Well, here it is at last – the trailer to Tim Story’s 2019 take on Shaft. When New Line announced the movie back in July 2015 it was promoted as an action comedy sending fans, including myself, running for the hills. As a Shaft purist – I mean the Shaft of the novels… Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft – I didn’t want to see John Shaft given the Black Dynamite approach, otherwise why not call it Black Dynamite? Whilst the trailer doesn’t suggest the movie has descended the series into camp, it does confirm that the main selling point will be the comedy rather than the plot. Sometimes trailers can be misleading, selling a film the producers believe people want to see rather than the one that has been made. I fear that will not be the case here, so any lingering hopes I had of this being a serious attempt to relaunch the franchise with any semblance of authenticity have all but vanished. That doesn’t mean to say Shaft won’t be a fun movie, I did laugh a couple of times during the trailer – the contrast between the politically incorrect first two Shaft generations (Roundtree and Jackson) and the latest (Usher) also has some interesting possibilities, more than hinted at here. It just doesn’t look and feel like my Shaft… Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft.
