Ghostbusters Trailer - Holy s#!t, how is it this bad?

[Gorrath]

Lordy this thread seems fun! I found the trailer to be more annoying than fun and the humor to be flat, derivative and boring. I think it's an interesting direction for the effects that fall somewhere between the original films and Tim Burton asthetic, so they aren't bad. All in all, it doesn't look all that good or interesting. But since I'm being critical I guess that means I'm a woman-hater wearing nostalgia goggles who's too stupid to realize that trailers are not at all indicative of a film's quality. Learning this last fact, I am going to rush out immediately and watch Gods of Egypt, since that trailer looked like horseshit and was not at all indicative of the film's real quality.

 

[JCAll]

Someone's had a go at recutting the trailer, and it actually now looks like a movie I would want to see:

Amazing what a difference the soundtrack makes. It's like with the Suicide Squad movie, which has managed to reinvent itself as a quirky fun movie via a bit of Queen. Makes you wonder how useful trailers actually are.

All they did was cut out all the unfunny jokes. Yeah, it mike make the trailer more enticing, but it won't make the movie better.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm not saying the trailer is particularly good, just that the reactions it has caused from the internet are really bloody overblown considering that it's not particularly worse than the trailer for the original film. At least not from a "this is a raucous, exciting, laugh-out-loud affair that I have to go see right now!" perspective; this trailer might have made me cringe a bit more than the 1984 one, but it also got the same number of chuckles out of me.

The worst thing I have to say about this trailer is that it just feels like a normal modern action-comedy movie. Maybe that's damning in itself, because oh hey, it's supposed to be Ghostbusters I guess? This is why I don't pay any attention to pre-release stuff for games, either, because the judging that gets thrown around has to be either one extreme or the other, and nobody can ever be content just waiting until they actually experience something firsthand. I get that trailers are supposed to sell things to us so that we want to experience them, and sure, this might do a poor job of it for certain people, but if there's one thing that gamers of all people should know by now it's that trailers aren't necessarily always representative of how a final product will turn out.

The art of making trailers has come a long way since Ghostbusters was released in 1984. It might seem churlish to heap scorn on something as ultimately weightless as a trailer, but Ghostbusters is an iconic property. If someone set out to remake Back to the Future or The Breakfast Club or Die Hard and released some god awful clunker of a trailer, it would likely also be met with hyperbolic scorn. You're choosing an iconic franchise because you want to rope that franchise's fan base in for an easy buck. You're letting an established IP do all the leg work for you. That comes with risks, and one of those risks is "if you shit it up, things are going to get loud". I'm not sure that's particularly unfair.

Naturally we cannot tell from a trailer if a film is going to be bad, but we can certainly make educated guesses. We're not judging a book by its cover so much as we're judging it from a studio selected highlights clip. We can speculate that the film is actually excellent and they just botched the trailer, but A) how often does that really happen, and B) isn't that also something bad and worthy of at least a measure of scorn? Someone was hired to do a thing and they did it badly.

And you're correct, there's some confirmation bias at play because people were already worried about this project, for a variety of reasons, not all of which were distasteful. Which means there was EXTRA pressure on the trailer to nail it, because it had a very steep hill to climb towards respectability. They did not succeed.

Spoiler: Don't open if you hate the F word!!!

Also, I'm really just sick and tired of people turning everything into endless bitching about feminism, and people have been using this as ammo for how "feminism ruins everything" since it was announced.

I'm as exhausted about that as anyone, but if you cannot take the piss out of a terrible trailer because of the gender of the film's stars, then you're actually giving those individuals ammunition with which to carry on their tiresome crusade. The trailer isn't bad because the actors have vaginas, the trailer is bad because it's BAD. If it makes you feel better, imagine that's Adam Sandler, Kevin James, et al, delivering the same trailer with the same tone and the same jokes. Good trailer? I think not.

I also worry that Dan Aykroyd gets the story credit, along with a deceased Harold Ramis who would have had very little in the way of input over the last couple of years. Did you ever read Aykroyd's original treatment for Ghostbusters? Or some of his sequel ideas? I have a soft spot for the guy, but he's an idiot. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

 

[Casual Shinji]

...

