Back in March I took a look at the first trailer for the new Ghostbusters film, and while that article was an overly long meandering mess of thoughts, I felt it accurately portrayed my thoughts on the trailer: it may be functionally a well produced trailer, but the core content in the film looks to not be very good, to put it lightly.
Jump ahead to a few weeks ago, with the 2nd trailer for the film having been released. The film is already notoriously hated by many, and while this fact can skew opinions unfavorably, I tried my best, like before, to look at this trailer objectively, and sadly, it’s still terrible to me.
Alright, let’s get down to the gritty part of explaining, once again, why people just don’t like what this film look to be. There is one extremely common, very obvious element to the film that is quite the dead giveaway as to why every joke makes me cringe. Many of the cast members are from Saturday Night Live, and the writing style reflects this.
That right there is enough explanation for me. I just don’t like the comedy style that has been used in SNL for the past, oh, 25 years or so. Older sketches I do enjoy, and depending on the person I can find them amusing in their skits, or in other roles, but for the most part very few things related at all to Saturday Night Live actually amuse me. It just isn’t my style of comedy, and yet this film is made of Saturday Night Live, at least in terms of acting and writing style.
While the cast is inevitably brought up as a key part of why the film is disliked, I have to stress that this is not because they are women. It isn’t even really them that makes the film look unappealing – the director and writers have as much to do with the content of the film as do the people playing their roles, and an actor can only work with what they are given.
That’s understandable, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that no only are the jokes poor quality, but their delivery is just… bad. It’s SNL bad. I know I keep bringing it up, but I can’t escape it; this film, from the trailers, looks to be a hour and a half long SNL skit where the parody the original 1984 Ghostbusters with a gender-swapped cast! The idea could easily work with a new, fresh origin (rather than a retelling, as it seems, of the same original story) and possibly with a more unique cast. Hell, it could work just find with these women, but the entire writing style of the film would have to be changed. That’s the key point, and I can’t stress it enough – the cast could be all men, and the film would still look bad like this. Hell, it could be the same 4 original Ghostbusters and we would all just say “no, screw this.” as it just doesn’t work for us!
This film could be good, but it just reeks of blandness, of poor writing, and of laziness. It could be good if it had better writers. It could be good if it had more original ideas. It could be good if it didn’t try so hard to focus on the one unique element of it, the all female cast, but instead, it just fails on all fronts to please people. It’s not a hard concept to get – the trailers do not make the film look like it is worth seeing, that simple.
This split second scene actually looks pretty awesome.
The trailer even contains jokes that try to hit on the idea of it being hated due to the female cast, and even in the context of the trailer that joke fails. The whole thing looks to be a mess
Unlike others, though, I will still praise the graphic effects – I like how they look, but ghosts alone don’t make the movie worth watching. I just don’t care about these characters. I don’t want to be involved in their story.
I’m not alone in this thought either. James Rolfe, of Angry Video Game Nerd fame, has said himself he doesn’t want to see the movie at all, which has caused it’s own massive drama pit, which I will get into in another article. For now, I’ll share his thoughts on the film, and leave it at that…