July 2022 – ADMIT PLAYER ONE

breaking out of my void to say um??? New trailer for this movie starring Florence Pugh?? Directed by Olivia Wilde??? GEMMA CHAN IS IN IT???? MUSIC BY JOHN POWELL??????? goodbye

Unlike my posts theorizing about The Quarry (which is delightful so far and yas there will be a review post for that just as soon as I’m done zooming around Hot Wheels tracks in Forza), this one won’t involve pulling much from various social media sites because there just isn’t that much out there yet.

We do however have 2 official trailers and they are a doozy.

THE STORY SO FAR

At its core, the film seems to be about young couple Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) in the 1950s living out their perfect lives in their perfect town. That is, of course, until Alice starts to question some less-than-ideal elements of their existence and everything immediately starts unraveling.

The official website actually offers a pretty in-depth synopsis for us: Alice and Jack are just one of the many couples living in the “experimental company town” of Victory–during the day, the men go to work on the top-secret Victory Project while the wives hang out and clean and cook and so on and so forth. As Alice starts to question things, she learns more and more about “something sinister lurking beneath the attractive facade” and ultimately must decide how much she’s willing to lose in order to expose the truth.

Much of what we see in the trailers involves Alice specifically questioning what on earth is actually happening with the “Victory Project.” There’s a delightfully unsettling dinner scene where she brings this up and is challenged by Frank (Chris Pine), the CEO of the project.

(Sidenote: so happy for Chris Pine to get to play a villain! Thrilled for him to join another Hollywood Chris on this journey of “I’m super pretty and usually get to play the romantic lead/good guy so therefore audiences trust me and it will add a very unsettling element to this film now that I’m a villain.” Basically, Evil Chris Evans in Knives Out lives rent-free in my mind forever and now he’ll have some company!)

There are a lot of side-elements to this basic story shown to us in the trailers: Alice and Jack’s relationship, Alice’s friendship with the other wives, a ballet class? For some reason??? The trailers are DELIGHTFUL and I really think they’ve done a good job of building up tension and hinting at the overall mystery without giving too much away.

SOME THEORIES

EVERYONE LOOK AT GEMMA CHAN I LOVE HER SO MUCH

Okay anyway

Just like you would find in any good Jordan Peele thriller, something dark is lurking underneath the picture perfect facade, but what is it exactly?

At this stage of our knowledge (or really, lack thereof) about the film, I’m guessing right now it has something to do with atomic bombs and, more specifically, atomic bomb testing.

I mean, an obvious nod to that could easily be how similar the names are of secret projects being worked on: in the film, we have the “Victory Project,” and in reality, we had the “Manhattan Project.”

However, slight disclaimer: advertising for the film always highlights the 1950s as the timeline, whereas the Manhattan Project was exclusively 1940s. Its legacy and the work it inspired carried into the 50s and beyond, but still, it’s worth noting.

But wait–there’s more!

One of the more eerie shots in the trailer is a bird’s eye view of the town of Victory–an almost perfect circular town paradise in the middle of nowhere in the desert. There’s another moment where the wives are all hanging out and chatting when suddenly there’s a loud rumble and they react like it’s some sort of minor earthquake (“the boys and their toys” one of the characters says). In the other trailer, there’s a clip of Alice and Jack at home when the rumbling begins and Jack reaches out to steady a coffee cup. This tells us the rumbling happens at least two different times in the film–it could be a regular occurrence and the characters are so used to it, they just don’t care or question it.

Does everyone remember that one scene from the Indiana Jones movie where Indy hops into a fridge and survives a nuclear blast? But prior to that, he was in this picture perfect town full of mannequins?

WELCOME TO DOOM TOWN

Specifically in the 1950s, this was a real thing the US did to test out the effects of nuclear weapons. My personal research varied with amounts, but there were at least two different fully decked-out towns set up and then essentially, destroyed. Reports vary on whether they were Doom Towns, Survival Towns, both, etc. Houses were filled with furniture, real food, and fake people–one of these houses still stands today in Nevada if you’re looking for a fun road trip stop!

So, hear me out: that’s what Victory is. The Victory Project is, like the Manhattan Project before it, specifically focused on atomic testing while Victory is a Doom Town. Except instead of mannequins, they want to test out how it affects living people.

There’s even a clip shown in both trailers where Alice has a carton of eggs out but when she smashes one–it’s completely empty. It’s a fake egg.

The original Doom Towns had fake people and real food–Victory has fake food and real people.

They could even bring in how much of a disaster communication was on the original Manhattan Project: for example, if Alice and Jack are the picture of romance (as implied in the trailers) why would Jack willingly work on something that could bring about Alice’s death?

That’s just it: he may not even know what he’s working on. So many of the people working on the Manhattan Project had zero clue what they were building.

Speaking of Alice and Jack, their relationship is pushed a lot in the trailers. Almost every other clip is the two of them snuggling, making out, staring longingly at each other, or doing unspeakable things on a dinner table. The second trailer even has one of the other wives say that “Alice and Jack only have time for each other.” Later on, however, there are some clips where Jack is yelling at Alice because “not everyone gets this opportunity” and saying “I gave you all of this, Alice!” One of my favorite eerie moments is at a dinner scene where Alice is asking another woman where she met her husband, and Alice finishes the story for her, word for word. It seems to be implying that perhaps all of the couples met the exact same way. Maybe none of the relationships are real.

That, or perhaps the men do know more than they’re letting on while keeping their wives in the dark, for the sake of having those test subjects in the town.

(Speaking of: the website synopsis says that the town of Victory is for the men working on the project and their families, and even though all of the wives are shown…there are no kids? Anywhere? They might just not be in the trailers, but it’s just…interesting)

THINGS I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR

WHY IS THERE BALLET. WHY IS THE BALLET CLASS SUCH A BIG PART OF THE TRAILER. I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

I mean, cool major Black Swan vibes and all but–????

There’s also a fun sequence where Alice is running from a large group of people in red jumpsuits–maybe this was just a sequel to Us all along!

The second trailer also showed us some scenes that seem to point to Alice seeing a therapist of some sort. He mentions that other patients of his have nightmares, and there are pills that will help. I guess this could imply that this whole thing is some sort of mind experiment?? I mean, MK-Ultra started in 1953, so………they could go that route. This therapist also says “keep calm and carry on” which is notably a reference to WWII and therefore out of the 1950s timeline, for whatever that’s worth.

I also couldn’t begin to tell you why the second trailer is full of an ominous voice saying “tick…tock…” although I did at first wonder if having the main character be named Alice was some sort of Alice in Wonderland reference, and therefore, the “tick tock” voice could be referring to the whole white-rabbit-being-late thing. It’s unclear, though, of course.

The only truly notable social media post (at this point) is on Instagram–it’s the poster I put at the top of the post, before it glitches out and turns upside down and the text changes to “don’t worry” before flipping back around. That plane in the poster is shown briefly in a trailer, where it flies overhead but sort of wobbles in and out of focus. Couldn’t begin to tell you what that means at this point.

One of the taglines for the film seems to be “are you ready to live the life you deserve?” which could imply that all the characters in Victory are horrible people and they have this coming. Or something. We’ll find out!