Is it Ghostbusters Trailer 2?

May 26, 2016 6:11 PM

The Trailers for Ghostbusters (2016) and the Art of Editing Comedy
posted by Artw (73 comments total)

Another thing I noticed watching both trailers - the US one really centers the white guy and seems to give away a LOT more of the plot points than the UK one. I laughed several times during the UK one and it made me want to see the movie.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:27 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hey, this is some pretty interesting insight, thanks.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:27 PM on May 26, 2016

Also yeah the UK trailer is tons better.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:30 PM on May 26, 2016

I think the article missed the biggest editing screw-up for me - the US trailer shows the ghostbusters logo before the reveal of the ghostbusters themselves, thus spoiling the joke.
posted by fungible at 6:40 PM on May 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

Doomed.

Editing ain't nothing to do with the fact that this retread, after decades of advancement in CGI has the same crappy looking ghost motifs.

Fail.
posted by Max Power at 6:44 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I dunno, the UK trailer makes me excited for this again.

Zhou's analysis is great while being easily layman-graspable, as always.
posted by figurant at 6:53 PM on May 26, 2016

this is great, i have always disliked the 'don't explain the joke' rubric and this is a perfect example of why.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:00 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is an interesting article, but I am frustrated it exists. I am frustrated it exists because it is representative of how picked over and excruciatingly criticized these trailers have been, far more than you see for most trailers. Even franchise reboots.

Like, I found the trailers to be pretty funny, not like, the funniest trailers in the world but I chuckled and got an idea of the kind of humor to expect from the movie. Which is basically what I expect from a trailer. But because a certain segment of the population has decided this movie is going to fail no matter what, an average trailer is not good enough. A better-than-average trailer is not good enough. Probably no trailer of any quality would be good enough.

I feel like a core group of whiny MRA douchebags have kicked off an availability cascade around this movie with the theme of it being an inevitable, terrible failure. There is literally nothing Sony and Feig could do to improve the reaction, save remaking it with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, and, I don't know, Aaron Paul and whatever other actor Reddit has a boner for this week. Maybe a shot of Kristen Wiig as a love interest, but throw everyone else out. Then suddenly everyone starts talking about how nostalgic they feel for that "classic ghost design" and how they like the hearse imagery of the Ecto-1 and the sleeker design of the proton packs reflects real-world advances in technology or something.

basically I want to pre-pay for like a hundred tickets just to tell the manbabies to go fuck themselves
posted by Anonymous at 7:01 PM on May 26, 2016

Interesting, and also encouraging. I want to like this movie and the first trailer didn't do much to help me out there.
posted by you're a kitty! at 7:08 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow, yeah, the editing really does make a huge difference, doesn't it.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:09 PM on May 26, 2016

Interesting. I've always wondered about film editing vs comedic timing, since so much of comedy is timing and delivery. I think the point that the editor is telling the joke is spot-on: the actors and lines are just pieces to work with.

Also reminds me a bit of that Time Magazine Covers, US vs World thing that went around a few years ago, in that the US version, in being dumb-downed and Amerisplained, kind of loses its impact.
posted by rokusan at 7:10 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

This guy just keeps on giving.
posted by _Synesthesia_ at 7:20 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Why hasn't Hollywood thrown tons of money at Tony Zhou to make movies? He seems to understand more about how films work (and don't work) than anyone else around.
posted by octothorpe at 7:26 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

So glad to see this analysis. There have been months of hate, trolling, sexism, MRA bullshit, vows to boycott over what, three minutes, at the most of footage that we've seen!? I trust and adore Paul Feig and all the work he's done lately to prove how funny women are. I'm a huge fan of every one of the main actors, and trust that they wouldn't put their names behind junk. What I've seen looks hilarious, on both continents. I for one can't wait til it's released and will be there cheering.
posted by jhope71 at 7:31 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pretty interesting and eye opening. I did wonder why the GB logo showed up in the American trailer, it's a weird tone shift.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:53 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why hasn't Hollywood thrown tons of money at Tony Zhou to make movies? He seems to understand more about how films work (and don't work) than anyone else around.

Probably for the same reasons that literature scholars rarely write bestselling novels.

