‘Snowden’ Trailer: The Government Is Probably Keeping Tabs on Everyone Who Watches This

“One nation, under surveillance, with liberty and justice for all.”

Damn, that’s a good tagline.

There’s not much else to report on this first teaser for Snowden, Oliver Stone’s biopic on the controversial and notorious security analyst who leaked classified documents about the NSA to The Guardian and prompted a worldwide debate on privacy and government power in the internet age. Snowden’s story was already the subject of an excellent documentary, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, and now it’s becoming a fiction film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role, along with Shailene Woodley as Snowden’s girlfriend, Melissa Leo as Poitras, and Zachary Quinto as former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. Plus, Nicolas Cage! I hope he plays his character from National Treasure.

The trailer doesn’t show us any of those people, focusing instead on the somber music, the great tagline, and the upside-down American flag, which is traditionally “a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” Frankly, it kind of makes it seem like Edward Snowden is dead, which he is not. Or so the government would have us believe!!! [Cue dramatic music.]

All kidding aside, Snowden’s story is a hugely important one. But it has been told before to great success (Citizenfour was last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary) so the big question here is what will Oliver Stone do to make a second telling relevant and worthwhile. Certainly the world of Snowden, with its dark conspiracies and heavy paranoia, works perfectly in the world of Oliver Stone, the man who gave us JFK and Natural Born Killers. If anyone was going to tell this story in a fictional context, he was the guy to do it.

Snowden opens in theaters on Christmas.