Like it or not, Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk is poised to be one of 2017’s biggest films, a work whose very outline — one of our few bankable working filmmakers’ IMAX-shot World War II epic with a cast of young British stars and seasoned pros — immediately sets it a place at the table of cultural conversation. (For whatever that ultimately means.) Before this nightmare of think pieces and weirdly petty Twitter debates really begins, though, WB’s marketing machine has to (must! cannot not!) put out a teaser — likely one that inevitably makes the film, however good it may end up being, seem a bit more “artful” than the final product.
So here, now, is, our first look at Dunkirk, in which Nolan chronicles the legendary 1940 battle and evacuation of British soldiers — material that, per star Mark Rylance, “has the potential to make a very, very powerful and simple, pure war film about a miraculous loss.” One won’t get a sense of the scope and scale in a 1080p YouTube stream likely seen on a computer or (gulp) phone, but if you desire some taste of what’s to come, I won’t be a halting force.
See the preview below for the film also starring Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy, Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Jack Lowden, Barry Keoghan, and Tom Glynn-Carne.
Dunkirk will open on July 21, 2017.