Why Trainspotting 2 Will Be a Cynical Cash-In

Danny Boyle is a notoriously accomplished director who’s always maintained a balance between high quality film making and disparate subject matter. Despite his diverse oeuvre, it’s quite obvious that the pinnacle of his career is
Trainspotting, his masterful adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel in 1996.

Worryingly, however, recent news that he’s plotting to reanimate the smack addled ghosts of Renton, Sick Boy et al in an imaginatively titled sequel dubbed Trainspotting 2 in 2016 is a dispiritingly cynical move that risks tarnishing the original’s legacy.

Trainspotting is an extraordinary black comedy that saw Boyle somehow make a life affirming film out of a novel about debilitating heroin addiction. Unsuccessful book to big-screen translations flop because the director fails to capture the emotional nuance accommodated by the novel’s form. Boyle would later fall victim to this trap when he very publicly ruined Alex Garland’s The Beach in 2000, in what was easily the nadir of his otherwise stellar career. Trainspotting, on the other hand, saw Boyle skilfully convert the detail underpinning the rivalries and personal struggles of the novel onto the big screen, without diluting the story.

The film became bigger than the sum of its parts because it fused with other landmark cultural events and offered bittersweet escape through the heady combination of rebellion and music. The cast, including Ewan McGregor and the seizure-inducingly funny Robert Carlyle, bounced off each other effortlessly, McGregor’s narration exuding pathos and guttural humour. Supplemented by a superb soundtrack featuring Primal Scream and Iggy Pop, Trainspotting reflected the general sense of optimism that was evident across sport, music and politics.

If Trainspotting 2 happens, Boyle would’ve fallen prey to the cult of unnecessary sequels, a hideous rabble of artistically deformed opportunists rabidly defecating on once sacred franchises with abominable sequels and sequels that are really absurd pre-prequels. One might argue that unlike Toy Story 4, Trainspotting 2 has a reference point in the form of its 2002 follow-up Porno, thereby justifying the project. But the sequel isn’t going to be called Porno: it’s going to be called Trainspotting 2, to coincide with original’s 20th anniversary. Furthermore, it’s only loosely going to be based on Porno, making it look like a hugely exploitative attempt to milk the anniversary for all it’s worth. If those two factors don’t scream ‘cash-in’ like a Spice Girls reunion, I don’t know what does. Irrespective of the title, a sequel is not needed because the original was perfect.

The current era simply does not have the same optimistic atmosphere of 1996 that the film could harness and articulate. Trainspotting 2 could end up being emotionally smothered by a cultural vacuum characterised by indulgent selfies, cuts to social security and what will more than likely be a typically shambolic exit for England in Euro 2016. Whereas Trainspotting reflected the caustic hedonism of the mid-nineties, Trainspotting 2 will suffer under its antecedent’s legacy, and fans’ unrealistic expectations.

McGregor, Carlyle etc are currently coasting professionally, their careers made, broken and repaired accordingly. They have nothing to gain from this venture other than to collect an obese paycheque out of the wreckage of a totemic film.