A new trailer for Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle’s upcoming Babylon shows more of Tobey Maguire’s hair-raising character. The youngest Academy Award winner for Best Director in history, Chazelle’s fifth feature-length film shows promise in being the most ruthlessly rambunctious installment in the auteur’s filmography. The official synopsis of Babylon describes the film as a fever-dream of decadence, depravity, and outrageous excess, which follows the meteoric rise and fall of several ambitious dreamers in 1920s Hollywood. Babylon boasts a spectacular cast that includes Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, Maguire, Max Minghella, Katherine Waterston, Li Jun Li, Flea, and Olivia Wilde.
Paramount has released Babylon’s naughty trailer that features Tobey Maguire’s James McKay. His character so far has been teased as a mysterious and seemingly ghoulish figure who hasn’t been given a proper introduction yet. The trailer opens with James meeting with Calva’s character, Manny Torres, and James looks like an absolute scene-stealer. Filled with snippets of provocative scenes, the new trailer features someone impaled by a spear, a reminder of the elephant brought in for a party, seemingly with no trainer responsible for it, and Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy, venting about someone slipping a dildo into her dressing room. Check out the trailer below:
Why Is There No Official Red Band Trailer For Babylon?
All the aforementioned hijinks are shaping up to be fairly standard fare for Babylon, so it’s highly likely that the writer-director, has even more racy scenes in store, with the sequence that are so full of nudity — and sounds like The Great Gatsby meets Eyes Wide Shut — it even shocked Pitt. The film’s debauchery is no secret, but as more is revealed, it’s becoming more apparent that Chazelle’s idea of excess will be a wild spectacle that needs to be seen on the big screen.
While films with excessive sex and violence often get a Red Band trailer to highlight those elements, it’s a smart and playful move that Chazelle and Co.’s opted to hide the most daring scenes and only tease the debauchery. Trailers for Babylon have not given away too much of the plot and have focused on teasing the wild excess of Hollywood in the 1920s. The intrigue has steadily built due to the glamorous teases in the trailers. A Red Band trailer would only take away from the spectacle that is being promised.
Following its Los Angeles premiere, critics have been split on Babylon, calling it either an Oscar-bait period piece or a hot, glamorous mess. Its depiction of Hollywood excess and three-hour runtime seems to be exhausting, being an example of excess itself, and that may very well be the point, but what critics seem to agree on are the great performances and wild vibes. The naughty trailer shows glimpses of these. In a way, it’s writer-director Chazelle’s most ambitious film yet, and, while it may have missed the mark with critics, audiences may find great pleasure in what Babylon has to offer that it will be another success for Chazelle.
Source: Paramount
