The first Clerks III trailer swallows its own tail

It’s been more than 15 years since the last Clerks movie, but now Kevin Smith and friends are back to finish the trilogy. The first trailer is here Clerks III, released on Wednesday, Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) decides it’s time to make a movie of his own. Clerks IIIThis fall, it will be released.

Clerks III will follow the original duo from Smith’s 1994 indie movie Clerks, Randal and Dante (Brian O’Halloran), along with friends Elias (Trevor Fehrman), Jay (Jason Mewes), and Silent Bob (Smith), as they’re drafted into making a movie after a heart attack reminds Randal of his own mortality. That means we’re in for a constant barrage of jokes about movie-making, plus plenty of meta bits about the previous two films in the series, as Randal mines the crew’s convenience-store chats for movie material.

Callbacks are available to Clerks’ rooftop hockey game and conversations about the Death Star (which softly implicated Disney as the new Galactic Empire), plus longtime Smith friend Ben Affleck reading for the part of Dante in the movie.

This whole experience already feels somewhat like meta jokes from movies and television in the mid-2000s, via titles like The Community And 30 Rock. Smith, however, and his Clerks series (including 2000 animated spinoffs), are also called Clerks) were doing that style of humor even before the earlier cycle of meta-comedy and self-reference that kicked off with 1996’s Scream. Therefore, it makes complete sense that they continue to do so after each meta-joke is over.

Kevin Smith wrote, directed. Clerks IIIJust like in previous films of the series. The movie will feature the main four characters as well as Rosario Dawson, Marilyn Ghigliotti and others reprising their roles in the movies.