This summer, we got our first look at Christopher Nolan‘s upcoming World War II film Dunkirk, and it looks absolutely massive. The director of The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar has long been established as a filmmaker capable of telling engaging stories in huge ways, which is the exact impression we’re getting from Warner Bros’ first complete trailer for the epic war drama.
The Nolan-penned script is based on the real-life “Miracle at Dunkirk,” a military operation that took place between May and June 1940. After the Battle of France, a whole bunch of British, French, and Belgian soldiers—around 300,000, in fact—found themselves surrounded by German forces on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. In a total surprise move, their de facto captors decided to hold back. This set the stage for the evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, of these troops over the course of eight days.
What’s interesting about this trailer is that it doesn’t seem to establish a clear protagonist, really selling us on the fact that Dunkirk has a true ensemble cast, which includes Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Jack Lowden, Barry Keoghan, Tom Glynn-Carney, and One Direction’s Harry Styles. But the most valuable player on Dunkirk may be behind the scenes: Nolan reunited with Interstellar cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema for this new film.
Given the tremendous scale of the military operation itself, the movie has the potential to be an absolutely massive affair. With Nolan at the helm, consider our butts already planted in the theater seats for July 21, 2017.
Featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures
