The teaser trailer for 127 Hours, the James Franco movie based on the true story of Aron Ralston, the mountaineer who cut off his own arm with a dull knife after getting it caught under a rock (“Oops!” he says), featured Franco charming the sense out of two ladies hiking through the wilderness. The full-length trailer features Franco trying to charm the sense out of all of us, by speaking directly to the camera — supposedly Ralston’s video diary of his trip — with high energy and increasingly chapped lips. In under three minutes the trailer powerfully lays out the stakes, with the inherent super-drama of the situation further juiced by flashbacks of kid Franco in awesome serial-killer glasses, parental angst, pounding soundtrack, and obvious yet nonetheless compelling shout-outs to never giving up, the triumph of the spirit, the will to live, etc. Still in hiding, however: all signs of bloody hand amputation! So watch with no fear of gross-out.
