First Trailer For Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

Great Gatsby Official Tobey Maguire Carey Mulligan 550x366 First Trailer For Baz Luhrmanns The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann is not known for his restraint. His films are bright and brassy, everything is turned totally up to 11 with big design, showy camera moves and ultra paced editing. Critics have said he stretches the boundaries of visual eye candy a little too far, he is shallow, it’s all surface and no substance etc. I’ve always been a staunch supporter of his (I will not hear a word said against Moulin Rouge!) but on the evidence of the trailer for his upcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby, those naysayers may not have been that far off the mark.

From the simple look of the film, Gatsby looks to deliver what we’ve come to expect from Luhrmann: exploitative flamboyance, only this time it looks quite shit. The recreation of period, 1920′s New York could not have come out of anyone else’s head and the palette is clearly that of a man who has strolled into a crayon store and decided to go completely nuts. Luhrmann, no matter what people have said in the past, does know every now and then how to exercise restraint and yet here there is no evidence of this. It more or less looks like a Zack Snyder adaptation of Fitzgerald.

It looks like a perfume advert. In fact, this looks more like his infamous Chanel commercial than an actual cinematic tour de force. I have no idea why it is going to be in 3D, I’m not quite sure what it will add other than more extravagance. I’ve never been sold on 3D and I don’t think Luhrmann is going to change my mind.

The performances do look massively overwrought, Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio are acting with a capital “A” whilst Joel Edgerton looks positively ridiculous and Tobey Maguire stumbles around the sets with a gurning grin on his face as if he’s dropped a lot of acid and then looked down a kaleidoscope.

This is a shame because The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite novels (as it is for most people) and seemingly Luhrmann’s version is again going to prove that Fitzgerald is not the easiest nut to crack on screen. We will have to wait to fully judge the final product but the signs aren’t good so far.

The Great Gatsby will be released in cinemas on Christmas Day. Watch the trailer below.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Christian-Law/1529056454 Christian Law

Sooooooo you didn’t like it? It doesn’t show, I was just asking to make sure.

I think the trailer looks like an interesting take on the novel, definitely worried about the 3D choice, but the cast and flair looks unusual and eye catching.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Lack/100000619690152 Jonathan Lack

You should never judge any movie too harshly from its trailer, and while I’m no fan of Luhrmann in general (I despise “Moulin Rouge” with every fiber of my being), at his best he’s impossible to capture in two-and-a-half minutes of footage. I love the cast, though – Carey Mulligan is brilliant casting for Daisy, just brilliant – and I think the footage appears to capture the hysteria of the time Fitzgerald was writing about (something people often forget when remarking on Gatsby). So I think we should hold harsh judgment for now, and see how the movie itself plays. On a purely visual level, I hope we can all agree it looks gorgeous.
- http://twitter.com/will_chadwick Will Chadwick
  
  It does look gorgeous but it looks knowingly gorgeous. Good period design doesn’t pay attention to itself, a great period film will make you feel as if you’ve been dropped into that period not as if you’re watching a construction and that looks like sets to me.
  
  I love Moulin Rouge because that style of filmmaking worked for what Luhrmann was trying to do which was bridge the gap between burlesque, musical theatre and cinema and he did it with real confidence. This just shows signs of the man making a film on a mad sugar rush.
  
  I just think it looks naff. However you’re right and it could be good fun.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathan-Lack/100000619690152 Jonathan Lack
    
    I understand your point about period design, but period design relies just as much on editing and context as it does on the images and sets themselves, and we’re watching a trailer cut by someone at a studio. There’s a 99% probability that Luhrmann himself had absolutely nothing to do with this trailer. It could be totally misrepresentative. I’m guessing, from what’s implied by individual moments or bits of footage itself, not the overall tone of the trailer, that the movie will probably be tonally focused on excess, which was, of course, one of Fitzgerald’s pet themes. Other than that, it could be totally in line with the source material and edited calmly and coherently, a la “Australia,” Luhrmann’s last film. Who knows?
    
    Again, if the final product is edited together like a kid on ADD a la “Moulin Rouge,” I will be the first to give this film an “F.” That would be the wrong direction. But to the general public, a public that hasn’t read “Gatsby,” the draw here is Luhrmann’s name, and they’re never going to cut a trailer for one of his films that DOESN’T look like “Moulin Rouge.” That’s what they want people to associate it with, because it’s popular, and the idea will sell tickets. Advertising it as the down-to-earth upper-class literary drama it might (or might not) be would only be preaching to the Fitzgerald choir.
dharper7

The trailer was a little showy but not that bad at all. I kind of understand where you are coming from, but the “crayon” set design is actually quite fitting…colors were a central theme in the book. The Great Gatsby revolves around the outward appearance of affluence and invulnerability when in reality these people are empty and dark. I think it was a decent representation for an early trailer (not that any early trailers are ever that great)