I've been pretty dismissive of this movie, but today I was shamed into recognizing what a mindless nay-sayer I was being by this video 2-minute video, Why is Cimema? Ghostbusters Trailer Breakdown, from Cameron Carpenter, who does satirical video essays with a bite on YouTube. I only heard of him earlier today, and I could have sworn it was here, but I can't find the post if it was. Anyway, his video on long takes is good, too, unless that's the one that was posted here and you've all already seen it.

Also anyway, now I have been shamed into recognizing how unnecessarily negative I've been and I am now looking forward to this movie with an open mind and much hope.

My family watched Ocean's 11 tonight (the Clooney/Pitt version). We think it would be a terrific candidate for the next all-women reboot. I mention it here in case it thereby somehow enters the zeitgeist and gets made.
posted by not that girl at 8:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Read an interesting comment elsewhere about the remake. There's no way to criticize this movie and not be lumped into some kind of 'woman-hating dick' category. I've got nothing against the actresses, this movie just looks terrible. And, as others have pointed out frequently, elsewhere, the role of Winston is somehow 100x more of a stereotype 30 years down the road.
posted by efalk at 8:09 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I feel like a core group of whiny MRA douchebags have kicked off an availability cascade around this movie with the theme of it being an inevitable, terrible failure.

Or you might be taking the reaction of a tiny cretinous subset of humanity and projecting it onto many who stated they disliked the first trailer because it was terrible. Humour is a funny thing, after all…

I knew nothing of the remake - beyond the initial rumour that one was being considered - until I saw the first trailer here a while ago. Not who was in it, not what gender they were, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That first trailer left me cold. It was exactly like every other trailer where the 'best' bits had been collated - dead, lifeless, unfunny, and made me want to actively avoid what looked like a pointless cash-grabbing Gen-X-nostalgia-pandering rehash of a fun original movie.

The UK trailer, though, made me smile & laugh. I'll go and see it based on that alone.
posted by Pinback at 8:12 PM on May 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

Like, I found the trailers to be pretty funny, not like, the funniest trailers in the world but I chuckled and got an idea of the kind of humor to expect from the movie. Which is basically what I expect from a trailer. But because a certain segment of the population has decided this movie is going to fail no matter what, an average trailer is not good enough. A better-than-average trailer is not good enough. Probably no trailer of any quality would be good enough.

Who's the monkey, and who's the organ grinder in this scenario?
posted by Sebmojo at 8:42 PM on May 26, 2016

The UK trailer, though, made me smile & laugh. I'll go and see it based on that alone.

Likewise. I'd been thinking of skipping this, but that made it look like this will be funny.

The American trailer is boring and has multiple major spoilers (boo) so skip the American trailer.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:43 PM on May 26, 2016

The interesting thing about the critique I keep seeing on the Facebooks about this movie is that everyone feels the need to open with, "Look, I don't hate it because it has women in it...."

And at that point I close the browser. Because if you're leading off your trailer "review" with that, then I damn well know that the women ARE the problem for you, you just can't admit it to yourself.

Paul Feig hasn't let me down yet. I'll probably find a way to go see this. I'll probably enjoy it. I do agree that the trailers have seemed a little off, and Tony does a good job of breaking down why I may feel that way. I honestly want this film to succeed so badly, that I hope Feig is reading this. Dude liked a couple of my tweets once. Clearly, he has a little free time, and someone should send him this.
posted by offalark at 9:50 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

The joke in the UK trailer was less funny to me tho.

Mostly it's second line, "Whatever they are...", sounding badly dubbed in by a completely different actor, which threw me out of the whole thing. The other trailer's line is delivered more consistently, and it's a better line anyway: "Whatever..(gulp).. it is." It sounds more afraid. The US trailer also has scarier sounds, like a screech and some heartbeats, while the UK one has just some kind of drum hit countdown.

The US one is obviously going for a more disturbing horror thing, which serves the joke better than swooshing over the city. Yeah, the little shot of the Ghostbuster ghost doesn't fit in, which is dumb, but not fatal. Neither joke is very good or told perfectly. It's not like every single detail of one must illustrate good joke, while the other illustrates bad joke. Why, that would just be a bunch of wanky nonsense.
posted by nom de poop at 11:45 PM on May 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

What was the last movie / reboot where the trailer alone generated as much critique and argument? Not about the cast being women? I simply do not buy it. This very well might not be a good movie, but nobody knows that yet, because it's not out. The pre-emptive accusation I keep hearing, "oh, you can't say anything bad about this movie, because you'll be accused of being a mysoginst", is absurd. If the movie comes out and is crap and you get called a mysoginst for saying so, then we can talk.

