After a few days of build-up we get our first look at the first full trailer for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. The folks behind the film, who released a short teaser trailer for Lincoln on Monday, partnered with Google+ to stream the trailer worldwide and in New York City's Time Square.
The preview finds Daniel Day-Lewis as an eerie facsimile of the 16th President of the United States. Spielberg called the trailer "a slight offering of the film that focuses on the last four months of Lincoln's life. This film treats him as a man, not a monument."
The spot offers up a few lines from Day-Lewis, as well as Tommy Lee Jones and David Strathairn.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham's son, who wants to enlist in the army though his parents don't want to let him do so because they have already lost two sons. "They're giving him special treatment to keep him out of the army. The movie doesn't paint him as this perfect monument but as a man that has really complicated issues to contend with – either let his son join the army and face potential death or give him special treatment and alienate him," Gordon-Levitt said.
Spielberg joined with Gordon-Levitt after the trailer's debut in a Google+ hangout session where the duo answered fans questions, and the filmmaker chatted about directing Daniel Day-Lewis, a little bit about JGL's character and how Spielberg intends to relate this film to mass audiences.
Spielberg contends that the audience will already know about the Civil War and slavery and that the film will center instead around the passing of the 13th Amendment. "There won't be huge battle sequences or scenes of slaves toiling. This is going to be a movie that audiences will need to bring some historical knowledge to."
Lincoln arrives in theaters in limited release on November 9 and expands the following weekend. What do you think? Does the film have any Oscar potential?
Follow along on Twitter @DerrickDeane and @Fandango.
