“Welcome to Marwen” Gets Final Trailer and AR App

Welcome to Marwen is the latest expensive proposition from Robert Zemeckis. The Academy Award-winning director of Forrest Gump has spent the last 15 years working with new technology for movies with big emotions and big special effects. The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol have been perennial holiday favorites, but The Walk and Allied have had a tougher time, despite being excellent.

Steve Carell stars in this fictional adaptation of the documentary Marwencol, an astonishing story of a hate crime victim who channeled his recovery and grief into making extremely detailed models of World War II scenes. The doc is heartbreaking, and one of the best films of the decade. The film has a high bar to clear if it wants to match Marwencol's emotional impact. Luckily, there's an all-star cast, including Janelle Monaé, Leslie Mann and Emmy winner Merritt Wever.

For those who want to go deeper inside the world, there's also an Augmented Reality app, that will let you play a scene from the film on any surface, and allow you to interact with the model village as well. Check out the trailer for the app below.

Welcome to Marwen opens Friday, December 21. The app is available in app stores now.

About Kip Mooney

Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.