'Radioactive' Trailer: Rosamund Pike's Marie Curie Fights For Recognition

Radioactive is directed by Marjane Satrapi, who is best known for co-writing and co-directing the 2007 film adaptation of her acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, which told the story of her childhood in Iran. Satrapi hasn't directed a feature film since 2014's The Voices, a movie in which Ryan Reynolds plays a killer who talks to animals. But now she's back with Radioactive, which, like Persepolis, is also based on a graphic novel. Lauren Redniss's Radioactive is a biography of Marie Curie with some unconventional art and layouts; unfortunately, it seems like the film adaptation trades those interesting comic visuals for a straight-down-the-middle period piece aesthetic.

It also pains me to say this, but did anyone else cringe their way through this whole trailer? The dialogue is super on the nose. "I want to tell you about radium, a most peculiar and remarkable element because it does not behave as it should...which, now that I think about it, is a spot-on metaphor for me, an intellectual woman in this male-dominated field." The empowerment narrative, while obviously an important part of this story and very much a vital ongoing issue in our society, is so blatant and pandering that it almost feels like a parody.

I had the same feeling watching the trailer for The Aeronauts, the Amazon movie in which Felicity Jones plays a woman who, damn it all, wants to fly in a hot air balloon and be taken seriously as a woman at the same time. So perhaps it's not a surprise that both movies are written by the same person: Jack Thorne, the writer of the Julia Roberts movie Wonder, Damien Chazelle's Netflix series The Eddy, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Hopefully this trailer doesn't do the final film justice – I can easily imagine a scenario in which all of this actually works pretty well in the proper context but is a bit grating when cut together for marketing purposes.

Here's the movie's official synopsis:

From the 1870s through our 21st century, Radioactive tells the story of pioneering scientist Marie Curie (Rosamund Pike) through her extraordinary life and her enduring legacies – the passionate partnerships, her shining scientific breakthroughs, and the darker consequences that followed.

Radioactive was the closing night film of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, and it debuts on Amazon Prime Video on July 24, 2020.