'Ghostbusters' Trailer Breakdown: Taking A Stupidly Close Look At The New Movie

The trailer for Paul Feig's Ghostbusters remake is here and you've probably already watched it. And you probably already have an opinion on it. But have you gone through it frame-by-frame and shot-by-shot like a true weirdo? Because I did. Let's pick this thing apart like real lunatics. Naturally, potential spoilers, idle speculation, and opinions of both the informed and uninformed variety lurk below.

The whole shebang opens with sweeping shots of the New York City skyline, and why not? The original Ghostbusters is a classic New York story that uses the city, its attitude, and its locations to great effect. If it's not set here, it's not really Ghostbusters.

These early moments are full of nudges and reminders that you really like the original Ghostbusters. A lot. From the dramatic text about four scientists saving the world to a shot of the new (but oh-so-familiar) firehouse headquarters, this trailer is banking on nostalgia just as much as it's banking on surprise. It'll be interesting to see how the finished film blends these two elements – will it go out of its way to throw references at old school fans or will it fully blaze a new trail?

And here's our fist kind-of, sort-of look at that classic logo. Whether this suggests that the team's logo begins as graffiti art or inspires graffiti art is unknown, but it's a really cool image.

Here's three-quarters of the team, staring in shock at their first ghost. We know from previous reports that the characters played by Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig are former colleagues who had a falling out and that Kate McKinnon is McCarthy's new partner in paranormal research. How Wiig gets pulled into this crazy business remains unknown, but she seems especially unprepared for this whole ghost thing.

One of my favorite aspects of the original Ghostbusters was that its comedy is surrounded by actual moments of horror. The ghosts, even when they're silly, are genuine threats that can scare the hell out of you. Based purely on the design of this particular specter, it looks like Paul Feig and his team are following a similar route. This would be an effective monster design in a typical horror movie.

Like I said: these ghosts look just freaky enough. Naturally, this particular ghost seems to be a direct callback to the haunted library from the beginning of the original movie, where a seemingly peaceful undead woman turns vicious on a dime.

This trailer knows what we want and it gets to it in record time. Yes, someone gets slimed in this movie and yes, it's Kristen Wiig, who appears to be the closest thing the reboot has to a Bill Murray analogue. This is one of many moments in the trailer that deliberately quotes the original film. Yes, Wiig getting splattered with gooey ectoplasm is funny, but it's a direct lift from something we've seen before. I remain curious how the film will balance these references with new stuff.

"That stuff went everywhere, by the way. In every crack. Hard to wash off." Wiig is one of the funniest people on the planet, so if she is going to get slimed Bill Murray-style, at least she's going to make it her own.

If Murray is the closest thing the film has to a Murray stand-in, does that make Kate McKinnon the new Harold Ramis and Melissa McCarthy the new Dan Aykroyd? Anyway, I mostly like this shot because I enjoy just how completely messy and detailed the laboratory/workshop looks. The Ghostbusters are a fun team because they're a blue collar operation and because they're not slick. Their workspace should be a total pit.

If there is one truly direct surrogate character here, it's the street-smart subway employee played by Leslie Jones. Like Ernie Hudson's Winston in the original film, she seems to join the team a little later and doesn't have the scientist background. But what she lacks in advanced education, she more than makes up for in knowing the streets of New York City. I genuinely appreciate how the trailer seems to be laying out each team member's specific role and what they add to the group and we'll get to that in a moment.

Once again, the ghost effects on display here are fantastic. They're colorful and creepy and don't look like jokes. After all, the Ghostbusters' mission only really works if you present them with something worthy of fear.

Attention future cosplayers! Here are a few extreme close-ups of the new proton packs. Study them closely and study them well, because your old costume may be in need of an update soon.

Cosplay jokes aside, I'm a big fan of how these new proton packs look. Then again, I'm a sucker for crazy movie technology that looks like it was built in a garage out of spare part by a total maniac.

And speak of the devil – here's that maniac right now! Kate McKinnon is very much the highlight of this trailer, but you shouldn't expect any less from one of the funniest people currently drawing breath on planet Earth. Once again, I love how no two members of the team appear to be interchangeable, with McKinnon being the genius engineer responsible for building the team's various pieces of equipment.

Speaking of pieces of Ghostbusters equipment, could this be our first look at the new trap device? In the original film, this vital piece of equipment was just a small box that sucked a ghost into storage. This thing appears to be a literal bear trap, albeit one with a bit more sci-fi punch.

Once again, making Wiig an expert in quantum physics makes each member of this team feel unique and stand out. Ensemble movies that revolve around a team are always more fun when each member has a unique role to play, forcing everyone to work together and use their specialized skills to save the day.

