The T2 TRAINSPOTTING Trailer Is Full Of Sadness and Promise

There are a number of things one expected to see in a sequel to 1996’s Trainspotting, and after two viewings of this trailer for T2 Trainspotting, I’m pretty sure they’re all in here. (Why list them? Watch and discover for yourself.)

What I wasn’t expecting to see was this tone of...sadness? The film’s characters turn up, weathered but still going, calling each other by their Christian names like proper adults (except Spud), and there’s this wistful gravity to the nostalgia that I wasn’t quite expecting. Then again, I hadn’t yet looked at Sony’s official synopsis:

First there was an opportunity......then there was a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him: Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance.

But if the emotions on display seem to have softened the proceedings, director Danny Boyle’s style has only sharpened in the last 20 years, as this looks every bit the frenzied, kinetic successor to the original film, but with an even more assured hand at the wheel. 

I never thought a trailer for a sequel to Trainspotting would have me tearing up a bit, but here we are. T2 Trainspotting opens January 27th. As of this trailer, it’s one of my most anticipated films of next year.