As the old saying goes, if you watch a UNESCO World Heritage site get destroyed in the morning, you ran into a vandal. If you watch UNESCO World Heritage sites get destroyed all day long, you’re the vandal. Renowned actor Tom Hanks should maybe take that to heart, judging from the new trailer for Inferno, Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel. In a tight one minute and 15 seconds, Hanks just happens to be around when someone falls through one of the ceiling paintings in the Salone dei Cinquecento, the Basilica Cistern is flooded with red liquid, and someone rips out the intricate mosaic floor of the Florence Baptistery and replaces it with a much simpler pattern:
Sony
Sure, the trailer suggests Hanks is trying to solve some sort of virus-related mystery, but all these acts of vandalism have one common factor, and it’s not the Templars. Besides, can you really trust someone who projects Botticelli’s map of hell onto his own face, serial killer style? Florence and Istanbul’s fates are clear, but the trailer also has location shots of Venice and Padua with no footage of any corresponding cultural destruction. Audiences will have to wait until October to watch Hanks (presumably) spraypaint some Tintorettos before bulldozing Le Calandre.
