WATCH: Google + Premieres Lincoln Trailer During Glitchy Q&A With Spielberg And Gordon-Levitt

Spielberg Lincoln Trailer

Steven Spielberg debuted the trailer to Lincoln, his highly anticipated film about the 16th U.S. President at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, but the experience was less-than-mesmerizing. That's because the webcast was initially plagued with glitches that left some viewers with nothing more than a "buffering" notice or moments when the trailer seemed to fade in and out of blackness.  The Google + Hangout session with the filmmaker and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who stars as Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln, was also bedeviled by sound problems that turned the question-and-answer session into an annoying echo chamber.  If you didn't — or couldn't — see the trailer during its premiere, check it out after the jump, along with the first images from Spielberg's '12 Oscar contender. 

PHOTOS: First Images From Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

The sound problems were eventually corrected, and Spielberg remarked that Lincoln "is a figure in this national landscape who hasn't been re-examined enough," except, he added, as parody.  According to Spielberg, the last movie to take a substantial look at the historical figure was the 1939 feature Young Mr. Lincoln, in which Henry Fonda portrayed him in his pre-presidential days as a lawyer.

"I think a figure as great as Abraham Lincoln deserves re-examination," Spielberg said.

Gordon-Levitt took a more personal approach to the Q&A, taking time to give a shout-out to his high-school AP  U.S. History teacher, Mr. Bechtel — I'm guessing at the spelling here — who the actor said was one of his favorite teachers because he presented history as if it were "story time" instead of reducing it to "a bunch of facts and multiple-choice questions." Gordon-Levitt also said he was "honored" to work with Spielberg.

Here's the trailer. Instant Oscar powerhouse?


Watch it on Youtube.

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Comments

  • robbushblog says:

    His voice doesn't sound anything like I imagine Abe's voice would. It looks great though. I got goosebumps.

    • I agree with you. I hate to say this, but listening to Day-Lewis doing Lincoln made me think of Ben Stiller doing Day-Lewis doing Lincoln.

      • Jackson says:

        I agree! Some of those facial expressions, and the ears, all I could hear was Zoolander. You're the first person online I've heard who thought the same thing. It kind of ruined it for me.

  • MARRY says:

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  • Megan says:

    Yeah, lots of confusion about Lincoln's voice. I think most of us imagined it sounding like Daniel Plainview, or maybe even Bill Cutting. But apparently Lincoln had a "high and reedy" voice. At the end of the day, I'll put all my trust in Mr. Day-Lewis and his phenomenal acting skills 🙂

  • robbushblog says:

    I'll have to watch the trailer again, but I don't remember DDL's voice sounding like Kentucky or Indiana either, which is another thing that seemed off about the voice.

  • Hip OP says:

    ---What is this? --the tenth? -twelfth Lincoln?

    WHO asked for it? ---WHO needs it?

    MEANWHILE, the 'on board' Hollywood franchise mafia
    is continuing to BURY without a trace this year's
    -----200th Anniversary of the Defeat of Napoleonic Globalism at Moscow

    ----100th Anniversary of the Jeckyl Island banking and EUGENICS coup
    AGAINST the American Republic

    ----40th Anniversary of the Nixon-MAO handover summit

    -----and 60th Anniversary of the RED China Halocaust, Globalism and EUGENICS
    'unfriendly'

    --------------------------------------KOREAN WAR-----------------------------------------.

    Look around you. SEEEEE what's unfolding on every front.

    Get a load of the BIG picture. ----Spielberg will ----NEVER----- show it to you. . .