It's a trailer. It's ~2 minutes of film. There have been terrible trailers for great movies, great trailers for crappy movies. They are often the product of different creatives than the feature film. The whole thing is ridiculous.
posted by cj_ at 11:58 PM on May 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I really like Tony Zhou's stuff in general, and I appreciate his critical analysis here but I think he missed the mark pretty hard on this one. His contention that the ghosts in the American trailer aren't doing anything threatening is just factually wrong: the ominous turning of the ghost crowd and the screech as the ghost appears with glowing eyes are both pretty common horror movie language and stuff that I know for a fact he's familiar with. These are all "and then the character died" shots. It's weird. And then the thing with the ending of the joke being 11 frames longer is where the US trailer is tremendously better than the UK trailer, because the only place where I actually laughed (during the whole trailer) was Kristen Wiig's terrified headshake. Yeah, she's preparing to say something else, but that little move she makes is funny in itself in this context. The segment's 11 frames longer because it has an extra visual gag in it, and that's 100% the right call.

(Incidentally, the appearance of the Ghostbusters logo in the US trailer is part of a double-swerve: We see the scary stuff, then we see the logo and go "Oh, it's a sequel to Ghostbusters! They got me!" and then we get the other swerve which is the same joke the UK segment ends on. It's a slightly different and more complicated joke and I do think the UK trailer made a better structural choice with the simpler gag, but it's certainly not something that doesn't make sense. I do prefer the more setup-and-gag-focused UK trailer over the US trailer with the extra plot information overall, as well.)
posted by IAmUnaware at 1:14 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm a Zhou fan too, but I disagree with him here. Like nom de poop says, the UK trailer's overdubbed "WHATEVER THEY ARE" is hugely distracting -- I thought it was part of a trailer-only "IN A WORLD" style voice-over, actually, awkwardly interrupting actual dialogue. Plus the whole "It will haunt you every night" thing is much better served by shots of claustrophobic, dimly lit interiors and implied menace than, like, the army facing off against screaming neon ghost squadrons in Times Square. I mean, the UK trailer certainly tells a more coherent story, but what's the point when that story undermines both the close-up, psychological horror that the voice-over is trying to imply and the "Welp, you're on your own" punchline?
posted by No-sword at 1:32 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if this movie starred Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel, it would be panned just as heavily.

I hated, hated, HATED the abysmal RoboCop remake in 2014. Luckily, it didn't star a woman or a black guy, so no one cared when I screamed bloody murder about it on the internet.
posted by ELF Radio at 1:43 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Still going to see it! Excited!
posted by alasdair at 2:14 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

The funniest anecdote I've heard about the film was a woman got off the train at Boston's South Station and used her GPS for directions to an appointment in Bostons Chinatown. But she could not find the address, eventually she asked an officer and it turns out all the street signs had been changed for the Ghostbusters production filming that week.

So not even NYC, but at least not Toronto :-)

(not that there's anything wrong with Toronto)
posted by sammyo at 3:53 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if this movie starred Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel, it would be panned just as heavily.

But the movie doesn't EXIST yet.
posted by IjonTichy at 3:59 AM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Gotta say I didn't really notice the difference between the two intros. The UK version had funnier jokes overall but I always wonder if a trailer with good jokes has just shown me all the best jokes in the film already. At least with an action sequence you can enjoy it more than once (and enjoy it more on the big screen). A witty one-liner is rarely as funny the second time.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:00 AM on May 27, 2016

TIMING!
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:52 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if this movie starred Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel, it would be panned just as heavily.

