The Final Trailer for Destroyer Shows the Brilliance of Nicole Kidman

Destroyer is the kind of movie that comes once in a career, providing a character to an actor that brings a completely different look to someone we’ve known for years. That’s Erin Bell for Nicole Kidman. The final trailer for the film focuses on Erin’s dinner with her daughter, the two having a moment as Erin tells her that she has the option to be better than her mother.

Throughout the trailer, we can see Erin flashing between different points in her life, an aspect the film tackles beautifully by showing just how much she has changed after the effects of her past.

But what the trailer also shows is more of her relationship with Chris, a driving point for Erin’s character in the modern era of the film. Though brief, their relationship is something that continues to weigh on Erin, driving her to struggles in the future because she needs answers and some kind of comeuppance for all that happened to her and Chri

Split between her past as an undercover cop with Chris (Sebastian Stan) and her modern life as an LAPD detective, Destroyer is different than any movie we’ve really seen before.

Talking to the director, Karyn Kusama, it is clear that Erin’s character is one of the main reasons Karyn, along with screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi wanted to bring the story to life. She isn’t apologetic for who she is, and she doesn’t blame others for how her life has turned out. She just wants justice to come to those who led her down the path we find her on. There’s something so important about the way she’s portrayed, so raw in contrast to how we typically see women onscreen.

This trailer gives us a deeper look into the emotional side of the character, something we see very scarcely throughout the film because of the cards she’s been dealt. As she tells her daughter, she knows what it’s like to grow up angry, and even now, as an adult, there is a level of anger that drives her, fueling her actions. It makes her a character that, even when she’s doing things we can’t exactly root for, we still want to her to succeed.

Maybe it’s because, for so long, these kinds of complex characters were reserved for men, but seeing Erin struggle with her past, motherhood, and her current life situation is wonderful, and Nicole Kidman brings her to life in an incredible way. It isn’t that Erin is a role we’d typically see a man portray, but rather that she is just a complex character that is unapologetic about her rage and, for that, I have to highly recommend Destroyer.

Check back here on the Mary Sue for a full review of the movie closer to its release.

(image: Anna Purna films)

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