Unless your name is Natascha Kampusch, you’ve surely seen or heard about Danny Boyle’s second feature film, Trainspotting. A cult film among cult films, Trainspotting was a defining flick for an entire generation. It’s raw, vibrant, filled with marvelous performances, and makes heroin look kind of fun (except for the dead baby scene). Maybe heroin isn’t so fun after all… Jared Leto’s arm certainly set the record straight in Requiem for a Dream.
Irvine Welsh wrote Porno in 2002 as a direct sequel to Trainspotting. Fans around the world went crazy (figuratively, not literally ) and people even (figuratively once again) marched the streets of the London to urge Danny Boyle to direct the sequel. The only problem was that at the time, Boyle had falllen out with Ewan McGregor, Trainspotting’s new star who played the protagonist Renton. Why do you ask? Because Boyle cast Leo DiCaprio in The Beach instead of him. DiCaprio subsequently went on to have the career we hear about on a daily basis, and McGregor went on to play Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels…bummer right?
But, after making up with his lead, Danny Boyle is finally giving fans around the world something to look forward to. Twenty years later, during the cold and bleak month of January, our favourite heroin addicts are coming back to the silver screen to provide us with much needed warmth and comfort. Judging by the trailer, we can expect them to get into various shenanigans, and hopefully bring back the rock’n’roll attitude of the original movie, something definitely sorely lacking in the majority of films today.
As with many films today, the hype surrounding the move might eventually exceed its qualities (The Witch being an excellent example), but we’re not asking for T2 (title pending James Cameron approval) to be as good as the original. We’re not even asking for pure fan service. We’re simply asking Danny Boyle to tell a crazy, fun, compelling, gritty story with a perfect soundtrack, tremendous performances and dazzling visuals. On second thought, maybe we are asking for a lot after all.
Let’s simply hope for a great time at the movies. A great time like we had in the 90’s, when characters talked to each other and there weren’t explosions at every turn like in every generic superhero movie being released seemingly every week. Let’s take it back to a time when the story actually mattered. Let’s also forget about McGregor’s part in Star Wars, about Jonny Lee Miller’s awful Sherlock Holmes (as well as his marriage to Angelina Jolie), about Robert Carlyle’s role in Once Upon a Time and Ewen Bremmer’s…wait, what did he even do following Trainspotting? Let’s forget about it nonetheless, and remember: choose life, choose a job, choose a big fucking television, and choose Trainspotting 2.
