The first trailer for “Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis” “The Walk” reminds us that the film will be presented in “3D!” and “IMAX 3D!” because this ain”t your pappa”s tightrope-walking biopic. No sir. This one”s going to be big! And, with just a few seconds of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the shoes of expert balancer Philippe Petit, that larger-than-life hype fits the bill. Even in YouTube form, the trailer will leave acrophobics clutching their seats.
“The Walk” recreates Petit”s headline-making, totally illegal tightrope walk across the World Trade Center towers in 1974. Previously documented in “Man on Wire” – and pretty darn well – Zemeckis” versions casts Gordon-Levitt as the death-defying Frenchman, with Ben Kingsley, Ben Schwartz, James Badge Dale, and “The Hundred-Foot Journey” star Charlotte Le Bon rounding out the cast. Whether it”ll be an award caliber take isn”t teased in this first trailer. The music certainly swells like it”s important.
An eeriness in seeing the Twin Towers recreated with CG magic is dispelled by Zemeckis” knack for capturing scale and motion. Even with Gordon-Levitt making his best David Copperfield face, Zemeckis maintains all the fluidity from his motion-capture directing days to plop us into this terrifying stunt. Hopefully IMAX 3D screenings provide antiemetics and barf bags.
“The Walk” arrives in theaters on Oct. 2, 2015.