A rough cut was premiered at Comic-Con, but a fully cleaned-up theatrical trailer for Astro Boy is now online at MSN.
Astro Boy, or Mighty Atom as he's known in his native Japan, is the pioneering 1960s anime and modern-day cosplay favourite. He was created in comic strip form by the "god of Manga" Osamu Tezuku in 1953, and reached worldwide popularity when he was repackaged for Western audiences in the 1980s (like Battle of the Planets). There was a remade version in 2003 for the 40th anniversary.
This new trailer for the fully CGI, pastel-hued Hollywood / Hong Kong re-jig gives us more in the way of plot (by way of Donald Sutherland's Thunderbolt Ross-like President Stone) than we've seen before, since the teasers concentrated on Astro's not-inconsiderable powers. He is, after all, "a perfect robot" with "the most advanced systems ever created".
We also get to see the giant Peacekeeper robot who looks somewhat like the Iron Giant, and Astro's small robodog. And we don't recall having seen the "rear"-mounted machineguns before. Kind of gives a new meaning to the word "arsenal".
Astro Boy's voice cast includes Freddie Highmore, Nicholas Cage, Bill Nighy, Kristen Bell, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Charlize Theron, Samuel Jackson and Matt Lucas. It's released in October in the States and January in the UK; in the same week as The Lovely Bones, should you need cheering up.