"So what have you been up to... for 20 years?"

November 3, 2016 6:03 PM

Choose life. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose watching the Trainspotting 2 trailer and talking about it on Metafilter.com. Choose your future.
posted by Artw (73 comments total)

Obligatory unifying theory of life
posted by Artw at 6:04 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

"So what have you been up to... for 20 years?"

Laying low in the Jundland wastes?
posted by percor at 6:11 PM on November 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

I got about ten seconds into this, and then stopped myself. No. I don't want the trailer to spoil the film for me. So excited about this! Trainspotting never gets old or boring.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:11 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

May have to fire it up again for the first time in... oooh, ages. I'm sure I'll still have all the dialogue memorized.

I'm curious to see how this compares with Porno, the 9 years later sequel that Welsh wrote. The characters being in their 40s rather than there 30s seems like it should make a much bigger difference.

Well, maybe not to Rents, since he's been off in space.
posted by Artw at 6:22 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Looks like Danny's having a ton of fun with the camera in this one. Hopefully they won't ruin it with too much fan service ... I saw they redid the opening scene, and ... ya know. Shut up and take my money though.

The soundtrack is the real spoiler!
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:23 PM on November 3, 2016

It's amazing how I kept thinking that Ewan would be looking so much older, and then I see the film and he's got a buzz cut and BAM he's back.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:33 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

If it's half as good as that trailer looks, I'm on board.

How the eff does Ewan McGregor still look so young?
posted by figurant at 6:34 PM on November 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jinx, AlonzoMosleyFBI
posted by figurant at 6:34 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm kind of hoping Quentin Tarantino's last film will be Pulp Fiction 2 and it will be the same kind of reunion deal.
posted by Artw at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm so pumped on this. When I shave my head I look exactly like Ewan McGregor in the first Trainspotting so maybe I'll do that this week.

Also, I love that Underworld song. It's use at the end of Trainspotting, with the final monologue, is one of the greatest uses of music in any movie as far as I am concerned.
posted by gucci mane at 6:40 PM on November 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

Heh. It's been my default haircut since shortly after watching the film. Well, TBH i'm a lot balder now so not quite.
posted by Artw at 6:44 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's some kind of hideous synchronicity that a Trainspotting FPP comes up right after a Carmen medley FPP that includes a rendition of L'amour est un oiseau rebelle.
posted by figurant at 6:48 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

WOOHOO!

Yet it occurs to me that by the time this is released and I see it, I will not have been at a movie in an actual cinema in over a year. This will be worth getting off my keister for, though, I can feel it.

::pours a bit of diet soda down the sink for Tommy::
posted by droplet at 6:56 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

The kitten was fine.
posted by Artw at 6:59 PM on November 3, 2016 [12 favorites]

My reaction back when this sequel was announced was to avoid it completely rather than risk having my memory of the first tainted (I've learned after a few terrible, terrible re-boots). But this looks great. How long do I have to wait to watch it?
posted by mannequito at 7:08 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

God, I feel like I've gone back in time to my 20s. Clinton's running for President, David Duke is being an asshole, and Trainspotting is in the theaters.
posted by longdaysjourney at 7:18 PM on November 3, 2016 [24 favorites]

*glasses random person*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:18 PM on November 3, 2016 [6 favorites]

Alright 2017! A new beginning?
posted by oceanjesse at 7:27 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Can. Not. Wait.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:30 PM on November 3, 2016

As much as anything, (and if I understood him correctly) Begby saying "I'm old." really grabbed me. I mean, from the rest of the trailer, he seems to get his insane rage back, but just that one little moment was fantastic.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:34 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Somewhere in this country, a person too young to remember the first film is looking at the screen and saying, "Hey! Sherlock and Rumpelstiltskin are in a movie together!"
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:36 PM on November 3, 2016 [25 favorites]

*glasses AlonzoMosleyFBI*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:54 PM on November 3, 2016 [15 favorites]

Choose nostalgia, choose the hyper normalisation of the current times, choose yearning for the 90's.

