It’s only been a couple months since the last Academy Awards—some of us are still recovering—but we’re already preparing for next year’s. That’s because, as the summer’s blockbuster season gets under way, studios start rolling out the trailers for 2013’s Oscar bait. This morning we got the trailer for The Butler, the star-studded and (apparently) heartwarming historical epic starring Forest Whitaker. Now the Guardian has posted the first trailer for Captain Phillips, the Tom Hanks-starring drama from Paul Greengrass.
Captain Phillips is based on the story of the Maersk Alabama, the first American ship to be boarded by pirates since the early 19th century, and Greengrass seems to be taking an approach similar to what we saw in United 93 and Bloody Sunday. As expected, there’s a lot of shaky, handheld camerawork and propulsive, quick cuts, and the sense that we’ll be following things in real-time.
Hanks’ performance appears similarly naturalistic, and more subdued than the showier roles that won him Oscars in the ’90s, for Forrest Gump and Philadelphia. Captain Phillips has already been tapped by Oscar prognosticators as a serious contender, but we’ll have to wait till October 11 to see if the movie has any more punch.
