Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, can we please talk about how the Scary Movie trailer discourse is the most predictable thing to happen this week in a week that has been extremely predictable?

Here Is What Actually Happened

The Scary Movie trailer dropped. The trailer included a pronoun joke. A since-deleted tweet called it transphobic. That tweet went viral. Headlines materialized. Discourse happened. Twenty four hours later the trailer has millions of views and a release date that people are genuinely circling on their calendars.

This is the full story. This is all of it.

Was the pronoun joke the freshest joke in the trailer? No. Was it the funniest? Also, no,t hat honor belongs to M3GAN unmasking as Ghostface, which was genuinely inspired. Was it a joke that has been made approximately eleven thousand times since 2014? Absolutely yes. Even the people complaining about it admitted it was less offensive than it was just really, really tired. One critic online said it best — “the bigger crime wasn’t that the joke was mean, it was that it was old. Which is a very different conversation entirely.”

Who Is Actually Mad

Here is the breakdown of who is upset about the Scary Movie trailer based on my extensive research, which consisted of reading the replies for twenty minutes before needing a snack:

A small but vocal group of people are genuinely bothered. That is legitimate and fair and their feelings are real. A much larger group of people are performing being bothered because it is their brand. An even larger group of people watched the trailer, laughed at the M3GAN bit, and went to bed without incident. The final and largest group are the ones who saw the discourse, watched the trailer specifically because of the discourse, and are now going to see the film in June.

Marketing, baby. It works every time.

The Part Where We Give Marlon Wayans Some Credit

Here is the thing that keeps getting lost in the conversation: Marlon Wayans has a track record that is worth examining before you decide what his intentions are. He has been publicly and vocally supportive of the LGBTQ+ community for years, has spoken extensively and emotionally about his trans son, and has consistently shown up in spaces where a lot of comedians his generation have pointedly not shown up.

His stated goal with this film is to make everybody laugh equally, including people who are uncomfortable with being laughed at. That is the Scary Movie formula. It has always been the formula. The original film made fun of everyone including and especially the kind of people who would make a film like the original Scary Movie. The self-awareness is baked in.

Wayans himself said he wanted the film to work for both the old heads and the new school, and the trailer backs that up. Kai Cenat shows up. The targets include the most beloved films of the last five years. The new generation of characters is specifically designed to butt heads with the returning cast in ways that should generate genuine comedic friction rather than just pointing at young people and going “kids these days.”

Why The Outrage Cycle Is Its Own Punchline

The funniest part of this entire situation, and I mean this affectionately, is that a franchise built entirely on puncturing cultural self-seriousness has generated a cultural moment of complete self-seriousness. Scary Movie is doing exactly what Scary Movie does and people are acting shocked that Scary Movie is doing it.

This is a film that in its original form had Cindy Campbell get beaten unconscious and a character get strangled with their own intestine and we are currently debating whether a pronoun joke is too far. The franchise has always had exactly one operating principle: nothing is sacred, nobody is safe, and if you take yourself too seriously you are going to get got.

The discourse is basically the trailer’s first victim. Which is honestly impressive for a film that doesn’t even come out until June.

The Bottom Line

Most of Gen Z is fine. The film looks fun. The core cast is back. The Wayans brothers wrote it together for the first time in eighteen years. The targets are genuinely the right targets. And the people who are upset — some legitimately, some performatively — have contributed more to its cultural footprint in the last seventy two hours than any marketing campaign could have bought.

Scary Movie hits theaters June 12. See you there.