The new trailer for T2: Trainspotting 2, the sequel to Danny Boyle’s 1996 cult classic, has been released online.
It reveals… not very much. The original movie based on Irvine Welsh’s novel, starring Ewan McGregor as a Scottish youth breaking out of his circle of heroin addicts, was a hit in the summer of 1996.
Stars McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle and Ewan Bremner have had colorful careers post-Trainspotting, but a sequel was always much-discussed ever since Irvine Welsh published the follow-up novel Porno in 2002.
The fact that it’s taken more than two decades for the second film to come to fruition is explained by McGregor and Boyle’s strained relationship, which broke down over the fact that the director promised his star he would cast him in The Beach, only to go back on his word when Leonardo Di Caprio, hot off Titanic, became available.
The pair patched things up two years ago and began shooting the film in May. In the book, the characters are all connected to the porn industry, but it’s too early to tell what direction the sequel — out next February — will take.
You certainly can’t tell from this trailer:
Danny Boyle told Heat Street last December at a brunch for Jobs hosted by the Peggy Siegal Company that he would give Trainspotting 2 his best shot: “I don’t know whether Trainspotting will top the first one but we’ll have a go… I’m especially looking forward to the the soundtrack.” The Trainspotting soundtrack featured Underworld, Iggy Pop, and New Order. “That seemed to go OK last time,” he said.
So, in the absence of any finished film, let’s have Trainspotting review Trainspotting 2, specifically the scene in which Sick Boy (Miller) outlines his unifying theory of life — that people end up losing what made them special — to Renton (McGregor):
Well, at one time, you’ve got it, and then you lose it, and it’s gone forever. All walks of life… in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it’s actually just…shite….we all get old and then we can’t hack it anymore. Is that it?
We’ll see…
Surely, a twenty-years on sequel to Trainspotting should mostly involve visits to a series of untended graves.
— Kim Newman (@AnnoDracula) July 25, 2016
