Afterburn [scifi movie trailer]
If you’ve ever watched Mad Max and thought, “Splendid, but what it really needs is Dave Bautista recovering Da Vinci paintings in a blasted wasteland,” then Afterburn is the film you never knew you’d been pining for.
Yes, fellow apocalypse enthusiasts, Afterburn is upon us—or will be, once it claws its way out of post-production hell and into a cinema near you. Directed by J.J. Perry (who presumably has a checklist of things to blow up), this cinematic romp is adapted from the Red 5 Comics series that asks the eternal question: when a solar flare fries every microchip on Earth, who’s left to nick all the priceless treasures?
The answer, obviously, is an ex-soldier named Jake—played by the boulder-sized Dave Bautista—who has forsaken the standard apocalypse pastime of eating baked beans in a rusty caravan to become the world’s foremost post-flare treasure hunter. Among the baubles he’s tasked with recovering is the Mona Lisa itself, proving that even in the ashes of civilisation, the rich are still determined to own things you can’t eat.
Joining him is Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, a freedom fighter who, judging by the trailer, delivers lines with that magnificent scornful incredulity that suggests he’s been utterly done with the apocalypse since day one. Olga Kurylenko pops up as another resistance fighter, presumably to remind the chaps that not everyone wants to be paid in petrol and bullets. Kristofer Hivju also lurks in the ensemble, no doubt poised to smash a few skulls or monologue ominously about humanity’s decline.
The trailer itself is a brooding cocktail of dune-buggy chases, grizzled men making speeches over smouldering ruins, and fight choreography that suggests nobody has washed in a decade. Think Mad Max, but with slightly more plausible science and considerably more art theft.
In true Hollywood fashion, the road to the screen was as bumpy as a Slovakian quarry in a sandstorm. Originally announced in 2012—when the biggest crisis was which iPhone to buy—Afterburn languished in development purgatory through multiple directors and leading men. Gerard Butler was once slated to star, before he presumably escaped via a conveniently placed helicopter. But at long last, with principal photography wrapped in Bratislava and Roque Baños polishing the score, the end is nigh.
Or the beginning. Depends on whether you view a solar flare frying the world’s servers as a disaster or simply a much-needed social media detox.
Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we can’t help but admire any film that treats the end of civilisation as the perfect excuse to indulge in a spot of Renaissance art pilfering. The next time you find yourself in a charred ruin clutching a can of beans, just remember: somewhere out there, Dave Bautista is probably smacking someone with a crowbar to save the Mona Lisa.
Bring on the afterburn.
