First Max Payne Movie Trailer Released

The first trailer for the Max Payne movie is out, and holy crap, is it awesome.

While acknowledging that my opinion may be biased by my appreciation of both the Max Payne games as well as movies in which lots of stuff gets blowed up real good, I stand by my statement of awesomeness and will add that this debut trailer has given my faith in the movie's potential a significant boost. Typical for a movie trailer, it's composed primarily of quick cuts and high-intensity action, but for what little you can see of him, Mark Wahlberg looks and sounds like a better choice for the titular character than most people expected. Mila Kunis, co-starring as contract killer Mona Sax and regarded by most fans as the weakest link in the chain, only appears for a second, and while she doesn't speak she does manage to nail the look of Mona in action.

Even more important, however, is the fact that the trailer "feels" right, and touches on all the big Max Payne elements: A dark, Gothic New York wrapped in a winter nightmare, gravelly narration in the cold, dead voice of a man with nothing to lose and lots of graceful, stylized, explosive action. You can't help but think that whoever made this movie is a fan of the games; it's still early and there's plenty of time for things to go wrong, but this early glimpse makes Max Payne look like the kind of movie Max Payne fans would want to see. And holy crap is it awesome.

But don't take my word for it - check out the trailer yourself on YouTube, and be sure to tell us what you think.

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Holy crap, he's not making it up. It really is awesome.

No, seriously.

Full disclosure: I am also a huge fan of movies in which stuff gets blowed up real good. Still....dude, that was frickin stellar.

Cool stuff, it actualy looks like it will be worthwhile.

Sweet, maybe we'll finally get a good videogame to movie translation.

But one question.

Were there any demons/angels in the games?

I thought the games were crime noirs from what I heard.

FUCK YES

But where is the theme song?

Gahars:
Sweet, maybe we'll finally get a good videogame to movie translation.

But one question.

Were there any demons/angels in the games?

I thought the games were crime noirs from what I heard.

Valkryies.

V is the drug Valkyr.

CantFaketheFunk:

Gahars:
Sweet, maybe we'll finally get a good videogame to movie translation.

But one question.

Were there any demons/angels in the games?

I thought the games were crime noirs from what I heard.

Valkryies.

V is the drug Valkyr.

Ah, thanks.

I will see this movie if only because it has Marlo Stanfield aka Jamie Hector of The Wire fame.

Susan Arendt:
Holy crap, he's not making it up. It really is awesome.

No, seriously.

Full disclosure: I am also a huge fan of movies in which stuff gets blowed up real good. Still....dude, that was frickin stellar.

I'm with you completely. Wow. That is not what I was expecting at all. I hope they pull it off. :D

Yeah ok that actually looked pretty sweet.

[quote=Gahars]Were there any demons/angels in the games?[quote]

Second. After I have been through each max payne AT LEAST 30 times each, there was no winged fella's. However, nice to see that they recreated Mona disapearing behind elevator doors. Thank god Uwe Boll never got his hands on this.

I was considering posting a thread about this, but you beat me to the punch.
I'm a little concerned about Wahlberg, but yeah, this doesn't look so bad.

OH WAIT, I HAS A THEORY FOR THE DEMON FELLA'S. Anyone remember the constantly repeated line, the flesh of fallen angels...

And, like I said, it's likely that they're more metaphoric representations of the drug Valkyr.

I would guess (because it's all guesswork at this point) that the Funkmeister is onto something; remember that Max Payne had some (admittedly annoying) dream sequences, so my assumption is that they're hammering home the Valkyr angle a little more.

And did I tell you guys or what? AWESOME!

Malygris:
I would guess (because it's all guesswork at this point) that the Funkmeister is onto something; remember that Max Payne had some (admittedly annoying) dream sequences, so my assumption is that they're hammering home the Valkyr angle a little more.

My thoughts as well.
This might just be the first video game movie that doesn't totally suck. As far as one can tell from a trailer this looks like it would be pretty fun to watch.

It looks nice but i was really looking forward to hearing even a hint of the original music. Maybe it will be in a later trailer.

This may be really cool. The angels/demons/valkyies was kinda offputting but I'm willing to wait to see where they go with this before judging further.

