but a token role (a trope that at least Galaxy Quest used for good effect).
So, before the rush to judgment about the film based on a generically produce first release trailer, it might be well to get some reviews of the actual film.
Stranger
Side note: I only learned very recently that Stay puft was a fictional brand of Marshmallow at the time of Ghostbusters (it is real now because a company that makes fictional brands real has since made it). For 30 years I thought it was a product placement for a brand I had just never seen in a store.
Even in the trailer, Melissa McCarthy CARRIES everybody else. Man, why didn’t they just issue the phone-it-ins wagons & let her pull them across the stage to their marks too!?
Agreed. McCarthy seems to be a mix between Aykroyd and Murray’s characters. But really, what’s needed is a dry, acerbic Venkman.
Without a true Venkman, it just won’t reach the same heights as the original.
That said, I’ll be seeing it.
That said, it seems like it’d be more in Wiig’s wheelhouse.
I think it looks great, I can’t wait to see it.
Side note - I tried watching the original a while back and…well. Times have changed. Murray’s character comes off less as “endearing horndog” now and more as “smarmy sexual predator.” His initial scenes with the student he’s hitting on by making her think she has ESP made me hate him a little, and his interactions with Weaver’s character didn’t change that.
He was funny as hell when he wasn’t interacting with women, but that bit of characterization spoiled him for me.
Uh, maybe that’s because between she and Leslie Jones they have about 90% of the lines in the trailer? This is like proclaiming that Steve McQueen carries The Great Escape after just seeing his wire jump scene.
Frankly, this generic action/comedy template trailer is probably the worst (or at least the laziest) way to promote this film. It gives away at least one major plot point and two scenes that should probably be a surprise to viewers watch the film. If any movie would be fit from a viral marketing campaign it is this one.
And if you want to see a truly snoozeworthy trailer, look no further than the original trailer for the 1984 Ghostbusters. There is not one actually funny scene in that trailer, and Bill Murray looks as if he’s just reading his lines off of a cue card and wishing he’d never signed on to a B-grade horror-comedy movie rather than playing one of the most iconic roles of his career. Dan Aykroyd–the Ringo Starr of 1970’s SNL alumni–is funnier than Murray in this trailer.
Stranger
Yeah, I’m planning on seeing this movie.
You definitely don’t want to go back and watch any John Hughes films or Revenge of the Nerds, then. Ah, the 'Eighties, when non-consensual sex with an intoxicated or hoodwinked woman was fodder for running comic gags. Yes, why can’t we make more movies with that classic humor?
Stranger
I agree with Stranger.
It’s upsetting how many people wont even give this movie a chance, though it may very well suck for real, the trailer’s just a trace of what the film will have in store for us. I, in some cases, think this all has to do with the female leads. I admit they have big shoes to fill, but the response to an all female cast was panned by day one on the internet.
We don’t even know the story.
Stranger is right to list the movies Ghostbusters has inspired. There’s something fun about a team of scientists trying to trap ghosts in an urban setting for me. I didn’t watch the cartoon’s that are held in such high regard, but it’s popularity is a testament that the concept isn’t just ‘tapped out’ after one really good movie.
I’m just saying it *could *be good
One thing that pisses me off ,though, is McCarthy head spin… do bones turn to rubber when people are possessed in movies?
If it releases and everyone’s saying it was the laugh riot of the year then, sure, I’ll go see it. Nothing in the trailer makes me think this will be the case and that may be wrong but, right now, that’s all we have to go on.
Maybe.
I guess I won’t know til the movie comes out.
FTR- There’s nothing wrong with me saying MM is funny is there? Because she is.
And not in a “Assholes from High School Comment” way.
Oh, I think we probably know the story in a broad outlines. Scientists investigate paranormal activity despite initial public disbelief, they discover that something is increasing the quantity and aggressiveness of ghosts and poltergeists, they are opposed by bureaucratic authority and have to overcome their own differences before they are called upon to engage the Big Bad and close the portal or eliminate the source of the danger. It’s pretty much the same plot of these types of movies (again, Men in Black or Galaxy Quest, or for that matter adventure-comic films like Guardians or The Avengers) and as in those films it isn’t really important to what makes the film entertaining as long as it is reasonably self-consistent.
What will make this film work or not is the interaction between the characters and some good internal conflict from which to weave threads of comedy. All of these actresses have demonstrated an ability to make humor out of hash (anybody who can make the frequently underwritten SNL skits memorably funny can claim sufficient credit) and are a good mix of high and low comedy, so it largely depends on how much space the script gives them to be funny and how consistent the direction and pacing are to not disturb natural comedic rhythms. There is a risk that with four prominent comediennes that Feig might try to showcase all of them simultaneously (rendering none of them funny) but this is far from his first rodeo with an ensemble cast, and he’s done reasonably well with weaker premises.
I don’t think we can conclude anything from this trailer other than that it is a generic, by the numbers trailer made by uncreative marketing people who are relying largely on callbacks and lampshading rather than highlighting the particular talents of the cast. If I were going to make a marketing campaign for this film, I’d only use a few brief establishing clips from the film along with cutscenes of the cast extemporizing in character, either being interviewed documentary-style or interacting between scenes of the film, teasing (but not revealing) plot points; perhaps interviewing Chris Hemsworth character for the secretary position or discussing the technology behind the proton packs with McKinnon doing her full-on crazy-eyed engineer against a deadpan Wiig.
Stranger
I’m pretty sure we do know the story. The trailer is pretty much every beat.
Did they really have to set the first ghost in the library? Exactly like the first one? You can tell from the scene it is positioned early in the movie.
Oh and the slime will flow early and often because that’s what people remember from the first one, slime right? So let’s have slime everywhere.
Like I wrote above, the trailer makes it look like almost a shot for shot remake but with unfunny jokes and fan service call backs to the first one.
With the caveat that “all we have to go on is a three minute trailer”, I would like to mention a couple changes (compared to the original movie) I think I noticed:
I did not see anything creepy in the reboot’s trailer.
I don’t hate the trailer, but nothing in this trailer made me do a fist pump, either.
I meant the story as in, ‘why there are ghosts’, but yes, they all follow a similar formula.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and yes, she is funny, by my money is on McKinnon becoming the breakout star from this film and stealing every scene she appears in regardless of how well the film as a whole does.
Stranger