I don't agree. I mean honestly, why so much venom? It's a fun film with some kick-ass women in it - is that not intriguing from the get-go? It massively matters that this got made at all so I don't care who is trying to condemn it from the get go. Big budget 80's reboot? Whatev. 80's reboot geneder-switched starring brilliant comedy actresses - HELL YES WHERE CAN I SHOWER IT WITH MY TICKET PURCHASING MOOLAHS. Any revisionism that places women (or POC or anyone who isn't goddamn Seth Rogan) centre stage works for me. I want it all and I don't care who's chin is knocked out of whack because dammit mine's too fucking bruised from all of those terrible terrible films starring white men that I already sat through for my entire life and did not dismiss out of hand before I'd even got to the starting titles because one (wo)man's turkey is another's tripe. You know? We contain multitudes - why not put some of 'em on screen and just judge when the credits roll.
posted by freya_lamb at 4:57 AM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yes! Timing. My small amount of video editing experience laid bare to me the critical nature of timing when delivering any punchline, but particularly comedic punchlines. It is really hard to get right and, as the article points out, 10 frames can make or break a joke. I am on Team UK Trailer.
posted by grumpybear69 at 5:00 AM on May 27, 2016

I've got nothing against the actresses, this movie just looks terrible.

Totally agreed. I love the actresses. The chemistry between McCarthy and Bullock made The Heatone of the funniest buddy-cop films I've ever watched; Wiig carried an entire cast of SNL on her back for several seasons and I kept watching; and McKinnon and Jones are part of the funniest SNL crew in years along with Aidy Bryant, Vanessa Bayer, and Cecily Strong.

The interesting thing about the critique I keep seeing on the Facebooks about this movie is that everyone feels the need to open with, "Look, I don't hate it because it has women in it...." And at that point I close the browser.

I think the opposite is true. Most of the praise seems to be focused on gender. Yes, they're great actresses. And yes, an all-female reboot of the film is a good idea. But gender and acting talent don't make a film awesome. Gal Gadot was pretty great as Wonder Woman, but still.

The trailer isn't the film. Maybe I'll love the film. But to analogize: I have been watching ads for The Big Bang Theory since 2007 and I've never laughed at a single joke. By contrast, ads for 2 Broke Girls consistently make me laugh. Without having watched either show, I am more interested in one because of its ads. That's the point of the ads.

The trailers for Ghostbusters don't make me laugh. The characters don't seem three-dimensional or compelling. The costumes look low-rent, as does the new Ecto-1. Chris Hemsworth looks like a ham. Feig appears to have added a villain, which...ugh. It just doesn't look like a very good film. I think most of the praise and excitement seems centered on the fact that it "would" or "will" be awesome to have all-female Ghostbusters, and it's fine if that's your criteria. Personally I think it would be awesome to have all-female Ghostbusters in a movie that is actually good, and I don't see that happening here.
posted by cribcage at 5:23 AM on May 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

I do see that happening here, they even have an eye candy male secretary! HA! I love it! This will be awesome.
posted by xarnop at 5:37 AM on May 27, 2016

...well played, Team Irony. Well played.
posted by cribcage at 5:52 AM on May 27, 2016

Speaking of timing and the fading power of one-liners, I didn't laugh at the UK trailer because I had just seen an almost identical joke.
posted by overglow at 6:17 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I found the U.S. one way funnier - the sense of dread was palpable and the extra time gave enough beat for the joke. Comedic style lately seems to require that extra beat.

But this analysis was interesting and I wonder why the difference, why does one audience call for one kind of edit and another audience seems to want another kind.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:18 AM on May 27, 2016

Remakes are odd. When I was younger, they seemed invasive and appropriative (especially American remakes of non-American films, like Let the Right One In, or Ringu or Insomnia) - like Hollywood wanted to colonise the past or non-U.S. cultures - and they still seem cynical and exploitative. I don't really get the annoyance I used to, though, because we've seen so many of those remakes disappear. The 1997 Avengers came and went and left Macnee and Rigg unscathed; we're on to a further remake of Thunderbirds and the 1960s puppets haven't been knocked off their perch yet. Anyone who mentions the Nic Cage Wicker Man or the Brendan Fraser Bedazzled is put on the right path to the Woodward and Cook/Moore originals. Remakes don't really replace what they're remaking, because the qualities that made the originals so persistently popular are invariably absent from them, and they've usually built their status up slowly over decades through a slow accretion of affection. On the other hand, any qualities the remake might have are lost in its attempts to compete with the status of the original (the 2012 Total Recall, for example, was a perfectly acceptable dumb action movie for people with low standards, suited for Friday nights in with pizza and a six-pack of beer, that was swamped by the fact that it wasn't, and couldn't be, the 1990 Total Recall).

