The trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Great American (by way of Australia) Movie made its way on to the Internet last night, but we at Vulture have a lot of thoughts about this latest stab at The Great Gatsby, and we assume that you do too! (How could anyone not have opinions about that green cloche hat that Carey Mulligan Gemma Ward? Isla Fischer? is wearing around the 30-second mark?) So we now call to order a special meeting of the Trailer Mix Society in order to obsess over these two minutes in a proper fashion. Let’s get it.
What is our faithfulness quotient here — and how much does it matter?
The opening narration isn’t from Gatsby, but from another Fitzgerald essay, “My Lost City†(also, it’s about Condé Nast parties). That seems totally fair to us — the 1974 adaptation stayed incredibly close to the book, and suffered for it at times — but how will the English teachers of America feel?
Leonardo DiCaprio still looks confused.
There are a number of ways to describe the pinched, slightly perplexed expression that graces Leonardo DiCaprio’s face in most movies these days (Slate went with “scrunchy“; we’d go with Incepted, though, to be fair, he was doing the Squint of Despair all the way back in his first Luhrmann movie.) The point is, that face doesn’t change much anymore! Neither do the affected upper-crust accents, actually, which brings us to our next question …
How do we feel about all these accents?
Do you buy Carey Mulligan’s Southern lilt? And is Ryan Gosling doing Young Hollywood vocal coaching on the side? Is Old-School Aristocratic the new Boston, when it comes to weirdo movie talking? Discuss.
Was Jay-Z the only music they had in the olden days?
Jokes! But “No Church in the Wild†is the second Jay song (with Kanye, we know) to be featured in a highly anticipated period movie trailer in the past two weeks. (It’s also the second recent “No Church†appearance; see also, Safe House.) We know Baz was there before Gangster Squad — remember the set stories, and the screening a few months back but still: Jay-Z Flapper Parties are a trend now, or something.
Those silk shirts!
“It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.†You remember the scene from high school, and so does Baz Luhrmann, who dutifully re-creates the pastel button-down shower, with maniacal grins on both Carey and Leo’s faces. It’s … a lot! And it makes us wonder how the rest of the book’s finer details will play in the hands of the grandiose Baz Luhrmann. Though, on the flip side …
Baz Luhrmann is very good at throwing lavish, bonkers parties.
And Gatsby requires those — at least at first. Or maybe we still just want to believe in a world where every party has a woman swinging from the ceiling.