The Eagle will fly in February 2011
- 11 November 2010
- Gerard Wood
When we last wrote about Kevin MacDonald's The Eagle of the Ninth, it was in response to some fairly hysterical criticism that the movie was an unreasonable attack on the US.
That was back in March. Since then the title of MacDonald's film has been cropped to The Eagle, its release date has slipped from September 2010 to February 2011 and, not before time, a suitably epic trailer has been released:
Since March we've had the pleasure of another movie about the fabled Roman Legion lost to history under mysterious circumstances: Neil Marshall's Centurion. Where Marshall’s Centurion gives us the last days of the Ninth Legion, MacDonald's story takes place twenty years after the Legion was supposedly destroyed by the natives of northern Britain. Marcus Flavius Aquila (Channing Tatum), son of the disgraced leader of the Ninth Legion, heads north of Hadrian’s Wall with his British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) to discover the truth about the Legion's disappearance and if possible to reclaim its Eagle standard which has become a symbol of Roman defeat: "The Eagle is not a piece of metal. The Eagle is Rome."
MacDonald and Marshall’s films are based more on legend than history but while both directors have an eye on the past, the other is firmly fixed on the present. Both depict a clash of cultures between a Roman Superpower and an occupied people, and the parallels between ancient Rome and the US are obvious and intentional.
Kevin MacDonald is responsible for two outstanding documentaries, One Day in September and Touching the Void, as well as the critically acclaimed movie The Last King of Scotland, and most recently an adaptation for the big screen of the BBC’s exceptional 6-part thriller State of Play. The Eagle of the Ninth also stars Mark Strong and Donald Sutherland.
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