The first trailer for The Twilight Zone 2019 remake has just dropped and whilst it flies by in less than 90 seconds, there’s still a lot to unpack from it.
The Twilight Zone is a show that I absolutely adored growing up and in my college years I spent hours upon hours watching the episodes. My favourite ever episode was called ‘The Howling Man‘ and it centred around a man stumbling across a secret cult during a storm that believed they had managed to capture the devil and lock him up as a prisoner.
The man eventually discovers him and sees he’s just a frail, polite young man and during the episode he tries to convince him to set him free. I don’t want to spoil the ending but it has an incredible twist and whilst that episode itself doesn’t appear to be getting remade, there are actually three in the trailer that appear to from the original series.
Throughout this video I’ll be breaking down everything that you need to know about those episodes and the rest of the trailer, as well as giving my thoughts on the series as a whole.
There will be heavy spoilers here, so if you don’t want to know anything in regards to the show then I highly suggest that you turn off now.
For everyone else, don’t adjust your youtube channel, just sit back, relax and watch my breakdown of The Twilight Zone Trailer.
The Twilight Zone Trailer Breakdown
Ok the first major episode that we can definitely confirm is a remake is Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. This classic episode followed William Shatner on a plane as he was slowly driven insane by a monster that appeared to be destroying the fuselage from the outside. Shatner is the only one that can apparently see it and the episode centres around him trying to convince the other passengers that he’s not crazy.
The episode has been parodied by Ace Ventura, The Simpsons and even Johnny Bravo. It’s definitely the shows signature episode and even got remade in The Twilight Zone film in 1983. The floating head that we see at the beginning of the new trailer is the same as the monsters and it definitely appears that the episode will follow a similar turn.
Where it differs is that we see the main protagonist off the plane and by a lake. It appears that his journey will continue beyond the plane as, in the original episode, it was restricted to this.
That episode ended with Shatner being escorted off the plane but with the camera lingering on the plane’s engine to show that it had indeed been damaged. Whether Jordan Peele will take this route is unclear but it certainly is interesting.
Oliver For President
The second episode that appears to be a remake is the one where it’s clear that a child is running for president. Whilst it’s not a direct adaptation, this seems to be sticking pretty closely to the episode titled, ‘It’s a Good Life.’
In that a young boy had incredible almost god like mental powers and was able to read and control minds. This pretty much put everyone at his mercy and all those who offended him were killed. In the epsiode, the boy named Anthony, isolates his town from the rest of the world and rules it as a tyrant.
However, just being a young boy, he has absolutely no idea how to run industry, agroculture and so on. Thus the town slowly starts to die and crumble in on itself, however, everyone is so terrified of Anthony that the pretend everything is going amazing.
The acting is fantastic and throughout all of the adults kind of smile through gritted teeth.
In it’s modern adaptation I can imagine this being a very clear Trump metaphor with the president being portrayed as a spoilt brat, which is something that those opposite Trump often call him.
It’s definitely an interesting take and is something that cements just how necessary that The Twilight Zone is in today’s climate.
In The Nick Of Time
The Third Episode is called ‘In The Nick Of Time’ and this centres around the devil head machine that we see in the trailer. In the original work this was a fortune telling device. A couple begin to test it and slowly realise that it’s very very accurate. They eventually are lead to believe that it is unsafe to leave the diner that they are occupying at 3pm and one of the characters becomes obsessed with this notion.
It’s basically about how theres no future but what we make for ourselves and that worry will forever hold us back. It’s a neat one to remake as it’s definitely one of the more niche ones but I can’t wait to see it.
I can’t wait to see what the other episodes offer and make sure you stay tuned into the channel for full breakdowns on them upon their release on the CBS streaming service on April 1st.
Your Thoughts
So, what are your thoughts on the trailer and is there anything that I missed? Comment below and let me know and if you enjoyed this video then please like it and check out my breakdown of The Haunting Of Bly Manor trailer which will be linked at the end.
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