No, that isn’t Lorde on set for a Solar Power music video — it’s Emma Stone being brought back to life by an offbeat scientist, played by Willem Dafoe, in the trailer for Poor Things. The Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film arrives in theaters Sept. 8 and finds the whole cast — from Stone and Dafoe to Mark Ruffalo, Jerrod Carmichael, and Ramy Youssef — at their absolute strangest.
“I am finding being alive fascinating,” Stone’s character Bella Baxter states in the 34-second trailer. A moment later, she’s spitting her food out, escaping down a grand flight of stairs, and slapping the sense out of Duncan Wedderburn, the smooth-talking but untrustworthy lawyer played by Ruffalo.
Despite her physical age, Bella’s brain is starting anew. It’s not just that her father, Dafoe’s Dr. Goodwin Baxter, has just brought her back to life — he did so by replacing her brain with that of her unborn child. A totally normal father-daughter-grandchild bonding experience.
“Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn,” a synopsis for the film reads. “Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn, a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.”
Based on an adaptation of Alasdair Grey’s novel of the same name, Poor Things finds Lanthimos reuniting with Stone, who starred in his last full-length film, The Favourite, in 2018 and the short film Bleat in 2022.
The film also features Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, and Wayne Brett.
