It’s a little tough to get a read on Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon from this trailer and the one that came out back in March. Is it just a story about a heroic dude trying to save his colleagues when their oil platform explodes? Or is it an attempt to put a human face on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and force audiences to recognize the impact that the accident had on real people? Interestingly, though this trailer includes John Malkovich’s character talking about the “big company” everyone on the rig works for, there doesn’t seem to be any specific reference to BP, the oil company that was officially blamed for the disaster. Is that to avoid giving it free advertising of some kind, or is the movie trying to disassociate BP from the spill? Generally, disaster movies don’t have real-life people you can point to who caused the disaster, but it remains to be seen how/if Deepwater Horizon will handle that.
The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Gina Rodriguez, and Kurt Russell. It’ll be in theaters on September 30.