Paul W.S. Anderson’s ‘Pompeii’ Trailer: What, No Gatling Gun?

By  · Published on August 22nd, 2013

One of the best things about Paul W.S. Anderson’s Three Musketeers trailer was that ridiculous gatling gun, so if he was willing to bring that kind of tech to 17th century, why not offer it up to the 1st? The weapons of Pompeii are all swords and fire, but maybe he’s saving the heavy anachronistic artillery for later. We can only hope.

Also curiously missing is Milla Jovovich flipping around and kicking people. It hardly looks like an Anderson movie at all.

So what does it have? A bunch of people encased in ash, Emily Browning kissing Kit Harington with gusto and one pissed-off volcano. Check out the trailer for yourself:

This historical action adventure looks a lot like Gladiator by way of the guy who directed Mortal Kombat. Harington plays a slave trying to return to protect his lady love (Browning, naturally) and his gladiating friend who is trapped in the Colosseum. The biggest question is still how they’re going to deal with the catastrophic event that killed 16,000 people in a very short amount of time – leaving only one known eye witness. The story here takes place in the days leading up to the eruption, but there’s no way they’d end the movie with lovers forever cased in ash, is there?

Questions aside, the greatest fact about this film is that two of its writers (Janet Scott Batchler and Lee Batchler) have screenplay credits on Batman Forever. Make of that what you will, but at this point in his career, if you don’t know what to expect from Anderson, you deserve the molten rock of terrible that’s about to land on your head.

Pompeii hits theaters February 21, 2014.

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