"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
With that real quote from Abraham Lincoln, White House Down has planted its flag as the next thriller set inside the White House that will get audiences flocking to theaters. Coming just two days after Olympus Has Fallen's big box office weekend, the trailer-- which premiered at Moviefone-- establishes its own mythic tone, using the Lincoln quotes and a whole lot of impressive shots of Washington in chaos to prove its potential. And even though it stars Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, two men who have made careers of being very funny when necessary, the tone of the trailer remains deadly serious. Yes, it will probably be fun to watch director Roland Emmerich blow up Washington D.C. landmarks again. But it's gonna be intense too.
Foxx and Emmerich on hand to help premiere the trailer at a New York City theater earlier today, and they also presented a special treat: 8 more minutes of footage for the film, including a lot more detail about how the story pans out. We see Tatum's character John Cale, a Capitol cop with dreams of joining the Secret Service, go in for an interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal's character only to be turned down for the job. Hoping to save face for the sake of his daughter (Joey King), he takes her on a tour of the White House… right before it goes under attack from a group of domestic terrorists, led by Zero Dark Thirty's Jason Clarke. As that Lincoln quote in the trailer suggests, this isn't about a war led from the outside, but from a group of disgruntled government officials who take matters into their own hands. As Emmerich explained it, "It makes it more of a coup d'etat thriller."
Though we got to see a lot more of the action, including how Cale saves Foxx's President Sawyer from execution and how the two wind up escaping the White House in a bulletproof limo ("Ground Force One"), it crucially showed off the film's sense of humor. Driving the limo while the President prepares a rocket launcher, Tatum screams "Can you not hit me in the head with a rocket when I'm trying to drive?" When it comes time to grab a pair of shoes, the President leaves the shiny loafers and puts on a pair of Air Jordans; later, doing battle with a bad guy, Foxx yells "Get your hands off my Jordans!" After the footage ended, Tatum-- on satellite from a London theater-- said "Did you like the romantic comedy that we made? Me and Jamie wind up together, just so you know."
It's clear that the camaraderie between Tatum and Foxx is crucial to the movie, and based on the reaction from this afternoon's crowd, that camaraderie is already coming through loud and clear. Emmerich has screened the unfinished film for a test audience, and said he had "the loudest screening since Independence Day." And that's before he even finished the booming special effects that have made him famous.
White House Down opens June 28
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