今日吃瓜

Twenty years after the first film was released, the trailer for the Devil Wears Prada 2 dropped on Monday, with a release date for April 30 in Australia and May 1 for the UK and US.

A sequel? In spring? Groundbreaking.

(I know it’s autumn for us, but just go with it for the bit.)

The iconic quartet of Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are returning, though things are a little different now, with Andy (Hathaway) now the new Features editor at Runway and Emily (Blunt) a high power executive with her own little squadron of assistants.

A teaser trailer released last November was reportedly the most-viewed comedy trailer in 15 years, with 181.5m views on YouTube in its first 24 hours. Unfortunately, this week’s full-length trailer didn’t quite live up to those standards clocking a little over 8 million views in the same time frame.

So exactly how much can we squeeze out of a 1 minute and 40 second trailer? More than you’d think.

Miranda is, thankfully, the exact same

Even though she’s the one who had the largest character arc in the first film, Miranda is still the same old Miranda Priestly, with her sharp haircut and even sharper remarks. There’s been some discussion online about Miranda potentially having dementia as the reason she doesn’t remember Andy, but that would just be way too dark for a film basing its entire appeal on nostalgic comedy.

Do you really expect Miranda Priestly, longtime Editor In Chief of Runway magazine, to forget the assistant who left her in the middle of Paris fashion week? The same assistant she called her “greatest disappointment” because she was moving on with a different role? Don’t play with me, Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer- Miranda knows exactly who Andy is, she’s just putting on a front, like she’s always done.

I cannot wait for her to say something touching and seemingly out of character to Andy after she’s used her finely honed media skills to navigate Runway through whatever conundrum they find themselves in.

Andy knows her worth as a journalist

Andy is no longer the anxious assistant running around the city trying to get her hands on an unreleased book from a now-irrelevant children’s author. She’s been travelling around the world as an investigative journalist and has clocked her fair share of last minute deadlines and dodgy sources.

Of course, she was always destined for this- what up and coming journalist lands a job at The fashion magazine of the day without a little chutzpah? She’s in her element as a Features editor, doing exactly what she always wanted to do, and battling the ever-changing landscape of print media while she’s doing it! If anything, it looks like Miranda might need to turn to Andy for some millennial insight into how people are consuming their news and culture today.

Emily makes a snappy little remark in the final seconds of the trailer that even though she’s more confident, Andy “kept those eyebrows, didn’t you”, which I wholeheartedly rebuke- the Annie Hathaway eyebrows of the noughties absolutely did not make it through the 2017 block brows trend alive.

Less than subtle nods to the original film

Of course, if you’re going to make a sequel in this day and age, you simply must pay tribute to the first film lest you be struck down by the cinema gods for your hubris.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer is jam packed full of parallels to the 2006 movie: Andy’s elevator trip up to the Runway office twenty years later; Emily’s framing in the car window as it’s being rolled down, 脿 la Miranda in the first film to communicate the balance of power has shifted; even Andy’s little spin around the streetlight during what appears to be scene with a romantic interest. This film is going to be a jolly stroll down memory lane with some of the 21st century’s finest actors- will we be bored by the time the actual movie releases?

The cast has expanded with appearances from Lucy Liu, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh (horrifyingly, as Miranda’s boyfriend), Sydney Sweeney, B.J. Novak, and Mother Monster herself, Lady Gaga.

The incredible lure of Streep, Hathaway, Liu and Gaga all on the same project will surely be enough to get bums on seats, and I for one, am waiting with baited breath to see what everyone’s going to be wearing to the premier.