In all seriousness this looks great.
posted by Divest_Abstraction at 8:01 PM on November 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

Matlock!
posted by clavdivs at 8:03 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Needs more trains
posted by fallingbadgers at 8:05 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

[bad bad scottish accent] weel weell thet wee bebe be returning?
posted by sammyo at 8:20 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm kind of hoping Quentin Tarantino's last film will be Pulp Fiction 2 and it will be the same kind of reunion deal.

Samuel L. Jackson has said (some time ago, admittedly) that he'd like to do a movie of Jules Winnfield roaming the earth and doing good things for people to make up for all the bad things that he'd done up to his moment of clarity in the diner. I would be so down for that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:59 PM on November 3, 2016 [10 favorites]

Right and Vincent Vega gets better or it's his son or something, kind of a Blues Brothers 2 type deal.
posted by Artw at 9:03 PM on November 3, 2016

I first saw "Trainspotting" in the theater. We drove to the state capitol from our B-grade, C-grade state university town and patted ourselves on our 20 year old backs for knowing the words to the Iggy Pop. We came back a week later when it opened 26 miles closer in A-grade college town (where I live) at a marvelous alleyway art house cinema (now a frat bar). The whole deal was close to magic and I'd yet to even visit Scotland in real life (better than expected).
posted by thivaia at 9:09 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Marry me, Ewan McGregor, marry me right now.
posted by Dragonness at 9:14 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

thivaia, I saw it in the theater too, and it was, if I remember, about six months after it had premiered in the UK. Six months of hype over how amazing it was, and how great the cast was. When I finally saw it, I was sort of underwhelmed. I didn't see how people could have been so excited about it. Luckily, though, I saw it again a couple weeks later, and wanted to invent time travel so I could go back and kick my own ass. Later, it became the movie that was almost always on when my dormmates and I were in our room with nothing to do (which was a lot, since we should have been doing things, but didn't).
posted by Ghidorah at 9:15 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

On one hand, I think that nostalgia generally leads to an artistic dead end, but on the other hand, I want to see this movie now. Now!
posted by betweenthebars at 9:34 PM on November 3, 2016

I have such a hard time with this movie, so many bad feelings. When I first saw the original it was with a man I was dating. Ah no, supporting, we weren't dating, he was using me. He was an heroin addict (a fact I didn't know about when we first got involved) and he targeted me because I was a pretty girl with low self esteem who had lost a lot of weight, but had not lost the fat girl self hate. I had a good job, I had the stability he needed to keep his shit going. He loved that movie. He thought of himself in this really romantic light because of his addiction. He called himself a writer, of course. And of course he had never published anything. However good the movie is and however good the new one is, all I feel when I think about it is the pain and expense of that relationship. I allowed him to take over my life and I got so far in debt supporting him that I still have not recovered 20 years later.

Right now I am thinking about how excited he must be about the new movie. I imagine it is some tale of redemption. He will love it. It makes me furious. Addicts may recover but the human wreckage they leave behind often don't.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 9:51 PM on November 3, 2016 [27 favorites]

kind of a Blues Brothers 2 type deal.

Man, you know how to kill a party stone cold dead.
posted by benzenedream at 10:07 PM on November 3, 2016 [7 favorites]

*brushes off 1996-era Perl script to turn English text on webpages into phonetic Scottish text while also adding in random images from the film via a series of terribly written regexes and LWP*
posted by alex_skazat at 10:16 PM on November 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

The Knuffle Bunny musical adaptation has a g-rated homage in which Daddy has to dive into the bowels of the dryer and battle laundry demons.
posted by brujita at 11:07 PM on November 3, 2016

Speaking of which: Does anyone know what Renton yells out when he finds his suppositories? He's underwater and has a thick accent to boot, and I've never been able to figure it out.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:17 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Yes ya fucking dancer"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ya%20dancer
posted by daveje at 12:26 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

I miss dirtynumbangelboy
posted by esto-again at 12:44 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Trams! Having moved to Edinburgh a few years after Trainspotting came out, this new film makes me very happy. Especially as they seem to have filmed a lot more in the city than last time.
posted by gnuhavenpier at 1:37 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

....

