Watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the Death-Defying Extended IMAX Trailer for The Walk

The Dark Knight Rises actor tries out a French accent. 

Are you sitting down? If not, please do. The new IMAX trailer about World Trade Center wire-walker Philippe Petit might give you vertigo.

Robert Zemeckis directs this semi-biopic of the French “madman” who in 1974 walked on wire between the Twin Towers. The Walk was primarily adapted from Petit’s own book To Reach The Clouds; but many of us are familiar with Petit’s death-defying caper by way of the mind-blowing 2008 documentary Man on Wire.

On the one hand, the Man on Wire documentary was such a singular, breathtaking film experience it almost feels sacreligious for Zemekis to dramatize the story; it was dramatic enough in nonfiction form. But on the other hand, there’s something really magical about a true-life story getting the same type of cinematic treatment typically reserved for superhero franchises and action-adventure blockbusters.

A remaining reservation is whether Joseph Gordon-Levitt is really right for the role. He seems just a little too young; a little too twee. But perhaps he will surprise us all — his better-than-decent French accent certainly surprised me.

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