Expectation vs...

Okay, let's all admit it: those Ghostbusters trailers are terrible! None of the jokes land, and it feels super cringy. I've seen various edits of the trailers to improve them, and there was one common feature: removing the jokes.

This is hardly the first time that a trailer has failed to sell the movie, but there were understandably other factors happening. This was rebooting a loved franchise. With women! We all know that women aren't funny!

Yet there were plenty of us who wanted this to do well. There's no reasons those factors should play into whether or not the movie was any good, but people kept bringing it up. But we need more female led movies, especially in the sci-fi (plus anything) genre, especially movies that aren't just 'female badass that could easily have been a gender swap male role'.

But those trailers were not doing us any favours. In an effort to show up how funny the movie is, they pile in plenty of jokes. And they don't work. And yet... they are still in the movie. Possibly but the time they came up I was inured to them because of the trailers, but the jokes weren't the emphasis of the scene, unlike the trailer, and it didn't go on to another clunky joke, it just played in the scene and we went on.

Trailers can be a problematic attempt at engaging the audience, and this one did not do its job at all.

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