Now I need an Adminspotting 2.0 shirt.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:41 AM on November 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Now I need an Adminspotting 2.0 shirt.

Choose no life. Choose DevOps. Choose startup careers.
Choose no family. Choose a fucking big private cloud, choose drive
arrays the size of washing machines, overpriced cars, tape storage,
and IOT enabled coffee makers. Choose no sleep, Adderall,
Crossfit, and mental insurance. Choose stock options. Choose
a rented closet in SF. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and
matching combat boots. Choose telecommuting from increasingly
ludicrous hipster coffeehouses. Choose Chef, Docker, and self-deploying,
self-healing operations models and wondering why the fuck you're
still logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose hovering at a standing desk
listening to mind-numbing, spirit-crushing bro-grammers, dribbling
fucking Soylent into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it
all, tweeting your last with some pathetic hashtag, nothing more than
an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up lusers Jobs spawned to
replace the computer-literate.
Choose your future.
Choose #sysadmining (2.0).
posted by Candleman at 2:20 AM on November 4, 2016 [23 favorites]

Was it just me, or was *every* shot in that trailer a callback to the first film?

I really hope this film isn’t going to be fan service from start to finish. Crossed fingers.
posted by pharm at 2:46 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Hey! Sherlock and Rumpelstiltskin are in a movie together!"

Cumber...? Oh, 'Sherlock'.
posted by biffa at 2:46 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wonder if there will be a worser toilet in Scotland?

Can't wait to see this movie
posted by james33 at 3:08 AM on November 4, 2016

Maybe it'll just be an ensemble of characters ruminating on aging and the meaning of death, while fighting a genetically-engineered nippleless superhuman obsessed with revenge ... wait
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:43 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

choose death.
posted by ennui.bz at 5:56 AM on November 4, 2016

Love this. I love it I love it I love it.

I choose not to be worried. This bunch made a beautiful thing the first time around. There's no need for any of them to be making another if they felt it wasn't being done right. They've more than earned my trust for the sheer beauty and joy they gave me the first time around. I will be there on opening day. Oh yes I will.

Poor Tommy.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:45 AM on November 4, 2016

Also: I totally forgot that Shirley Henderson was in the first one. How did I manage that?
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:50 AM on November 4, 2016

The original is on my watchlist but I haven't actually brought myself to watch it yet. I'm a big Danny Boyle fan but that movie just seemed so repellent. Is it really worth it?
posted by octothorpe at 6:59 AM on November 4, 2016

Well, that's sort of the auestionthe film asks itself.

But yes.
posted by Artw at 7:03 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I watched the original movie a few months after it came out (on VHS), and was enamoured with the "sexiness" of taking heroin, b/c the movie made it look so cool. The appeal was such that I probably would have tried it, if only I had the money and knew the right people _{(or any people for that matter - I knew there was a bright side to having no money or friends!).}

And the trailer for this new movie makes the whole lifestyle look even more awesome - the colours are brighter, the sexy people are sexier - and being the same age as the characters, I get to fantasize that this is my life - responsibility and guilt-free, with no repercussions for my actions.

A few weeks ago the CBC put together a series of reports on the fentanyl addiction crisis in BC.
Here's one of the articles (trigger warning - pics of unconscious OD'd individuals).

This is probably what Trainspotting IRL would actually be.

I don't fault the movie industry for making such a movie; rather I'm jealous of those folks who can watch a movie, enjoy it, internalize it, but still make the distinction between fantasy and fiction, and real life.

Me though? I'll pass on this one.
posted by bitteroldman at 7:19 AM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Similar story, Belle O'Cosity. *hugs* I loved someone who was a heroin addict. He loved this movie. He also loved Pulp Fiction, Bright Lights Big City, Leaving Las Vegas, and any other movie that showed sympathetic characters doing drugs on screen. He died at age 29.