The thing that strikes me about this film from the trailers is that it's not so much a remake as a cover version - the art direction, the special effects, the colour grading are all intended to evoke the original film, which is a lot less common than one might expect. It may even be new. The only recent film I can think of that has taken such care to look like the original is The Force Awakens, which a separate entity in a shared world.

I'd not have thought about it, especially, apart from seeing the trailer for the Rocky Horror remake, which is definitely a cover version: it looks exactly the same as the original except with new actors, it seems to be trumpeting "We do the same jokes in the same way, don't worry!" In that film, the actors appear to be bland analogues of the original actors apart from Laverne Cox, who (one suspects) is the point of it.

But then Ghostbusters is a movie I went to see when it came out and it's woven into my life like the pop records and ad jingles from the same time. I have too much of a (minor) emotional relationship to it to be able to judge a remake rationally. Which isn't necessarily anything to be proud of. Like they're saying "Fuck off, old man, this is our playground now". Which, I suppose, it is.

I would be a lot more angry if (or when) they do it to Back to the Future, simply because it's so much better a film. But I doubt a new version of that would be remembered any longer than last year's Vacation anyway, so I should probably save my emotional energy.
posted by Grangousier at 6:57 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

cribcage- you seem to be operating from the assumption the original ghostbusters was anything other than a goofy not that well made comedy- don't know if that's your position, but the original ghostbusters was not that great. It was not a three dimensional or compelling movie. It was ridiculous. And fun. Now it's gender swapped for more enjoyment of women who want a ridiculous and fun movie that's not necessarily high quality and doesn't have to be- just like the original.
posted by xarnop at 7:13 AM on May 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

I would be a lot more angry if (or when) they do it to Back to the Future, simply because it's so much better a film. But I doubt a new version of that would be remembered any longer than last year's Vacation anyway, so I should probably save my emotional energy.

This is more or less my feeling on 70s/80s remakes/reboots in general. The MRA types are all annoyed by women in their classic IPs, but I'm mostly perturbed by this meaning that fewer new IPs get made for female stars.

Allowing, of course, a gaping exception in the foregoing for the new Mad Max, which was more or less perfect.
posted by fifthrider at 7:14 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Exactly, xarnop! All of a sudden the original ghostbusters was a witty character study?

It's totally cool if comedic, goofy, action movies aren't your thing, but if you think the original Ghostbusters was hilarious and have already decided from the trailer that the remake isn't that's seems a bit shaky. In addition, for me at least, I saw the original Ghostbusters as child and I don't think I will ever quite be able to seperate out what is legitimately funny (to an adult) vs just filled with pleasurable nostalgia from laughing at it as a kid.

the other issue is that there's a difficult cycle here: there are so few movies (let alone action movies) with all women casts so when there is one it has to be everything to everyone or fails. And if it fails people are like "well movies with all women casts aren't popular..."
posted by CMcG at 7:21 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

What I want to see is a genderswapped Expendables remake with maybe a James Franco as Giselle Itie's role and Nicholas Brendon taking on Charisma Carpenter's.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:24 AM on May 27, 2016

Doomed.

Editing ain't nothing to do with the fact that this retread, after decades of advancement in CGI has the same crappy looking ghost motifs.

Fail.

is this comment a joke because i honestly can't tell
posted by beerperson at 8:03 AM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

The film doesn't exist yet, but the trailer is not encouraging. Plus, after horrible remakes of Robocop, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, The Thing, Point Break, and Total Recall, I suspect that people have stopped believing that hey, maybe THIS cynical, assembly-line Hollywood committee product slapped together by technically-proficient but uninspired professionals collecting a paycheck to haphazardly water down someone's else's original idea -- will be worth it. All the others were soulless, forgettable dreck, but THIS one will be different.

