Take a look back at an old trailer…
It’s funny how different trailers looked even 25 years ago — this feels really slow, doesn’t it?
Look how young Sean Astin is! And Josh Brolin!
Can you imagine a movie today calling a kid “Chunk”? It’d never happen — everyone would be too worried about damaging the self-esteem of all the fat kids in the audience… and there’d be a lot more of them now then there were then. Fat grownups are still acceptable as the butt of humor today, but fat kids seem to be off the table. (I was a fat kid, but I don’t remember being traumatized by Chunk…)
Tee-hee: a Gremlins reference right in the trailer!
The Goonies is available on DVD in Region 1 and in Region 2.
It’s hard to imagine that the guy who directed “I love you Beth Cooper,” also wrote the script for The Goonies. Still a miracle he didn’t destroy the HP films before the franchise could take off.
It’s nice to know that movie trailers shamelessly stealing music from unrelated movies is nothing new. (That was the theme from The Neverending Story running through the first half. Of course, I have both films on DVD, so maybe this was just the marketing people knowing their audience.)
I’m always struck by how much more plot and dialogue is in those old trailers. Doubtless marketing reps today would think it too “boring” a trailer for kids, and punch it up with quick flashes of only the action parts, coupled with generous sprinklings of toilet humor or pratfalls (possibly animals attacking someone’s face THAT NEVER GETS OLD U GAIS). Plus, even movies “for kids” seemed more adult, with the “slip her the tongue” comment you’d NEVER hear nowadays. (Or the ET “penisbreath” comment fwiw.) We seemed to acknowlegde the uninnocent side of kids more and not present them as plastic saccharine sweetness all the time. The drawback to the 80s era? Even less girl protragonists and even less girl roles other than “someone’s boyfriend/love interest” or just token girl. That’s why I always loved Stef from the Goonies. She was so different. I remember hating Andy as a kid, but now I have sympathy for the poor kid who just doesn’t want to die. I just wished it wasn’t The Girl who was whining and freaking out. She does come around in the last half though.
Didn’t watch it, but if it’s the trailer I remember, it has the octopus in it.
The same octopus that is missing from the movie itself, but is featured in the (excellent) Commodore 64 video game adaptation.
The semi-completed octopus sequence is somewhere.
I just saw this for the first time on Thanksgiving – now I finally see where the disfigured face that was a fixture on the front page here on FF came from.