Luckily, enough time has passed now and I can actually enjoy this movie a lot, the characters are so unique and true.
posted by Melismata at 7:37 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

(Strokes a locket engraved with the words "Still Can't Hardly Wait")
Soon, precious
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:07 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Good lord when "Born Slippy" started up, I just about lost it. Can't wait for this!
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:27 AM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Diane, I still love you.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:03 AM on November 4, 2016

Maybe it's because I read the book before seeing the movie but nothing in it ever made me want to do heroin or made it look glamorous at all. I read the book for a book report freshman year of high school (boy, did that one get me in a load of shit with my teacher...) and saw the movie soon afterward and I think the overall message supplied by the ending monologue has affected me so severely that the heroin stuff was basically back seat to all that. I also like the movie more, for what it's worth.

I've done heroin before, and one of my best and closest friends died from a heroin overdose, and so have a few other people I've known. In my point of view if there's anything this movie does for heroin its that it gives it a solid soundtrack.
posted by gucci mane at 9:08 AM on November 4, 2016 [3 favorites]

(SPOILERS)

"The movie makes heroin use look sexy" kinda dies after you know, the baby dies. Then it's just sad, and depressing. Everyone is in this denial that they have a problem. There's a line in the movie where they DO state, "People forget how fun this all is!" (paraphrasing), but then there's also the scenes of funerals, arrests, trials, overdosing, and heroin widthdrawls. You can't believe the narrator at this point about the, "fun of it all". He's shown himself throughout the movie as a liar and a thief.

At least in the movie, all the silly, moronic things the characters do are also silly, moronic things young people do, especially young people with little to no hope for a better future (all the characters come from a low class, except Dianne, who is extremely repulsed by heroin use). It's the heroin use - the addiction, that gets in the way. One of the takeaways from the movie is that everyone is addicted to something, be it a feeling taking an outside chemical, or from allowing yourself to do a deviant act, like beating people up. So, there's no reason to look down at heroin use as somehow worse.

The movie also tries to show the lengths at which the main characters will go to get out of this cycle, by taking on an extremely risky and dangerous drug deal. Renton double crosses his own best friends to get out, and then justifies it. Think about how many times you've done something outside your own morals just to survive. Can you judge him?


The book is much better, of course, and way more visceral. It's not at all so glamorous or sexy. It's terrifying, and stupid, and sad. It's still something you can find an identity with among the characters, even if you're not a heroin addict or worship the idea of the lifestyle. I've read the book more times than I can remember (think I'll read it again!), but I've never taken heroin or any hard drugs. I'm extremely afraid I'd LOVE heroin completely and utterly, and with the relatively ease it is to get something like OxyContin, this is legitimately a problem I look over my should for, give that my family also has a history of substance abuse.

I don't even know if people actually shoot up heroin all that much. OxyContin though, is a huge, huge, problem in the US.
posted by alex_skazat at 10:16 AM on November 4, 2016 [5 favorites]

My take on the movie and its role in promoting, encouraging, or simply romanticizing drug use, is "not really, IMO." A lot of my alcohol abuse relied on my romanticizing my own addiction as a way of blocking out how it was really making me (or helping me become) fat, diabetic, lonely, and broke, but that was really about me ignoring the evidence right in front of me and not really about Bukowski or whomever fooling me into thinking that it was cool. Trainspotting, in addition to the dead baby scene, has the shitty toilet scene and the dirty laundry scene, and even though they're not played absolutely straight (the surrealism of the toilet and baby scenes, the dirty laundry scene playing like one of those gross-out stories that redditors like to tell each other), they strongly work against any kind of glamour. Addicts will find that romanticism one way or another, always ignoring the shit and horror; they'll read The Basketball Diaries or watch the movie and ignore the parts where Jim Carroll describes how this funny, rebellious, adventurous teenager gets sucked into a life of despair and degradation; they'll listen to old Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and ignore how they eventually became poster children for recovery (to the point of Reed doing an antidrug PSA).
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:16 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure it sucked for the baby, for the kitty, and for the former soccer player, but overall, most of the main characters turned out OK. I think this is what bothered me most about the original - the redemption of the main character and his ability to just leave his old life behind with a ton of cash and a rosy outlook on life.

Requiem for a Dream to me seemed much more of a wake-up call to the dangers of drug addiction.

