New ‘1917’ trailer previews Sam Mendes’ thriller, ‘not a war movie’
Sam Mendes, the Oscar®-winning director of Skyfall, Spectre and American Beauty, brings his singular vision to his World War I epic, 1917.
At the height of the First World War, two young British soldiers, Schofield (Captain Fantastic’s George MacKay) and Blake (Game of Thrones’ Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a seemingly impossible mission. In a race against time, they must cross enemy territory and deliver a message that will stop a deadly attack on hundreds of soldiers—Blake’s own brother among them.
“I think it’s a classic ticking clock mission movie,” Mendes says. “You know, it’s not a combat film. It’s not a eat your peas historical war lesson. It’s a ride.”
Check out the trailer below.
“I never thought of it as a war movie,” says Mendes, who also wrote the script. “It adheres more to the structure of a thriller.”
“All good war movies are scary,” he says. “but not for the same reasons that horror movies are scary.”
1917 co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns agrees.
“There’s no jump scares, but it it’s about delivering a message against the clock,” she tells Inverse “So it’s really a thriller. It’s a race against time. The fact that is in World War I is just this amazing backdrop to say something about duty and honor and sacrifice.”
To make 1917 more interesting, it will unfold as one single shot.
Blade Runner 2049 Oscar-winning DP Roger Deakins. “It looks incredibly difficult, said Deadline’s Peter White to Deakins. “Good, it was” replied Deakins.
The whole technique is a means to draw the audiences into the action of the story.
“We rehearsed for months and months beforehand,” said MacKay so that when it arrived time to shoot, the technical aspects of blocking came innately to the actors.
“You get it drilled into you so you can let the scenes be real,” added MacKay. If the actors got a scene correctly blocked, rest assured that shot moved forward to the editor.
“What you achieve in a day goes into the film.”
The actors in total prepped for six months, even going through a boot camp.
“We had to shape these men. They came to us as blobs,” said producer Pippa Harris, “Sam said ‘You’ll never be fit as that ever again’.”
The film also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Richard Madden, Colin Firth, Andrew Scott (Sherlock), Daniel Mays (Rogue One), Adrian Scarborough (Christopher Robin), Jamie Parker (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Nabhaan Rizwan (Informer) and Claire Duburcq.
Universal Pictures will release the film domestically in limited release on December 25, 2019 and wide on January 10, 2020.
1917 – In Theaters December
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