Twenty years after Danny Boyle’s 1996 black comedy and hit cult film ‘Trainspotting‘ surfaced on European and American cinemas to tell the life story of heroin addict Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his friends, a full trailer for its sequel, ‘T2: Trainspotting,’ finally appears on YouTube.
Sony Pictures UK published the trailer on their YouTube channel, adding that the movie will come out officially on January 27, 2017.
The original story comes from the debut novel of the same name by Scottish author, Irvine Welsh. ‘Trainspotting’ quickly achieved a cult status amongst young readers as a voice of the 90’s forgotten punk youth. Welsh wrote a sequel, ‘Porno,’ which came out in 2002. That book will serve as the basis for the cinematic follow-up.
‘T2’s trailer sees the return of (almost) all of the beloved main characters
Again, the lead narrator played by Ewan McGregor will make an appearance, and with him will be the famous characters of Simon ‘Sickboy’ Williamson (Jonny Lee Miller), Daniel ‘Spud’ Murphy (Ewen Bremner), and Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie (Robert Carlyle), Trainspotting’s original gang.
The sequel will also see the return of Kelly McDonald as Diane Coulston, Renton’s love interest, for the sequel. As a bonus Irvine Welsh, the author himself will reprise his role of drug dealer Mikey Forrester.
Renton is still choosing life in the post-Facebook era
The ‘Choosing Life’ monolog uttered by Mark Renton in the first movie is one of the pieces of dialogue that contributed most to its success. His rant about all of the things that ordinary people are supposed to do to be happy (which he enumerates with disbelief) now updates to include 21st-century addictions to things like internet porn and social media.
The trailer shows that the film will be a return to the wild scenes of drug abuse (and its consequences) that made the first one so famous. Heroin is not in the picture anymore, judging from the images, but cocaine takes a predominant role.
The trailer, however, drops hints at what could be some of the characters found in the 2002 novel, such as amateur porn star Nikki Fuller-Smith.
What made Trainspotting so popular in the nineties
More than being just a movie about drugs, ‘Trainspotting’ was a film about what young people think about drugs and the problems that drug users usually handle.
It portrayed them in a tone that was perceived as honest, raw, and cruel, but ultimately non-critical, which allowed viewers to get not only into the lives of its characters but also in the whole zeitgeist of Scotland in the nineties, which clashed with Thatcher-era social norms.
The movie’s emphasis on music, later compiled in one of the most best-selling soundtrack albums of all time, also gave the film its cult status by appealing to songs that signaled the historically significant rave movement of the time.
Source: The Guardian