Again, I'm not slamming the movie - I quite enjoyed it.
My comments and criticisms are more of a reflection of my inability to differentiate between "the movies" and reality.
posted by bitteroldman at 11:38 AM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't even know if people actually shoot up heroin all that much. OxyContin though, is a huge, huge, problem in the US.

Yes, yes they do! It's a huge epidemic in the US. People are ODing like crazy. It's been making the news quite a bit as it's had a huge impact in the midwest.

The thing is, people get hooked on OxyContin or Percocet first, which become cost-prohibitive as tolerance goes up, then they switch to heroin. Heroin is far cheaper than prescription drugs, black market or otherwise, and is far more cost-effective when injected than swallowed. So yes, heroin is being injected in massive quantities in the US, and people are dying due to adulteration with more potent synthetic opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil, the latter of which is absolutely lethal to people and used to tranquilize elephants.

There are so many stories about this I can only suggest Googling "heroin epidemic USA," tons of documentary videos, etc.
posted by aydeejones at 12:33 PM on November 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sure it sucked for the baby, for the kitty, and for the former soccer player, but overall, most of the main characters turned out OK.

I think the only reason we have to believe that is the existence of the sequel. Based solely on the end of the movie, would you give Spud good odds of making it to 40 intact? I'd say more likely he relapses within a year or two and never pulls out. Best case scenario for Begbie (who stays off the skag, mind) is that he goes to jail for 10-20 years before he can do something that carries a life sentence.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 2:17 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I never thought (and I don't know) that the experience of watching Trainspotting would have much to do with what I was like to be on heroin; maybe something that fast paced, surreal and chaotic might be like what it would be like to live life on some incredibly mellow form of crystal meth I'm pretty sure doesn't exist in real life. So anyway, I never bought the arguments that the movie made drug use look cool. The movie itself was cool, and it was about drug users, but their lives did not seem terribly desirable. Hence their abuse of drugs.

I am very relieved to see how good this looks.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:32 PM on November 4, 2016

Interesting - looks like it's only a very loose adaptation of Porno.

[Spoilers for the book] - no Juice Terry (one of the best of Welsh's characters), looks like no Nikki (which means no subplot of Nikki and Sick Boy ripping everyone off). I'm seeing a lot of fanservice, hopefully there's more to it than that.
posted by Pink Frost at 3:00 PM on November 4, 2016

Sickboy endlessly telling everyone about the fifteen minutes he was married to Angelina Jolie and nobody quite believing that actually happened...
posted by Artw at 3:59 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure it sucked for the baby, for the kitty, and for the former soccer player, but overall, most of the main characters turned out OK.


I'm not sure if I agree. (in the movie) Spud served time, Tommy died of a horrible disease, it was Sick Boy's kid that died in his cradle, Sick Boy, Spud AND Begbie got ripped off by their friend they've had all their lives after risking everything with ~2 kilos of uncut heroin, and Begbie was about to get arrested for at the very least, destroying a hotel room, if not for his armed robbery.

Everyone loses except Renton, and only because he may just be more sociopathic than his circle of friends, which is saying something, because Sick Boy is one of those friends. Other than, "same thing, again", where are these characters going to go, now?

Perhaps this *is* one of the forced plot turns for the movie (Renton being the victor), as in the book, Renton is far less sexy and beautiful. He's pretty much a loser, a junky (not a heroin chic junkie). Remember his only sexual exploit even in the film is with an underage woman after striking out with basically everyone in the club. In the book, I wanna say it was Renton that has sex one more time, but at someone's funeral, and I wanna say it was with a pregnant woman in a bathroom. (was that Renton? thre's more characters in the book, and some of their stories are smooshed together). In the book he suffers from being a lot less head-strong. He's drifts into heroin dens even more, that sort of thing, I wanna say he would do sexual favors for money, using saran wrap for protection (for example). The actor would should have played Renton played Spud (who DOES play Renton in the for-the-stage treatment), really, but who exactly would have made a better Spud? That's right, no one could have. Some of Welsh's other books, where he makes an appearance have Renton super shy, almost only able to mumble something, before disappearing.

