Ever since EW dropped the first pictures of the cast from the new Kenneth Branagh adaptation of the classic Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express, we’ve been pretty excited to see some footage.
At least on the page, it looked really cool — the period trappings looked great, and the cast (Judi Dench! Leslie Odom Jr.! Willem Dafoe! Michelle Pfeiffer! Daisy Ridley!) is just stacked — but we’re here to report that we are underwhelmed by the trailer that dropped nice and early this morning.
Well, this is most definitely a mixed bag. Sure, there’s some cool touches — we, for one, actually really like Poirot’s ‘stache, and the tracking shot introducing each member of the cast is just nicely done — it’s just sort of weird to end with the money shot being Branagh. If this is playing in front of Wonder Woman, who the fuck under the age of 30 is going to know who the hell Hercule Poirot is?
It’s actually kind of funny that they didn’t just use Josh Gad’s Instagrams of him and the cast harassing Daisy Ridley for Star Wars secrets for the weekend crowd, and saved this trailer for something with a bit more pedigree.
As it stands, the cast alone is selling on this. Here’s a synopsis if you can’t be assed to go to Wikipedia or read a goddamn book: “A lavish trip through Europe quickly unfolds into a race against time to solve a murder aboard a train. Everyone’s a suspect as Detective Hercule Poirot sifts through 13 strangers to find the killer before another person ends up dead.”
Murder on the Orient Express hits theaters everywhere on November 10.
