Gerald McMorrow's Franklyn - potentially one very compelling mash up of noir and superhero tropes along the lines of a certain other superhero film currently caught up in legal strife - is a film we have been following here for nearly a year and a half now. A couple months back a very gritty version of a sales trailer popped up online but that one, frankly, looked like ass and the producers wasted no time slapping cease and desist orders on anyone sharing it. But now Franklyn is back and looking good. With the film releasing in the UK next month - surprisingly it does not yet seem to have a US distributor - a proper trailer, in good resolution, is now available and looking tasty.
Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of Londons homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to the purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student, her suicidal art projects becoming increasingly more complex and deadly. Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City; a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervour. Esser, Milo, Emilia, Preest- a group of people who couldnt be further apart. Their individual worlds are set for a cataclysmic collision. In an explosive finale, the path of a single bullet will decide the fate of our four lost souls....
You'll find the trailer below the break!
With the music, the raspy one-liners, and all the slow-mo photography, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't watching a trailer for Watchmen. That said, any comparison to Watchmen from me is a compliment. I'm glad to see Franklyn's looking good after all. Hope it gets US distribution.
i agree with you... thats what come into my mind when watching the trailer... i dont think its coincidence also that the last phrase of the trailer is "watching"...
i am sure it is a completely different film but the marketing people thought the could use some of watchmen's hype...
I saw this film at the LFF. Was ahuge disappointment... the crowd did seem to like it. Nothing like Watchmen at all it's closer in spirit to Donnie Darko with a splash of the crow. Production values are good and it attempts to do something different..but for me it never comes together well enough. I have to say mind watch the trailer again does make me remember it more favorably ..at the time i was a little annoyed at it.
Definitely second the whole Watchmen vibe. I'm guessing because of the buzz the Watchmen is/has been garnering, that is why this trailer is rearing it's pretty little head. It was a pretty good trailer though and if it is derivative of The Crow and Donnie Darko (if only in spirit) what about it was a let down? Was it because it TOO much of a mashup?
Just curious.
I got more of a Dark City vibe.
Dark City, with a little bit of Vidocq thrown in. I would check it out if it gets US distribution. My bet is that if Watchmen is a big hit domestically, this will find a home.
What's up with the cops with top hats D:
Looks like a mess. I get the that the story is more along the lines of The Maxx than Watchmen. That the whole superhero storyline is some fantasy of deranged person. Which could be cool, if it wasn't Ryan "sucks the life out of everything" Fucking Phillipe. And the rest of the cast looks similar, cute and vacid.
The art direction reminds me of Repo (which I finally saw on dvd yesterday!) and I thought Repo was ugly for the most part. The top hots, victorian stuff all looks like some cheap Tim Burton imitation by way of some Evanescence music video with shades of Alex Proyas. Very cheesy stuff for the Hot Topic kids. For the record, I loved The Crow and Dark City and makes me wonder, what happened to Poryas. Knowing? Come on, Knowing? It looks fucking awful, even worse than I Robot.
And all of that stuff clashes with the real world imagery in the trailer. Everything about this screams "music video director trying real hard to make something original."
I bet this gets dumped to DVD and gets reamed critically. But two years from now, this will slowly develop into a major cult iteam for the crowd that went absolutely gaga over Donnie Darko and Boondock Saints. Hot Topic will sell T-Shirts with Franklyn on them. Stoner, second rate film students will have posters of this in the dorm rooms....
lookin good.