Survival is victory in first trailer for Christopher Nolan's WWII epic DUNKIRK

We’ve been talking about trailers a fair bit lately. First there was the fact that the trailers for Suicide Squad were completely misleading about what the actual final movie was like, and then James also had a few things to say/shout about how movie fandom has become far to beholden to the movie marketing cycle. And all of that is indeed true, but there’s no denying the power of a really good trailer to get you all worked up about a movie.

And damn, do we have a good trailer for you today!

We’ve known for a while that Christopher Nolan – the master filmmaker of Inception, Memento, The Prestige, Insomnia, and The Dark Knight Trilogy fame – has been working on a WWII action drama epic titled Dunkirk. The film will tell of the incredible “miracle of Dunkirk”, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, which saw 340, 000 Allied soldiers evacuated off the beaches of the titular northern France town while being completely surrounded and outgunned by German forces.

Nolan is infamous for keeping his productions extremely secretive, but with this being a famous historical event, I guess he figured he could let folks in a little early. Thus up until now we’ve seen several set pics for the film, as well as had the internet fervently discuss One Direction frontman turned actor Harry Stylez’s haircut in the movie (No, for real). What we haven’t seen though is any footage from the film. Until now.

In vintage Nolan fashion, this first teaser trailer is very much that: a teaser. But hell, it teases oh so well, as it takes less than a minute to get you completely enraptured with what you’re seeing. See for yourself.

Whoo. Chills, I tell you.

After the disappointment that was The Dark Knight Rises, it looks like Nolan is back to firing on all cylinders again. With this being a factual piece of history, Nolan probably won’t be able to make use of his brilliantly clever storytelling tricks in his screenplay, but based on the brief bits of sweeping vistas we see here, it looks like Dunkirk will be a visual treat. Especially since Nolan has shot the entire film on IMAX 65mm film and 65mm large-format photography. In other words, film geeks are probably going to geek out hard.

Dunkirk also stars Cillian Murphy, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Jack Lowden, Barry Keoghan, and Tom Glynn-Carney. It is scheduled for release on July 21, 2017.

 

Last Updated: August 5, 2016