And that brings us to the fourth and final member of the team. I generally enjoy Melissa McCarthy, but I especially enjoy her when she escapes out of her comfort zone. Seeing her play a brainy paranormal researcher is far more fun than watching her play another redneck slob. In any case, it's just plain cool that Ghostbusters is emphasizing that its heroes are scientists first and foremost – we live in an era where intellectualism is so often under attack that this feels like a breath of fresh air.

Naturally, the new Ecto-1 has a new origin story: Jones has borrowed it from her uncle and is totally oblivious to the fact that it's a hearse.

But it still has that familiar license plate...

...and it still looks great in action. The Ecto-1 is up there with the Batmobile, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, and Mad Max's Interceptor in the realm of great movie cars and this trailer knows it, giving it more than a few terrific hero shots.

Ladies and gentlemen: your new Ghostbusters, suited up and ready to work. They look like a bunch of badasses, if I do say so myself.

This shot of the Ecto-1 speeding through traffic is just an excuse to note how well the trailer uses the classic Ghostbusters theme music. While those iconic lyrics aren't present, the iconic melody is and it has been remixed to give it a modern, trailer-friendly, action movie edge. We already know that the classic song and a new song will be featured in the final movie and the orchestration here is a nice taste of what's to come.

"Someone is creating a device that amplifies paranormal activity." Ah, our first taste of real plot! From the sound of things, the new Ghostbusters will have a human villain in addition to the various ghosts and monsters and what-not. Could this be the character played be Neil Casey? And could this shot represent the climactic fruits of his labors? That is just idle speculation, but this moment has a real "Gozer on the roof of a skyscraper" vibe going on.

Remember when everyone said that Slimer wasn't going to be in the new movie? Well, here he is. And he looks like Slimer. After all, why mess with a great character design that isn't broken in any way? The question now is whether or not he plays a actual role in the story or just pops in for a cameo.

That brings us to the best shot in the trailer: the team walking into a full and proper ghost infestation. The scale here is genuinely impressive. As much as I've enjoyed Paul Feig's previous work, my main concern was that his Ghostbusters would follow the same path as last year's Spy: a hilarious movie filled with great characters that, well, looks a little cheap whenever the scope increases beyond a comedic gag. However, the ghost effects and the atmosphere on display here feel really special – this movie looks expensive in all of the right ways. Getting to watch Feig stretch his genre filmmaking muscles alongside his comedic chops is starting to look like a real treat.

Bonus: anyone else notice that Hostess ad to the left of the image? That's a big Twinkie.

UPDATE: As /Film reader Gonzalo Jimenez wrote in to point out, this wide shot also features billboards advertising films like Taxi Driver, Tommy, and Boris Karloff's Isle of the Snake People. Is there a reason for these three particular films? There is no immediate connection (aside from all of them being released during the '70s), so it's likely that Feig and his crew chose to populate this shot with references to movies they like or that influenced this film in some way. Since each of these films came out in separate years and their poster are mingled amongst 2016 imagery, we can probably rule out time travel. Or can we?

This is a very simple, very dumb gag pulled off to perfection because McKinnon is still one of the funniest people alive and working at this moment. This character is going to inspire so. Much. Cosplay.

The sheer variety of ghosts on display is impressive, but this guy is my personal favorite from what we've seen so far. With his skeletal figure, long fingers, and massive size, he almost looks like he walked out of Guillermo del Toro's sketchbook.

I have nothing to say about this beyond "Hey, doesn't Kristen Wiig look really, really cool as a Ghostbuster?"

And like that, a thousand GIFs were born. But also, note how McKinnon's proton pack appears to utilize strange little ray guns instead of the typical design. It certainly seems like we'll be seeing a greater variety of gizmos and gadgets than in the previous films.

After all these years, there are still few things cooler than watching a Ghostbuster fire a proton pack. This is where I feel especially bad for people who have instantly dismissed this film.

It's not entirely clear what's going on in this shot, but it certainly looks like McCarthy is taking down a ghost by firing some kind of device strapped to her wrist. Yep, the new Ghostbusters have a legitimate arsenal at their disposal. Toy collectors and cosplayers rejoice!

This is just a great shot, showing off the team in a great action pose. For the purists out there, it looks like the streams look pretty much identical to how they looked 32 years ago, just with a new CGI sheen.

Hey, remember how Chris Hemsworth is also in this? Here he is.

It's a bit unfortunate that the trailer ends on a gag that doesn't quite work. McCarthy gets possessed by a ghost and rampages throughout the firehouse...

...forcing Jones to intervene. McCarthy pulls an Exorcist-style head spin and Jones once again proves that she's one of the better comedic yellers working right now. It's a pretty good gag, but an odd button for an otherwise impressive trailer.

Meet the new logo, same as the old logo. Well, it's a little shiner now and a little more three-dimensional now. The trailer doesn't even need to display the title – it knows that everyone in the audience knows what this is.

Ghostbusters opens on July 15, 2016. If you want to know more, you can read our report from the special trailer premiere event, complete with quotes from Paul Feig himself.