When Hollywood does its horrible remake of The Neverending Story, they should definitely cast a black kid as Bastian Balthazar Bux. We can do this all over again.
posted by ELF Radio at 8:06 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

the one i am sure about is that if we talk about it some more, one group can convince the other group that they are wrong and also reprehensible people
posted by entropicamericana at 8:08 AM on May 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

On the other hand - True Grit, Ocean's Eleven, Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead (gender-swapped lead, even!). Better than the originals? Maybe, maybe not, but all solid movies in their own right. A remake doesn't *have* to be automatically terrible.
posted by Roommate at 8:14 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I just hope they used Dan Ackroyd's original several-hours-long script about competing Ghostbuster groups in outer space
posted by beerperson at 8:24 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Still not changing my mind about not watching trailers beforehand because they're so stupidly spoilery. Still looking forward to watching this movie because three of the main actors I like everything else they've done. I win.
posted by P.o.B. at 8:28 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

For tl;dr folks, there is a video version illustrating pretty much the same points, but with a different material: Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy
posted by ringu0 at 8:46 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

by technically-proficient but uninspired professionals collecting a paycheck to haphazardly water down someone's else's original idea

You know, if you actually follow comedy, none of those descriptions apply to either the cast or the director of this movie. I get that Hollywood's preference for making sequels, remakes, or adaptations rather than new original works can be tiresome, but that tendency of theirs doesn't make uninformed statements any less uninformed when it turns out you're dealing with an exception. This sort seen-it-all done-it-all criticisms is a lot less impressive when it's incorrect.

And I'd be curious to see if you can explain what a black kid has to do with any of this without making recourse to using terms like "political correctness", "social justice warriors", or "pandering".
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:50 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Watching only the first 18 seconds the US trailer does a much better job on that joke than the UK one, I disagree with Zhou on almost everything here, which is weird because usually I agree with him.
The US trailer goes for atmosphere, mounting up the tension, in the UK trailer the ghosts are already there, and the army is here to take care of them, why do we need those ghostbusters if the fight is already going on ?
Also on the delivery there is a longer pause before one of the ghostbusters say "oh good..." and that's what make the joke for me, those 8 frames before she answers. In those 8 frames you have the hesitation that culminates in her saying "oh good".
I'll also defend the zooming in, the shot is too short to get everyone's reaction anyway, what you want is the one who's going to speak taking more of the frame. So you can identify her quickly, in the original framing she's more lost in the frame amongst the other but that's a bit nitpicky.
posted by SageLeVoid at 9:12 AM on May 27, 2016

did you know that the best judge of a movie's quality is its trailer
posted by Anonymous at 9:55 AM on May 27, 2016

I mean, the original Ghostbusters trailer wasn't very funny, either.
posted by Automocar at 10:07 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

What xarnop said, basically.

Listen, I like the original Ghostbusters movie just fine. But it's draggy in a lot of places, some of the gags either don't work or come off as just plain creepy, etc., etc. It's super flawed, actually, but somehow it's achieved a memetic status that causes people to overlook those flaws, I think mainly because the funny parts are really funny.

But it really seems like people are expecting this remake to sit comfortably on top of a pedestal that even the original film doesn't quite fit on, and that's just absurd.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:11 AM on May 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

I am frustrated it exists because it is representative of how picked over and excruciatingly criticized these trailers have been, far more than you see for most trailers. Even franchise reboots.

Really? I feel like the Abrams Star Trek ones were pored over pretty thoroughly.
posted by Hoopo at 10:31 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The most concerning difference between the two trailers to me is that the UK version includes the really funny joke where Kirstin Wiig gives the proper name "Conductors of Metaphysical Examinations" which the receptionist translates into "Ghostbusters", while the US version includes the crowd-drops-stage-diver followed by "don't know if that was a race thing, or a lady thing, but I'm mad as hell" which I found far less funny.

Was that a conscious choice based on focus testing of Americans' sense of humor? Am I wrong? No! It's the American's who are wrong!
posted by jermsplan at 10:46 AM on May 27, 2016

Really? I feel like the Abrams Star Trek ones were pored over pretty thoroughly.

