This is going to be an interesting one. On the one hand, you have Robert Zemeckis, who is still a great director in spite of his years-long infatuation with the uncanny valley. On the other, this story was already told brilliantly in James Marsh’s documentary, Man On Wire. That film has the benefit of using the real footage from Philippe Petit’s 1974 (illegal) high-wire walk between the still-in-construction World Trade Center towers. So if the argument is that Zemeckis is going to use his considerable filmmaking chops to ratchet up the tension, I don’t know…they pretty much got it right the first time.
But this trailer gave me vertigo. And I watched it on my phone, in my car, with my ass planted firmly in a seat. When Joseph Gordon-Levitt loses his footing…man. I’m just hoping they haven’t tried to goose the already-wild events too much. They don’t need to.
Also interesting: the Back To The Future shout-out. Every once in a while we get these older titles showing up to sell us a newer movie, but the last time it jumped out this much to me was when Tim Burton remade the Planet of the Apes and they sold it as “From The Director of Batman.” This isn’t as strange because Back to the Future is a classic in a way that Batman never was, but still a little odd.