Have we been on different internets for the past ten years?

I don't mean to be dismissive or mocking of what you said, but literally every reboot or sequel to a "beloved classic" gets this treatment, at least from what I've seen. People aren't exactly breaking the mold by saying that this is the worst thing in the history of humanity since the last thing that was the worst thing.

And most if not all of those have been mediocre at best. This extremely negative reaction toward the new Ghostbusters trailer is a result of a great number of people having it up to here with these crappy reboots/remakes, and the fact that they could not have chosen a worse movie to try and remake. Oh, and ofcourse that it looks like complete garbage.

This is like if they announced a remake/reboot of Back to the Future, pointlessly gender swapped Doc and Marty, and then released a trailer that made it look like Space Jam. People would get a bit ticked off.

Who knows, maybe by some big fat miracle the movie will actually end up being just a very mediocre retread of the original. But just the fact that it has the jokes and effects that it has in the trailer gives it the annoyance factor of an Adam Sandler movie.

 

[DemomanHusband]

I have to acknowledge a thing that you apparently believe to be true, because you say I do? Do you know what "Have to" actually means?

It's true, you've already failed to acknowledge the rest of my post, and you've refused to acknowledge my previous statement of your broad generalizations, so I guess you're in the habit of not acknowledging things that are apparent and right in front of your face, no, you clearly feel far more compelled to cherry pick someone's phrasing instead. Since you seem to have no reservations when it comes to overreaching conjecture about people and their posts, your reluctance to simply hold an opinion on how you think a movie might turn out just kind of comes off as willful obstinance. Oh well, I suppose it's natural since you're far more interesting in forwarding your own biased opinions of others rather than having a simple speculative conversation about a film.

Don't try to talk with them, Im Lang lives in a world where there's no such thing as objectivity or quality. We had this same conversation in the news post about the trailer, and Im Lang insisted on having better things to do than discuss the quality of an upcoming film based on its trailer... Despite currently being in a thread discussing the film based on its trailer. We spoke at length, and they preferred painting me as a raging 'hyperjudgmental megaconsumer' than actually addressing my points. They also insisted that change in a franchise like this is good, when there are other examples of change within a franchise that actually are pretty darn good.

It's almost as if they're pushing a narrative to make this movie's detractors seem childish, doesn't it?

 

[shrekfan246]

We can speculate that the film is actually excellent and they just botched the trailer, but A) how often does that really happen, and B) isn't that also something bad and worthy of at least a measure of scorn? Someone was hired to do a thing and they did it badly.

Take a look at the difference between the two Suicide Squad trailers?

I mean, sure, that movie isn't out yet so we don't know whether it'll actually be good or not, but the first trailer left a collective "meh" heard 'round the interwebs, while the second had a lot of people turning around and thinking there might be some promise after all because it actually showed some personality.

Really, I'm just done with the overblown hyperbolic cynicism that is the native speaking language for the internet. I'm supposed to be in my most jaded and cynical years right now and the internet has out-cynic'd me with all of the hair-trigger hatred that it spews out at the slightest provocation. So hey, don't let me stop the internet rage machine from going full-speed ahead once again. Maybe it's like Speed; if it ever stops the entire internet will just spontaneously explode.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Really, I'm just done with the overblown hyperbolic cynicism that is the native speaking language for the internet. I'm supposed to be in my most jaded and cynical years right now and the internet has out-cynic'd me with all of the hair-trigger hatred that it spews out at the slightest provocation. So hey, don't let me stop the internet rage machine from going full-speed ahead once again. Maybe it's like Speed; if it ever stops the entire internet will just spontaneously explode.

You're the grumpiest person in here!

Cheer up, lil' buddy.

 

[happyninja42]

You're talking to people who are following an internet outrage script. For reasons of ideology, politics, or nerdishness they already hate this movie. This is just about sharing and echoing that hate, nothing more. When people say "Circle jerk" or "Echo chamber", this is what they mean. A totally uncritical sharing of the same preconceived notion, with some token "evidence" that acts more like a ritual fetish. I'd hate to be the guy who wipes down the loads.


