We all joked when an embarrassing, clueless email from a Sony executive to then-head honcho Amy Pascal surfaced online, outlining the studio’s plans to bring Spider-Man into the new millennium by capitalizing on youth-skewing trends. Perhaps we only laughed so hard because deep down, we knew it was a prophecy of events to come. One dark portent in the email has already come to pass: The Zac Efron-fronted We Are Your Friends will provide EDM culture with a cinematic touchstone destined to baffle a generation of children 20 or so years down the line. Now, the next augury from Sony has been realized. The first trailer for the remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s action picture Point Break has been unveiled, and it really appeals to the #millennial predilection for “really extreme forms of experiential exercise like Tough Mudder (a sort of filthy triathalon), the Color Run and even things like Hot Power Yoga [or] veganism.” I look forward to Snapt, a slasher flick about a monster with the power to kill you via Snapchat, but can only attack for approximately 10 seconds at a time. Think Nightmare On Elm Street, but with more dick pics.
But yes, the long-gestating Point Breakmake will airdrop into theaters on Christmas Day and jab a syringe of x-treme adrenaline right into the heart of your yuletide festivities. Bigelow’s original film starred Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, both at peak hunk levels, as a serial criminal and the FBI agent that infiltrates his gang of surfer-robbers, respectively. As Johnny Utah and Bodhi, Reeves and Swayze exude dizzying levels of sublimated homoeroticism and raw testosterone, their intense surfing sequences a fair analogue for a somewhat more intimate friendship. Not to mention Kathryn Bigelow, biding her time in goofy thrillers before bringing her considerable skills as a director to weightier fare at the tail end of the ’00s.
Point Breakmake’s biggest non-literal jump is the transplanting of the plot from the world of surfing into the world of extreme sports such as base-jumping and motorcycling. (The trailer doesn’t include any footage of characters engaging in extreme ironing, but I’m holding out hope.) And this time, Bodhi and his cohorts are no petty thieves ripping off banks; they’re kinda like Communists, “freeing” the banks’ money and “disrupting” the global economy. Nothing is more x-treme than financial destabilization! Snap into an energy bar, disavow yourself of your bourgeois addiction to the moneyed yoke, and hit play on the trailer below, bro-ham:
The trail of the tape
Title: Point Break
Director: Ericson Core
Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer
Cast: Luke Bracey, Édgar Ramírez, Teresa Palmer, Ray Winstone
Release date: December 25, 2015
The entire trailer in one line of dialogue: “The only law that matters is gravity.”
The entire trailer in one screengrab:
As Bodhi, Édgar Ramírez makes a solid point: When the whole world is your playground, what do the laws of men matter? Those who know how to snowboard are truly as gods, unconcerned with our petty squabbles over little multi-colored pieces of paper. There is only the ride, the thrill, and the score. Cling to your plebeian “money” if you so wish. It will not save you when Bodhi’s revolution comes. The only currency shall be extreme ironing.