'Sin City: A Dame To Kill For' Trailer: Remember How Cool This Looked In 2005?

Remember how excited everyone got back in 2005 for the first Sin City? Revolutionary green-screen technology that made it look like everyone was inside a comic book? A teeming cast of stars?

Remember how excited everyone got back in 2005 for the first Sin City? Revolutionary green-screen technology that made it look like everyone was inside a comic book? A teeming cast of stars? Remember how Robert Rodriguez was going to make a sequel, adapting Frank Miller’s “A Dame To Kill For,” starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie? Well, nine years later, that sequel is finally arriving, and it doesn’t have quite that kind of star power, but hey, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, and Lady Gaga ain’t nothing, right?

Once again co-directed by Rodriguez and Miller, A Dame To Kill For promises a showdown between Brolin and Eva Green, a prequel segment involving Marv (Mickey Rourke), and two stories not adapted from any of Miller’s comics, featuring Gordon-Levitt and the returning Jessica Alba. Bruce Willis will probably poke his head in for a second, Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) has been recast with Dennis Haysbert, while (sob) Brittany Murphy’s character Shellie has been permanently retired. Man, that first movie really had a hell of a teaser, didn’t it?

It’s hard to imagine anyone getting as pumped for A Dame To Kill For, especially since Rodriguez’s whole career since the first Sin City has felt very repetitive (a Spy Kids sequel, the worst half of Grindhouse, and two Machete spinoffs) and a lot of these actors, hot in 2005, now feel warmed-over (Rourke, Alba, and Jaime King come directly to mind). And when’s the last time anyone ever said “oh, Jeremy Piven’s in that? Now I can’t wait to see it!”?