During yesterday’s Emmy Awards, TV audiences were treated to a second trailer for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Vince Gilligan’s feature-length sequel to his legendary series Breaking Bad. Unfortunately for impatient fans, the trailer is more of a teaser – we don’t get any more details as to the film’s plot, just some very Breaking Bad-esque steel guitar on the soundtrack. Also some sly hints to the TV show’s final episode over radio airwaves.
Fortunately, Gilligan did throw us a bone by letting us get a look at the series’ beloved punk-kid-turned-trauma-survivor Jesse Pinkman, even if only in a brief close-up of the upper half of his face. It’s been about four years since we saw Aaron Paul in the breakthrough role which earned him three Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. This trailer seems to be hinting that El Camino will picks things up at exactly that point.
Back in 2013, Breaking Bad ended with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) killing his former collaborators and freeing Pinkman from imprisonment in the collaborator’s compound. The trailer’s radio news bulletin mention of ‘hundreds of shots fired’ and a ‘remote controlled machine gun’ seemingly confirms that the narrative of the upcoming film could take place immediately after that final massacre in the series, circumventing the trend in TV storytelling to use ‘time-jumps’ to skip ahead in a narrative’s action.
Breaking Bad itself jumped ahead five months in the span of one montage in its season five finale, so it’s a little surprising that Gilligan could be starting his movie spin-off only minutes after the iconic series’ conclusion. In general, though, we’re most likely in safe hands with El Camino, considering the vast critical success of Gilligan’s other spin-off property, AMC’s Better Call Saul. Before that prequel show premiered, there was endless discussion as to whether it would ever be a worthy successor to Breaking Bad – four seasons of excellent dramedy later, the naysayers have dispersed.
Watching this teaser, one gets the feeling El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie could be just as tense and character-driven as the series it sprang from. We’ll have to wait until October 11 to learn Jesse Pinkman’s ultimate fate.
