Samantha and her friends remember that in the comics, the pandemic leads to "our undoing." So naturally they join up with Stearns, who assures them, "We can fight it. As REM's "The End of the World As We Know It" plays in the background, we see a quarantine camp and get our first glimpse of Stearns, the foremost expert on a new strain of the flu virus the latest outbreak has now been declared a national pandemic. "They've killed every single person who's seen Utopia." Apparently, Samantha was right: everything in Utopia is real. "You wanna stay alive, come with me," she says. Things get real with the appearance of Jessica Hyde. "'It all has to mean something!'" But amidst the normal business of the convention, mysterious figures are lurking-and watching. "You're one of those, huh?" a cynic sneers. Samantha waxes enthusiastic to several fans about how much of the events depicted in the comics have come true-horrible viruses like Ebola and Zika, for instance. The trailer opens, fittingly enough, at a comics convention as our main protagonists gather to revel in their mutual love for the Utopia comics. When the dangers depicted in the comics begin manifesting in the real world, they decide to take action. Per the official premise: "When the conspiracy in the elusive comic Utopia is real, a group of young fans come together to embark on a high-stakes twisted adventure to use what they uncover to save themselves, each other and ultimately humanity." Ian (Dan Byrd, Easy A), Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop, The Handmaid's Tale), Samantha (Jessica Rothe, Happy Death Day), Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges, You're the Worst) and Grant (Javon "Wanna" Walton, Euphoria) are the conspiracy-minded uber-fans, intent on teasing out the hidden meanings they believe are hidden within the pages of Utopia. "I took this idea of a group of ragtag, unlikely heroes who get caught in this incredibly dark conspiracy." "In fact, when I was pitching this, I called it The Goonies meets Marathon Man," she said. I want to use violence when it's effective and appropriate." AdvertisementĪnd unlike the sleek, Britpop-influenced tone of the British original, Flynn found inspiration for her take on the series in 1970s conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View and Marathon Man. I think we as an audience are past most of that as pure shock value. I don't want it for a cartoon effect or for shock value. "I'm the person who loves that moment in Rosemary's Baby where we're only seeing part of the conversation whereas the whole audience is trying to look around the corner to see what's happening, or obviously Jaws. "I'm more 'less is more' as far as violence goes," Flynn said. It remains to be seen if Amazon's Utopia will match the same scale of violence, although Flynn recently told Deadline Hollywood that it wouldn't be as prominent. (The most famous scene involved a torturer using a spoon to gouge out a victim's eye). Further Reading An Ars roundup of the many trailers unveiled this weekend during British version received critical praise for its originality and visual style, offset by strong reservations about its extreme violence, which struck many as unnecessarily gratuitous.
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