Tick, Tick...BOOM! The 10 Best Moments In The New Trailer
Jonathan Larson's name may not be known to everyone. However, he is a very familiar name for anyone who is a Rent-head. Larson redefined the rock musical with the hit Broadway musical, but he didn't live to see his dream come true. Before his death, he was continuing his work on a semi-autobiographical piece entitled tick, tick...BOOM! In the upcoming movie adaptation, Lin-Manuel Miranda will be making his film directorial debut. Miranda is most recently known for his work In The Heights, which some people argue is even better than Hamilton. tick, tick...BOOM! has much anticipation around it, and now Netflix has dropped the first official trailer.
There has been a lot of nervousness regarding this upcoming movie for those who know all about the off-Broadway show and its creator. However, when the trailer dropped a few days ago, it quieted some of those fears. The movie adaptation looks impressive, and the trailer features many exciting moments that tease fans who can't wait for its release.
10 Hints Of Rent
The trailer looks as though it could have taken out of Larson's hit production, Rent, from start to finish. However, it appears that tick, tick...BOOM! will really show how the inspiration for Rent came about. The trailer shows that Miranda's new film is sure to make fans of Rent feel everything they feel when they watch the hit musical, from unbridled joy to heartbreaking devastation, highlighting how much Larson drew from his life for that show.
The hints of RENT throughout will make the movie appealing to a larger audience, as many people know about this production of Larson's creative genius.
9 A Family Of Friends
There is nothing audiences like more than being able to see themselves represented onscreen. As the trailer opens on that party, that song, that group of friends, it is clear that they are so much more than that. They are a family, and the way they interact, even for those brief seconds onscreen, reaches out to everyone who has ever felt alone or has a group of friends that turns into a family that is there, no matter what.
Though the trailer is not long enough to know any single entire storyline, it is definitely enough to know that any artist who feels isolated or has built their own friend and family group will identify with this movie.
8 Art Is Everywhere
No creator can watch the trailer and not relate to the fact that for Andrew Garfield's character, his art surrounds and consumes him, no matter where he is or what he is doing. There are plenty of interviews with Larson, and with those that were closest to him after he passed, to know that this is precisely how Jonathan Larson lived.
It is how many who work in the creative world feel as they immerse themselves in projects, especially with those projects that they know will be bigger than themselves.
7 Tick, Tick...
The ticking throughout the whole trailer is one of the best things about it. The show's entire plot is that Larson felt that his time to write his masterpiece was slipping away from him. As he watched his friends dying and the city he loved changing, he thought that he would run out of time before he wrote a piece that would really matter.
Watching the trailer with the ticking throughout, and Andrew Garfield as Jon explaining its meaning, makes the viewer feel that time is racing and running out, not just in the trailer, but in life, in general.
6 Slow Down For Life
The original Broadway musical of tick, tick...BOOM! was meant to be a semi-biographical look at Jonathan Larson's professional life. Throughout it are nods to hard-earned lessons, mainly to slow down and enjoy life. Larson watched his friend circle be destroyed both by drug use and the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and many of these elements were poured into RENT.
A quick shot in the trailer shows a hospital bed with Garfield as Larson sitting next to it. This implies that the movie will include the story of both Jonathan's personal and professional life.
5 BoHo Days
The original title for tick, tick...BOOM! -- "BoHo Days" --- instead became the most easily recognizable song from the show, at least for the general public. BoHo is the nickname for the area in New York City below Houston Street, west of SoHo on Greenwich Street, where he and most of his friends lived while working at The Moondance on weekends and working composing during the week.
Seeing the song placed at the forefront of the trailer is heartening and suggests that the film will stay true to who Jonathan was.
4 An Opening Party
The party at the beginning of the trailer is everything. It has the same kind of energy that audiences see on stage and will appeal to the theater crowd that will inevitably be interested in seeing the movie.
With that energy and the excitement that oozes out of every scene with Larson's group of friends, it is easy to see a nod to the world that tick, tick...BOOM! represents. The energy is tremendous and evident in the trailer, and hopefully, the trailer means that this energy will be seen throughout the entire film. If fan's reactions to the tick, tick...BOOM! trailer on Twitter are any indication, then they also are feeling that energy and excitement.
3 Best Life
As the trailer opens, the camaraderie amongst the group on the screen seems evident. They are singing, dancing and enjoying each other's company. The pure joy and fun that the group is having grabs the viewer and immerses them into the next one minute and 11 seconds.
The audience is gripped by the world of music, dance, creativity, and inspiration. But, unfortunately, one can also feel the similar anxiety, pressure, and fear that many creative feels as every milestone birthday approaches, and they have not yet been discovered. The trailer does a great job of making viewers feel something, every single second.
2 Garfield Embodies Larson
Fans of the late, young composer know that Jon was more than a once-in-a-lifetime mind, but a unique individual from every aspect. He had his look, his own cadence, his own way of speaking, and the suavest way of moving. Everything he did was like music, and few actors could passably play him. In Andrew Garfield's best movies, he is known for not only disappearing into his roles but completely embodying and transforming into them and their worlds.
In the trailer, Garfield manages to look and move like Larson. From his most common hand position to his hairdo, the starry look in his eyes, and the sheer genius that radiated off him, Andrew Garfield seems to have gotten into the role and embodied Larson in a way most didn't think was possible.
1 The Moondance
This may be the deepest cut in the whole trailer for long-time, faithful fans of Jonathon Larson. For nine and a half years, Jon worked as a waiter at The Moondance. It was there that he worked as he wrote tick, tick...BOOM! and Rent. The song "30/90" from tick, tick...BOOM! was the title song of the show that opens the musical. Larson wrote it with inspiration from his mentor Stephen Sondheim and his job slinging food on the weekends at the diner. It was meant to be an anthem, as he looked at turning 30 in 1990 and still not having achieved a hit musical, wondering if he should give up and move on.
This is also where Larson met a trainee named Jesse L. Martin. Before his days fighting crime on Law & Order, Martin played Tom Collins in Rent. Seeing not only the building in the trailer but Garfield as Jon in that "Good FOOD" shirt quickly brings equal joy and sadness to the heart of every Larson fan, who can't wait for what many believe will be one of the best movie adaptations of a musical ever made.