So, the fact that the original was a classic screwball comedy, the fact that they've seen it a dozen time and only seen a trailer for this... none of that matters.

Yeah, after seeing the like:dislike ratio on the trailer for the new film, I should've known better than to even bother talking about this on the internet.

Even the people who aren't so blinded by their hatred for "feminism" that they went off the rails at the thought of Ghostbusters having a female cast are getting their knee-jerk on because "BUT MY CHILDHOOD".

Exactly. Either nostalgia or ideology, you can't really touch that until the movie is out and we've all seen it. Until then, the hysterical people basically run the show online.

I don't understand the "raped my childhood" mindset. The shit you like is still there people, just go watch it again.

 

[shrekfan246]

Really, I'm just done with the overblown hyperbolic cynicism that is the native speaking language for the internet. I'm supposed to be in my most jaded and cynical years right now and the internet has out-cynic'd me with all of the hair-trigger hatred that it spews out at the slightest provocation. So hey, don't let me stop the internet rage machine from going full-speed ahead once again. Maybe it's like Speed; if it ever stops the entire internet will just spontaneously explode.

You're the grumpiest person in here!

Cheer up, lil' buddy.

I'm grumpy about everyone else being grumpy.

(Actually, more seriously, I haven't been in a great mood because I've been dealing with a second kidney stone in three years for the past month, and only just had it removed the other day and am still in a great amount of pain because I elected to go for the full-blown surgical option and they have to shove a stent up by your kidney after that.

If anyone else ever has kidney stones, I don't recommend a ureteroscopy.)

 

[renegade7]

Unpopular opinion here, but I don't actually think the original Ghostbusters movies were actually the cultural icons they've been made out to be. Especially the second one. Sure, they were good, but only in that they were decent science fiction movies that had a little bit of fun with popular culture and special effects.

I will say though that I looked at the whiteboard at 1:00 and I am extremely pleased that everything on there is correct. It's rare for movie producers to make that kind of effort, and IMO there's nothing more beautiful than a woman who knows what gauge bosons and the special unitary groups are.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

(Actually, more seriously, I haven't been in a great mood because I've been dealing with a second kidney stone in three years for the past month, and only just had it removed the other day and am still in a great amount of pain because I elected to go for the full-blown surgical option and they have to shove a stent up by your kidney after that.

If anyone else ever has kidney stones, I don't recommend a ureteroscopy.)

Ouch. I'm sorry. That sounds absolutely horrible.

Almost as bad as that new GHOSTBUSTERS trailer, amirite?

Heyoooooooo...

Really though. Drink more water.

Unpopular opinion here, but I don't actually think the original Ghostbusters movies were actually the cultural icons they've been made out to be. Especially the second one. Sure, they were good, but only in that they were decent science fiction movies that had a little bit of fun with popular culture and special effects.

The original Ghostbusters is a cultural icon, though. You can make the argument you think it doesn't deserve to be, but it is.

No one thinks the second Ghostbusters is iconic, save perhaps iconic as an argument for why we shouldn't be trying to make more Ghostbusters.

 

[Something Amyss]

To me this is something beyond a trainwreck. Its like watching graphic testicle removal surgery after horrible trauma to said area... something I wouldn't want to do no matter how much I was being paid.

...you know, there's a certain irony in talking to a transwoman about testicular removal I won't get into. >.>

That said, I'm actually with my brother from the land downunder. The trailer was mostly just...a thing that happened. Like, I don't love it, but I didn't hate it. It doesn't rise to the level of being bad.

I'm not saying the trailer is particularly good, just that the reactions it has caused from the internet are really bloody overblown considering that it's not particularly worse than the trailer for the original film. At least not from a "this is a raucous, exciting, laugh-out-loud affair that I have to go see right now!" perspective; this trailer might have made me cringe a bit more than the 1984 one, but it also got the same number of chuckles out of me.

Well, two things from that.

1: related to your spoiler, this movie was hated from the moment it was announced because of the "f" word, so it was always going to go down this way. That trailer could have been a masterpiece and still caused a shitstorm.

