The first trailer for the new Ghostbusters wasn’t well received. This isn’t simply coming from sexist assholes attacking the remake for vagina-ing up their beloved property. Fans and non-fans alike couldn’t find much to excite them about the upcoming paranormal comedy. Upon closer look, you can’t blame them.
A piano sonata version of Ray Parker Jr.’s original Ghostbusters theme song kicks things off with the intention of tickling the nostalgia bone without seeming too obvious about it. The same trick was used in the Jurassic World trailers to create an ominous vibe, but while that mood works for a film about killer reptiles breaking loose, it feels out of place for a comedy about ghost grabbers. Right from the start, something already feels off.
When the trailer reveals the jokes, they’re not that strong. It opens with a scene that’s basically untouched from the original, carrying on with klutzy comedy where Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy interrupt each other and touch hot things they didn’t know were hot.
But the real lame spot? It’s 2016 and movies are still ripping off Young Frankenstein…
The only eye-catching things in the trailer are fleeting glimpses of the tech involved, which include ghost fists…
…a cam-corder which could possibly dig a heel into the ribs of the Paranormal Activity franchise…
…and a laser pointer bear trap thingy that’s going to look GREAT in 3D (I own Step Up 3D on Blu-ray, so you can trust me on that).
Unfortunately, those fragments of goodwill are swept away by the trailer’s end with a demon possession scene that culminates to Leslie Jones screaming and hitting the ghost out of McCarthy. It’s not a very funny scene, giving us a leaving impression that sadly sums up the trailer in general: it yells “Ghostbusters!” very loudly while slapping our faces with the logo.
I wasn’t that impressed with it, but I remember feeling the same way about the trailers for Spy (by the same filmmakers) and that somehow ended up being my favourite comedy of 2015.
That was all I had to make myself feel optimistic about this new Ghostbusters. That is, until the second trailer dropped a few days later…
OK, so that wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, replaying the same opening scene and replacing the “oh, that’s hot” klutz comedy with “oh, I’m pulling a push door” klutz comedy. There’s also more Chris Hemsworth, but his presence has been statistically proven to make anything better, so that’s understandable.
And that mosh-pit dive put me in a throaty chuckle-fest – mainly due to Jones’s on-point response.
Plus, we get a slightly longer look at the flurry of ghost taking over the city. I don’t exactly know why the extra two or three seconds would matter, but it got me way more excited to see CGI ghosts on the big screen.
But the main point of difference in this second trailer is where it leaves us: with a big-booby version of the Ghostbusters logo.
It’s hilariously bad at promoting a “womanised” version of the Ghostbusters, something this movie knowingly avoids like a toxic fart cloud. By mocking this symbol, shows that it can be smarter than an eye-rolling rehash and a barrage of klutzy comedy.
Then there’s this final shot.
That reaction says “He doesn’t fully understand what we’re trying to do, but we’ll work on it.” And that’s a better send-off to Ghostbusters fans than the yelling and slapping we saw in the first trailer.