Requiem for a Dream to me seemed much more of a wake-up call to the dangers of drug addiction.

Requiem was an incredible movie, and quite true to the book. If you like those, Last Exit to Brooklyn should be on your reading list. Just a great, underappreciated author through and through. And I agree to a point, their downward trajectory was probably more believable, and less, MTV in the 1990's. Speaking of which , Jared Leto? Great acting in that movie. Can not believe it.

The book, Trainspotting, was certainly less of a story, and more of vingettes of a circle of friends that had one thing in common: their heroin addiction. ...And knowing Begbie, I guess, who's so much of a loser that the only people he can hang out with are heroin addicts. Making that into a film plot must have been interesting.
posted by alex_skazat at 7:43 PM on November 4, 2016

the book, I wanna say it was Renton that has sex one more time, but at someone's funeral, and I wanna say it was with a pregnant woman in a bathroom.

Yep, Renton. His brother's funeral, with his brother's pregnant ex-girlfriend.

He also tries to chat up his teenage cousin (IIRC, also at the funeral).
posted by Pink Frost at 8:17 PM on November 4, 2016

Lest we forget, one of the novel scenes excised from the film was Renton completely acing his job interview on account of his school record and social skills... and then he casually drops that he's a heroin addict. Now Rents is an unreliable narrator and the (deleted, rightly so IMO) scene is played slightly differently from the novel, but it does reinforce the narrative that some of these boys at least had their potential utterly wasted.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:17 AM on November 5, 2016

I am stoked for this. Watching this trailer was a bit of a "Oh thank fuck, it's going to be all right. Fuck it's going to be AMAZING" moment.

I lived in Edinburgh when the original book was first out, and when the film came out. I was a poncy English student living in Marchmont back then, so it wasn't exactly my world, but I was also volunteering for Waverley Care, the city's HIV/AIDS charity, so I knew some of the folk who had been steamrollered by the heroin-AIDS epidemic, and who are no longer here to get excited about sequels.

So I'm at the same time totally naive and middle-class, and yet also not entirely sparkly-eyed about the glamour of heroin.

I think it excites me because Trainspotting was such a funny, passionate love/hate letter from Irvine Welsh to Edinburgh, Leith and their people - specifically some people who were never really acknowledged by the city as being their own - written, unusually for a book, and even more so for a film, in their own language.

I came back to Edinburgh myself about eight years ago and Leith has adopted me now. I'm going to go and see T2 at Ocean Terminal and then come out and look out of the massive plate glass window with its panoramic view over the docks, the Banana Flats, the Scottish Government offices, and all the massive changes that have happened down here in the past 20 years (all of which I pretty much personify in my poncy waterfront flat which doesn't have the feckin tram line that was once planned for it).

----

As much as anything, (and if I understood him correctly) Begby saying "I'm old." really grabbed me.

I hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure he says "I'm home" - as in home from prison. Begbie's home from Saughton, Rents is back from...wherever he's been... and suddenly the 20 year hiatus is over. BAM!

Also - bit mental to think that if ceiling baby had made it through, he'd be about the age now that the rest of them were in the first film...
posted by penguin pie at 3:48 PM on November 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

(Ha. And in case that makes me sound even more poncy than I actually am - the massive plate glass panoramic window is in the back of the cinema, not my flat...)
posted by penguin pie at 4:33 PM on November 5, 2016

I saw this in theaters with my fellow 14 year old girlfriends, I remember thinking "aren't there supposed to be subtitles?" I found the Scottish so hard to understand at first. But the three of us fell so utterly in love with the movie, and the soundtrack, and it was formative for us each in big ways. Let's just say not every 14 year old girl gets obsessed by heroin heist movies. (Though Jonny Lee Miller helps, I grant.) We may fly planes to reunite for this.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:23 PM on November 5, 2016

Let's hope there's never a Human Traffic 2.
posted by meehawl at 8:13 PM on November 6, 2016

I'm home? Damn. Then again, it took me about five or six viewings to figure out pretty much anything Begby said in the first one. I imagine I'll need to brush up a bit before I see this one.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:04 PM on November 6, 2016 [1 favorite]