Marky actually looks like he might have nailed it.

Taxi Driver:
A lot of unnecessary shooting, a building blowing up, a man with a sword, crazy things with wings that may or may not have angelic/demonic roots, Marky Mark! Seems like my kind of movie. The game always looked stupid to me, no offense I know the game has like cult following. I probably should have picked it up, but I just wasn't driven enough.

It's fairly easy to find, and no doubt pretty cheap at this point.

I can't tell you that you will like the game, but I'd recommend trying to ignore the hype you've heard, go in with no expectations and see if you like it. If you don't like it after the end of act one, you probably won't like it.

"A lot of unnecessary shooting,"

I don't think you "get" video games.

Like most have said, my thoughts on the fallen angels, is that they're Paynes personal demons. The man is pretty fucked up, and has had the worst of luck. I'd think that would leave you pretty scared. Plus, he's crunching down painkillers like they were tick-tack's.

Also, the trailer is great. Looks like they've really nailed the feeling of the games down. And Wahlberg seems to be a great choice now.

...I know I'm going to get lynched for this, but Wahlberg looks freaking badass in that trailer.

Why would you get lynched? Wahlberg pwns practically every Departed scene that he's in. I'm looking forward to this, but the current imdb cast and crew list for this flick is lacking one Vladimir Lem - how can you do a Max Payne flick without Vlad, and without at least one "Max! Dearest of all my friends!"?

I'm on the fence. If the plot is rooted in the game (max's wive dies, ha investigates it, finds out about the secret group) i'll be pleased.

There isn't enough there to confirm or deny it.

it looks good but for me if they throw in some supernatural elements in they will ruin it. its good if its in a dream, but if its turns out that like they are in the waking world or if they are like some monsters comming to get him it would totaly destroy the feeling of it being credible.
still heres hopeing it becomes one of the best movie/game adaptions

williamjg:
... but if its turns out that like they are in the waking world or if they are like some monsters coming to get him it would totally destroy the feeling of it being credible.

Yeah, because the Max Payne games are very credible. If they do it right I think they can throw in some supernatural elements without it destroying the movie. There's clearly something supernatural about the V-drug. Perhaps not demons/angels (god vs devil) supernatural but still. It's a crime-noir film (and game), so they have a pretty wide-area were they can stretch what's natural and not.
I've always felt a weird atmosphere coming from the Payne games (a thing that the movie Constantine actually showed for me. Now that I think about it, Keanu "Stone-face" Reeves would probably have made a good Max Payne), and you can't say the developers haven't played with our minds several times during the gameplay.

I think it looks awesome...

Though I'm kind of amused that I beat you guys (the news staff) to the punch by like 3 hours (I think), not a big difference and I defer to the much more well written article of course, but it amuses me none the less.

Codgo:
It looks nice but i was really looking forward to hearing even a hint of the original music. Maybe it will be in a later trailer.

I thought the music on that trailer was some kind of version of the tune that plays behind the graphic novels in MP2. I could be wrong though, been a while since I heard it.

While it's looking really kick-ass, I'm hoping this is an instance of "never trust a trailer." Hopefully all those angels and the talk about the Devil is purely metaphor. Or maybe the movie will have so much ass-kickedness that I can overlook such a drastic shift from the source material.

The trailer looked absolutely fantastic. The narration, action and style is true to Max Payne and that's what we want. Finally we may get a good video game to movie translation, I also thought that Silent Hill was true to form too but I'm getting off track now. Mark Wahlberg I think will do an excellent job as the titular anti-hero, can't wait to see more. Count me as excited.

Fiskmasen:
Like most have said, my thoughts on the fallen angels, is that they're Paynes personal demons. The man is pretty fucked up, and has had the worst of luck. I'd think that would leave you pretty scared. Plus, he's crunching down painkillers like they were tick-tack's.

When I first played the game, I said to myself "Even if he wins, he'll probably OD on all the painkillers he's been taking not long after". Not to mention nearly ODing on V at the end of Part 2.

I always thought it would have been interesting to incorporate where the painkillers work, but after a while, they become less and less effective because max builds up a tolerance, and eventually he'll die from overdose.

But the game was hard enough as it was.