Priest, the second team-up of Legion director Scott Stewart and Legion star Paul Bettany, had its first trailer debut at Comic Con, and it is now online from Daily-Motion for your viewing… well I won’t say pleasure. We’ll leave it at “viewing” alone.
I will admit the trailer for Priest has the film’s production design and art direction going for it. There is the unique atmosphere of a dystopian, steam-punk, desert western with interesting architecture and vehicles. If only the world didn’t seem filled with such bland vampire nonsense- if you are in the market for even more overwrought vampire mythology and useless creature CGI (these people obviously learned fucking nothing from I Am Legend) then this is the one minute and fifty-five seconds for you.
Priest could surprise us– the incessant gang-banging of the vampire and zombie concepts have birthed a few unexpected delights. The cynical mining of an existing comic that pits a “demon possessed undead creature” (thanks Wikipedia) against demons and angels, so those elements can be replaced with a scowling Paul Bettany and boringly uniform vampires doesn’t fill my heart with hope.
The film doesn’t hit for almost a year (May 13th, 2011), but it will do so in the current trend’s requisite number of dimensions.