The debut trailer for London Has Fallen, the sequel to the 2013 disaster/thriller film Olympus Has Fallen, has released and it’s been dubbed insensitive due to the timing of its unveiling.
With the tenth anniversary of the London 7/7 bombings, a series of terrorist attacks that took place on July 7th, 2005 that took the lives of 52 people and injured over 700 more, only a few days away, the timing of the unveiling of this trailer does seem a little suspect.
Following the bombings, the Tavistock Square Memorial Trust was set up in order to support the families of those who died during the attacks. Philip Nelson, chairman of the trust, told the Mirror that he felt the images of a crumbling London depicted in the trailer were not appropriate to display given the looming anniversary of the tragedy, saying: “This is not the first time that Hollywood has been insensitive. If the story is about terrorism then this is extremely insensitive. People have also recently died of a terrorist attack in Tunisia.
“I have seen an image of Big Ben with the clock face blown out, that’s also insensitive. [Our Trust] has had lots of help from America so I just think that these are the wrong images to portray.”
London Has Fallen will see Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles from the first film, with its plot set to focus around Butler’s character, US secret service agent Mike Banning, tracking down terrorists who attack England’s capital during the British prime minister’s funeral.
While it’s easy to point to the comments of those deeming the trailer’s debut insensitive as a little reactionary, it would undoubtedly be a little alarming if Lionsgate Pictures followed up this bit of marketing by displaying the movie’s poster on the sides of buses in the capital:
However, given that the sequel has a 2016 release window, it’s highly unlikely that is going to be the case.
If Lionsgate intentionally unveiled the London Has Fallen trailer to coincide with the 7/7 bombings then, yes, that’s a particularly appalling marketing tactic. However, as we’ll never know whether or not this is the case, I’ll instead have to position myself with the exasperated elite, who see headlines such as these and bellow “But it’s just a film/video game/book!” into the deep abyss of the Internet.
It’s just a film!
