Movies
“The Killer” Trailer Reaction
The idea of multiple identities or personality is hammered home in the final moments of the trailer when Fassbender is staring into a mirror and stating “Hey.”
“After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.”
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Andrew Kevin Walker, Alexis Nolan, Luc Jacamon
Staring: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard
Release Date: November 10, 2023
IMDB
Inject David Fincher into my veins!!! Over the past couple years, the man has become one of, if not my favorite directors. Last week we got his final preview for The Killer (2023). What is this movie about? We don’t really know. And I love it for that.
It’s not coincidence that the opening to this trailer has our main character The Killer, played by Michael Fassbender, talking about music. Our “protagonist”, if you want to call him that, says that music calms him and down and grounds him. This second trailer is composed with a purposeful rhythm. There are moments where there are no words spoken and there are simple quick cuts of natural sound effects acting as fast-acting beats in what is sure to be a fast-paced thriller.
It is also no coincidence that the main character has no name. He is a chameleon is society, paid to blend in and commit a soulless act with zero empathy. We literally see The Killer wearing many different hats and moving throughout different communities and modes of transportation. This lends to a question that I can’t wait for Fincher to tackle.
If you don’t define yourself as someone, then how do you know who you are? If your identity is being invisible and planning for precise manipulative acts, then can you pinpoint what your “ego” is?
The idea of multiple identities or personality is hammered home in the final moments of the trailer when Fassbender is staring into a mirror and stating “Hey.” This is The Killer either saying high to a hidden persona that has been resurfaced because the cage of calming music has been lifted, or it is a hidden persona that understands what empathy is. Feelings are a foreign concept to a hit man, and once he learns someone’s name of feels the need to protect someone, then all objectivity may jump out the window.
Leaning into this opaque sense of self. No one in The Killer has a name. Some of the characters include The Killer, The Expert (Tilda Swinton), The Lawyer (Charles Parnell), The Client (Arliss Howard), The Brute (Sala Baker), and The Target (Endre Hules). There are a handful of characters that do have names…and they are all on the young side. Not sure how that is correlated yet. Perhaps if one wanted to be an over-thinker, one could say the young people still have a sense of self before life beats it out of them. But that is me being a professional Debby downer.
The Killer is based off of a graphic novel written by Alexis Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon. I know nothing about this graphic novel, and that is how it should be. It’s always better not knowing anything going into a Fincher movie.
The Killer has supposedly been Fincher’s pet project for nearly 20 years, and now it is on the doorstep of being released. Fassbender is back, being joined by Tilda Swinton, Monique Ganderton, Arliss Howard, and Charles Parnell.
After this second trailer for the The Killer dropped, I decided to assign myself some homework. Yes, that is a benefit of being an adult. You can give yourself an assignment. I am diving through all of David Fincher’s movies. I am going to finally see The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008) and Rick Springfield: The Beat Of The Live Drum (1985). I am going to rewatch The Social Network (2010), The Game (1997) and a few more. I recently did this with the Xenomorph films., and I am vey confident the quality of this movie checklist is going to much greater than some of the pitfalls of the Alien franchise.
Netflix put out its first preview of The Killer a couple months ago. Much like this second trailer, we have no idea what is going on. And that is for the best.
The Killer releases on Netflix on November 10, 2023.
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