Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So why is it that there’s still part of us that’s curious to see “Inferno?” The first of Ron Howard’s Robert Langdon films, “The Da Vinci Code,” starring Tom Hanks as Dan Brown’s globe-trotting professor, wasn’t just idiotic, it was incredibly boring, despite an A-list cast. And follow-up “Angels & Demons” was, if not worse, at least on a similar level of badness.
There’s been a lengthy gap (including a thrown-out attempt to make another of the books) and Brown’s books aren’t the pop-culture shifting best-sellers that they once were, but nevertheless, franchise-hungry Sony have greenlit a third film based on the novel “Inferno,” and a second trailer for the movie just arrived.
READ MORE: Watch: Tom Hanks Is Back As Robert Langdon In First Trailer For ‘Inferno’
Directed again by Howard, the film sees Hanks’ Langdon struck by amnesia and forced to team with a scientist (Felicity Jones) to solve Dante-inspired mysteries to prevent a terrible plague from being unleashed on the world population. Penned again by David Koepp, this time Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Irffan Khan and Sidse Babett Knudsen join the cast.
As bad as the previous films were, there is an intrinsic appeal in the formula for these things, and if done with the right pulpy approach, you could make a perfectly enjoyable film. Howard’s approach has always been too turgid, but could it finally pay off this time? Take a look at the trailer above and below, and you can check the film out in full on October 28th.