'T2: Trainspotting' Gets A Millennial Update

In the 1996 film Trainspotting, Mark Renton, while sprinting through the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, implored the audience to choose something. "Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family," he said. Now, in the official trailer for T2: Trainspotting , Renton is asking you to make some different choices. Ones that are much more modern and appropriate for a 2016 audience. As in, the famous Trainspotting Renton monologue has been given an update that millennials will appreciate. (Hint: It involves Facebook, and Twitter, and reality TV.)

Fast forward 20 years, and the gang's all here. Despite being, at one point, heavy intravenous drug users (TBD on how much of that is still going on), the group hasn't aged in the way you'd might expect. Mark Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, and Franco have returned, look relatively the same, and appear to still be running from things. By the sound of Renton's follow-up monologue, the type of anxieties that plagued the group in the original haven't been quelled so much as they've shifted into other anxieties. Renton wears a wedding ring now, and he says he doesn't use, but it's not like his life choices have lead him anywhere closer to happiness. (And if they did, come on, would Danny Boyle really make a movie out of that story?)

However, the new Renton monologue does show a tinge of underlying optimism. Which, for the sequel to a film about heroin addiction, might be the most surprising update of all.

Here's the original expletive-filled monologue:

"Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f*cking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of f*cking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f*ck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f*cking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f*cked-up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

And now, the updated one.

“Choose life. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, wishing you’d done it all differently. And choose watching history repeat itself. Choose your future. Choose reality TV. Slut-shaming. Revenge porn. Choose a zero hour contract. A two-hour journey to work. And choose the same for your kids only worse. And smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug in somebody's kitchen. And then take a deep breath. You're an addict. So be addicted. Just be addicted to something else. Choose the ones you love. Choose your future. Choose life."

Whereas the original ended with "But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?" The new monologue ends at "Choose life." Which leads me to believe that despite how bleak this landscape of 2016 looks, Renton's already made a choice. The "mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows" have just turned into "Reality TV." The "f*cked-up brats that you choose to replace yourself" have just turned into "kids." It doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, sound perfect, but it's marginally better than it was 20 years ago. For Renton, that's something.

T2: Trainspotting premieres on Feb. 3, 2017, so start thinking about what you want to choose in the meantime.

Images: Sony Pictures; Giphy