Watch the first full Trainspotting 2 trailer

The trailer for Trainspotting 2, the most anticipated British film in years, is finally here.

Titled T2, the film takes place two decades after Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) made off with £16,000 he and his three pals – Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen Bremner) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) – made from an amateurish heroin deal in London, and the new trailer opens with our hero’s reunion with Sick Boy. “Hello Mark,” he says to his old pal, a pool cue ominously in his hand. “So what you been up to… for 20 years?”

As well as Renton and Sick Boy, the other surviving characters from Danny Boyle’s 1996 film are here too, including Spud, Begbie and Renton’s old flame Diane (Kelly Macdonald). Director Boyle is also back, and the two minute promo suggests he’s lost none of his love for blending grim reality with transformative fantasy, which made the original film so bracing back in the mid 90s.

The new film is loosely based on Irvine Welsh's 2002 novel Porno, but this is very much a modern take on these characters, as evident with the update of Renton’s iconic “choose life” monologue. “Choose life, choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares.” Later we’re asked to choose “revenge porn”, “slut shaming”, “zero hour contracts” and other modern phrases from our internet-age lexicon.

“It's very much telling a story about Edinburgh as it currently is,” Welsh told Vice. “The thing that's going to be interesting is seeing how the young kids in the multiplex cinemas get on with it now, because they're older guys – it's not going to be a youth movie like Trainspotting was. It could be like watching your uncle dance at a wedding. Hopefully it will be fun and crazy enough. It's got the potential for some great, incendiary performances from the actors.”

Can T2: Trainspotting do justice to the original? Find out 27 Jan, when the film is released in the UK. Watch the full trailer above.