I know how the impossible story of wire walker Philippe Petit turns out, and I still got sweaty palms watching the first teaser trailer for Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk. A lot of it has to do with my crippling fear of heights. But it’s also Zemeckis’ incredible use of visuals in this initial teaser trailer for next year’s biopic. Check it out below:
For those who might be unaware, Philippe Petit is a French tightrope walker who, in 1974, attempted (and completed) a tight-rope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center. It’s an impossible feat, a staggering accomplishment and a bat-shit crazy story that should sing in the hands of Robert Zemeckis. As you can tell by the trailer, Zemeckis hired Joseph Gordon Levitt to play Petit, and the trailer trumpets several previous accomplishments for the director as it scales a digital recreation of the Twin Towers. And yet, knowing that it’s a fake creation didn’t prevent my stomach from doing flips when Petit (JGL) took that first step onto a slim beam dangling stories above the streets of Manhattan.
Dizzying. The story of Philippe Petit already was tackled – masterfully, I might add – by director James Marsh in a breathtaking and brilliant documentary called Man On Wire. Marsh, who’s currently making the rounds promoting his latest film The Theory of Everything, treated Petit’s story like a caper – as the wire-walker and his colleagues did have to break into the Twin Towers and sneak to the top because authorities NEVER would have allowed the man to attempt the walk if they knew what he planned to try. It’s unclear that the tone of Zemeckis’ film will be at the moment. This initial teaser just seems to want to educate people on the fact that the Twin Towers are important characters in The Walk, and they somehow will be conquered by Joseph Gordon Levitt.
To get a better sense of Philippe Petit’s accomplishment, check out the official trailer for Man On Wire.
The Walk is aiming for an October 2, 2015 release date.
