Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt rustle up a posse in the new Magnificent Seven trailer
Somewhere between The Ridiculous 6 and The Hateful Eight lies The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming homage to Westerns. The teaser trailer set up the initial premise, which is drawn from the 1960 film of the same name, which was drawn from 1954’s Japanese film Seven Samurai. So it’s a tale as old as time—or, at least, as old as 1954. A widow (Haley Bennett) wants retribution for her husband’s murder, so she seeks out a charismatic gunslinger who then assembles a ragtag group of men talented in the arts of destruction, chaos, and revenge to get the job done. The widow is not one of the seven, because the damsel never gets to be a real part of The (Adjective) (Number). She’s just the glue that holds them all together. But that’s not important enough to get her a freeze-frame spotlight in the official trailer, which dropped today.
The new trailer introduces the cast of roguish men by their official Western titles. There’s the bounty hunter (Denzel Washington), the gambler (Chris Pratt), the outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), the sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke), the assassin (Lee Byung-hun), the warrior (Martin Sensmeier), and the tracker (Vincent D’Onofrio). Again, there’s also a widow, but no title card for her. (Silly widow, title cards are for men.) Peter Sarsgaard plays the leader of an evil group of bandits responsible for the widow’s husband’s (Matt Bomer) death. Pratt and Washington are an undeniable dream team in the trailer, but we’re Team Widow. At least she does get to brandish a gun a few times in the trailer.
True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto co-penned the script with Richard Wenk, who also wrote Fuqua’s The Equalizer as well as its upcoming sequel. The Magnificent Seven hits theaters September 23.