Depending on what nerd sites you visit, pretty much any hotly anticipated movie with a trailer will have said trailer broken down scene by scene, with comparisons and speculation about which characters are doing what. It's gotten pretty intense and its only going to get worse.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:56 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trailers are so weird because the final film will have different music and special effects and may or may not even have some of the same shots or scenes in them.
posted by octothorpe at 11:13 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

UK trailer made me smile. Seemed more likeable and funny. More jokes. Which, for a comedy, seems a good idea. That's all I got.
posted by howfar at 11:54 AM on May 27, 2016

First time I saw the trailer I turned to my husband and said, "Christ, they need to fire whoever did the trailer!" It's a terrible trailer, but I like that this, article points out that it may not have been the editors fault, something I hadn't considered.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 1:36 PM on May 27, 2016

And just for clarification, the trailer I saw was the first one, this is the second one. The first one was fine until about 3/4 the of the way through when, after saying everything that needed to be said, it abruptly slowed down and started to say everything over again. Just terrible. Watch it and tell me I'm wrong.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 1:52 PM on May 27, 2016

"Look, I don't hate it because it has women in it...."

It's like being a man who doesn't support Hillary Clinton, or a white person who doesn't support Obama.

You basically start out on thin, crackling ice before you even open your mouth. Society is a bit odd, that way.
posted by rokusan at 4:01 PM on May 27, 2016

But it really seems like people are expecting this remake to sit comfortably on top of a pedestal that even the original film doesn't quite fit on

People have offered a number of criticisms as to why it doesn't seem funny or good, but I don't think most of them have been framed as comparisons to the original. It wouldn't be a fair comparison anyway: nobody has seen this film yet, and nobody remembers the original film's trailer. (YouTube notwithstanding.)

In terms of comparison to the original, I've mostly heard two points made. First is the gender issue: "The original crew was male, this crew is female, therefore awesome." Again, that's fine if it's your criteria. Second is what ELF Radio said: people have criticized the concept of this remake the same way they criticized remaking RoboCop, The Karate Kid, Total Recall, Judge Dredd, etc. Remakes are dicey territory, and they get criticized. Water is wet.

I just think people want the film to be funny. Yes, there's probably a heightened expectation for a film titled Ghostbusters to be funny in a way that wouldn't arise with a totally original new film. That's not unfair. But again, I don't hear a lot of people saying, "It doesn't look quite as good as I was hoping." People are saying it looks bad.
posted by cribcage at 9:25 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I would buy 100 tickets to this movie just to stop hearing about how somebody HAS to see it on principle, or how it HAS to suck.

It's like the run up to snakes on a plane in reverse combined with all the mad max think pieces.

I thought Ray Parker jr told me bustin was supposed to make me feel good.
posted by emptythought at 9:26 PM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hillary Clinton, Ghostbusters, and Gender Politics Collide on Ellen
posted by Artw at 10:12 PM on May 27, 2016

My family watched Ocean's 11 tonight (the Clooney/Pitt version). We think it would be a terrific candidate for the next all-women reboot. I mention it here in case it thereby somehow enters the zeitgeist and gets made.

Already in the works.
posted by jimw at 10:13 PM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

(That movie and this one both should have had a female director as well, though.)
posted by tobascodagama at 7:12 AM on May 28, 2016

I watched the original Ghostbusters a while back, all revved up with nostalgia, since those movies were HUGE in my childhood but I hadn't seen them for probably 15 years. I was...really disappointed. Ghostbusters isn't that great a film. As others have said, it drags a lot in places, and there are some very clunky bits. But still, I'm mildly excited for this. Cause I do think some of the bits in the trailer are really funny, and I like the actors.

But there's this tendency for Hollywood to remake movies from the 80s that are objectively not very good, and for modern audiences to then say the remake sucks, because it's not benefiting from the nostalgia effect.
posted by threeturtles at 3:13 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

As others have said, it drags a lot in places, and there are some very clunky bits.

I still get an excited, jumpy, little-kid feeling when I hear the theme music kick in and the movie really kicks off, but when I last saw it there were definitely parts that hadn't aged well. Dan Aykroyd's facial expressions could not relieve my discomfort when I realized he was basically being raped by a ghost. Hopefully there's no repeat of that in the new one.
posted by Anonymous at 1:26 AM on May 29, 2016

The ghost is stealing his underpants, guys.
posted by Artw at 1:51 AM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, ultimately Ghostbusters was at most a fun movie. It certainly wasn't a truly great movie or anything.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:42 AM on May 29, 2016

The ghost is stealing his underpants, guys.

Yeah . . . yeah, just stealing his underpants . . .
posted by Anonymous at 4:25 AM on May 29, 2016