The first trailer for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters was so bad, even Melissa McCarthy, one of the film’s four stars, called it “very confusing. But then everyone said we don’t care what you think.” (It quickly became the most disliked trailer in YouTube history, for all the wrong reasons.) The second trailer, released earlier this week, was a slight improvement, but it still had editing problems and gave away way too much about the plot.
In an interview with Monsters of Filmland, director Feig said, “My movies, for some reason, are really hard to do trailers for, because my comedy all comes from context, really. I’m not the guy who’s like joke-joke-joke, and here’s a one-liner one-liner one-liner. I do have those, but you have to get to know the characters, you have to settle in with them to get to know their personalities.”
That explains a lot (Spy‘s trailer was terrible; the actual movie was great). But will we ever get a good Ghostbusters trailer, or is the self-righteous Cinema Massacre dork going to win? We, America, didn’t, but overseas did. The international teaser is by far the promising look at the film yet. The jokes land, nothing important is given away (a problem with all trailers, not just Ghostbusters), and there’s a lot more McKinnon. That’s been the movie’s marketing problem: not enough Kate McKinnon. Slap her goggled face everywhere, and the world’s YouTube commenters will change their minds.