2: I do agree with guppy on the point of trailercraft. Many trailers from the 80s were done in a radically different style aimed ast a different audience in a different time with different expectations. The original Street Fighter was released in the 1980s with only two playable characters (and no character select) and 10 opponents. Capcom has proved it's stupid to even come close to that [http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/street-fighter-v]. Things change and our expectations do.

I'm grumpy about everyone else being grumpy.

Quick! Look at your avatar!

Sorry to hear about the kidney stones. Closest I've come to that is having my bladder scoped, and even that was...not fun.

This extremely negative reaction toward the new Ghostbusters trailer is a result of a great number of people having it up to here with these crappy reboots/remakes, and the fact that they could not have chosen a worse movie to try and remake. Oh, and ofcourse that it looks like complete garbage.

Oh, come on. I didn't enjoy the trailer, either, but this reaction is making TREKKIES look reasonable. And really, the idea that there couldn't be a worse movie to choose? Star Trek. A franchise beloved by some of the most anal and histrionic people on the planet (and some awesome people like me >.>) that received a less heated response. Hell, the latest movie got the 2 Fast 2 Furious treatment in trailer, and it got a more measured response.

And the thing is? The hardcore Ghostbusters fans seem to be super excited. You can go to YouTube to see whole crowds of Ghostbusters fans cheering.

No, I seriously doubt this is the final straw on the reboot camel's back. I can almost guarantee the next Michael Bay reboot of something 80s will be better received.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I view it as neither good nor bad but just dissapointingly average looking. Think people are overreacting but I get why, comparing it to the old Ghostbusters probably isnt fair though because it takes a certain magic spark for a movie to be a classic like that.

 

[Imre Csete]

Oh my. I never got the SNL humour, more of a british standup/sketch guy (like Eddie Izzard, Mithcell and Webb etc.), but this is even beyond not clicking with it. Definetly not a concept that warrants feature film length. Seems so soulless and just for its own sake.

Can't wait to read about blaming misogny for the bad box office performance though!

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

My reaction to the trailer was...eh. It got a couple smirks out of me, which is two more smirks than I expected, and I think Melissa McCarthy actually does pretty good when she's given more to do than just "fat chick with attitude".

Of course, I not only enjoyed Spy in theaters, I own it on Blu-Ray, so maybe my tastes are just different than most people.

I do agree the black girl was cringeworthy.

 

[Casual Shinji]

This extremely negative reaction toward the new Ghostbusters trailer is a result of a great number of people having it up to here with these crappy reboots/remakes, and the fact that they could not have chosen a worse movie to try and remake. Oh, and ofcourse that it looks like complete garbage.

Oh, come on. I didn't enjoy the trailer, either, but this reaction is making TREKKIES look reasonable. And really, the idea that there couldn't be a worse movie to choose? Star Trek. A franchise beloved by some of the most anal and histrionic people on the planet (and some awesome people like me >.>) that received a less heated response. Hell, the latest movie got the 2 Fast 2 Furious treatment in trailer, and it got a more measured response.

Well, I can't clearly judge that, since I'm not into Star Trek, but am instead an extremely baised Ghostbusters fan. What I do know about Star Trek is that it seems a bit easier to pass the torch onto others with that franchise. I don't know how big if any outcry there was when The Next Generation was announced, or any of the movies before the '09 version. Star Trek seems to be a bit more balanced regarding its peaks and valleys. It's also had a lot more experience, I guess, in the changing of hands.

I can't really condemn the outcry, because I generally share the same pissed off sentiments. I'm not going to blame it on feminism, tweet death threats, or even lose any sleep over it, but there is a part of me that is kind of enjoying the bile this trailer is receiving. Shameful as that might be to admit.

And the thing is? The hardcore Ghostbusters fans seem to be super excited. You can go to YouTube to see whole crowds of Ghostbusters fans cheering.

Not that I've gone looking for them, but I honestly haven't seen many of them. The only real positive reactions I've seen were E! Entertainment like manufactured super hype videos. But maybe there's a layer of hardcore Ghostbusters fans out there that I am unfamiliar with.

