Trailer Tuesday: Noah

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Brace yourself for controversy of a Biblical scale. Because opening early next year is this "timeless" take on the Noah's Ark tale, called, rather unsurprisingly Noah. 

In a role that is not so different from his work as Jor-El in Man of Steel, Russell Crowe is a good man who receives visions from God that the world is going to be destroyed. No one will believe Noah that a catastrophic flood is coming to rid the world of sinners, least of all vindictive local ruler and rival Ray Winstone. Still, Noah and his family - including wife Jennifer Connelly, sons Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth, plus adopted daughter Emma Watson - commence the task of building a giant, tar-slapped ark to survive the impending Flood. Anthony Hopkins also appears in the film as Noah's geriatric grandfather Methuselah.


Acclaimed writer-director Darren Aronofsky is the man at the helm of Noah, and given that this is the same filmmaker responsible for Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan and, especially, The Fountain, cinemagoers can certainly look forward to some dazzling, surreal dream sequences... which may or may not put the devout in a panic.

For the record, Noah is based on Aronofsky's own story, which has already appeared in graphic novel form over in Europe and is soon to be released by Image Comics in the US. In the comic, Noah's story is given a sci-fi spin, with events set in the ancient past or - Cloud Atlas-style - a future so distant that civilisation has collapsed and humanity is once again surviving day to day in the muck.

Personally I think this interpretation sounds fantastic. However, negative response to Aronofsky's taking of non-literal creative licence at test screenings suggest that the director will be fighting some serious studio meddling in the coming months. All so that Paramount doesn't enrage the religious types with this $130 million epic. Here's hoping the film doesn't suffer for attempts to make it "safe."

Noah opens in North America on 28 March 2014. The film's South African release date is tentatively set at this stage for the same day.

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