No, I seriously doubt this is the final straw on the reboot camel's back. I can almost guarantee the next Michael Bay reboot of something 80s will be better received.

Unless it's Back to the Future starring Shia laBeouf as Marty McFly.

 

[Pinkilicious]

I had kind of the opposite reaction.

When I heard the trailer was out, I expected it to be a train wreck, but after watching it... I don't think it was. The 'loud black lady' is indeed loud, black, and a lady, but not quit as much as I expected. The gear looks kind of dumb, but not as dumb as I expected. Melissa McCarthy is meh, instead of headache inducing bad, as I expected.

I still have no interest in seeing the movie, but I can now see how it could kind of work. That's more then I could say before the trailer.

Good point. It should really have been a B-rating tv series instead. All campy and shiz. LCD running gags work better if you establish an unfunny bit, then start whipping it out at inopportune times. Bit hard to do but if you land it right, it works! One show I can recall doing that really well is Burn Notice. Dry, yawny bit, you think to yourself "who the shit would think THAT'S funny?" 4 episodes later it happens in the middle of a very serious moment and completely works.

Bad acting, bad humor, bad CGI, just bad, they took a classic and turned it into a slapstick comedy for kids and people who will simply support it because wimmins. It's a parody without any respect for the source material, I'd rather have a simple rule 63 movie than this garbage.

The only thing that is more ridiculous than this eldritch abomination is the claim that it is somehow racist, I highly doubt that Feig put a gun to her head and told her to act like that, she consented to it, and seeing the video above, she is absolutely in her character. People have to finally realize that most stereotypes have a strong basis in reality, and that this movie is a lot of bad things for sure, but racist is not one of them.

That's actually funnier to me than the movie itself. The people complaining about people who don't want to watch it are displaying sexism turned right around and said anyone that does watch it is essentially a racist. Classic SJ doublethink. Now if only Sony would stop deleting the fargin' comments I could be even more entertained! This is probably why people are starting to flood into the trailer put up by The Ellen Show instead, completely unmoderated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JINqHA7xywE

No, I seriously doubt this is the final straw on the reboot camel's back. I can almost guarantee the next Michael Bay reboot of something 80s will be better received.

It's funny that...you should mention...Reboot...

http://www.legendariummedia.com/2015/06/08/corus-mainframe-rebooting-reboot/

 

[rcs619]

Oh, come on. I didn't enjoy the trailer, either, but this reaction is making TREKKIES look reasonable. And really, the idea that there couldn't be a worse movie to choose? Star Trek. A franchise beloved by some of the most anal and histrionic people on the planet (and some awesome people like me >.>) that received a less heated response. Hell, the latest movie got the 2 Fast 2 Furious treatment in trailer, and it got a more measured response.

And the thing is? The hardcore Ghostbusters fans seem to be super excited. You can go to YouTube to see whole crowds of Ghostbusters fans cheering.

Pretty much. The last time I saw this amount of hate and doomsaying was for the Devil May Cry reboot, and it actually turned out to be a pretty good game overall. Easily the 3rd best game in the whole Devil May Cry series, so yeah.

I think the positive points are:
1: It seems very vibrant and colorful, which is automatically a plus for me.
2: The weird, blonde punky girl looks fun.
3: It has a lot of the people involved in the original in writing and production roles.

It may well turn out to be average or not great, but it doesn't seem to deserve the amount of hate it's getting either. It really comes down to how the main cast works together and that's super hard to tell from a trailer.

On the bright side, there's no way they could screw up the Ghostbusters reboot nearly as bad as they screwed up the Robocop reboot. Man, the Robocop reboot was awful. Not all reboots lately have turned out bad though, look at Dredd. That was actually a really well-done reboot.

 

[Dreph]

Unless it's Back to the Future starring Shia laBeouf as Marty McFly.

Don't... Please don't let anyone see this and do it. I'm not sure I can handle that kind of brutality to such a beloved franchise. This would make crystal skull look like... Well apparently I can't come up with a good simile, but seriously don't do this.

 

[Tony2077]

hate be damned i personally will give it a chance
reboot reboot excluding Canada what heresy is that