“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career…”
In the 90s, Trainspotting made that line feel like the ultimate middle finger. Renton wasn’t just rejecting the system – he was mocking it. The whole idea that if you did what you were supposed to – got a job, bought a house, played along – you’d end up happy. Back then, you could still believe in that promise, even if you chose to reject it. A stable job. A home. A way out.
But Trainspotting was never about believing. It was about escaping.
There are films that capture a moment in time, and then there are films that define it. Trainspotting isn’t just a film about heroin; it’s a film about the 90s. Not the Britpop-polished, Cool Britannia fantasy, but the sweaty, reckless, skint, and slightly feral reality lurking underneath. A film that doesn’t glorify addiction so much as it makes you feel the downwards pull – the highs, the squalor, the camaraderie and the desperate, sickly need.
It’s grim, hilarious and disgusting, all at once. Visually, it’s appropriately schizophrenic with a killer soundtrack and caustically incisive writing.
Addiction, in Trainspotting, isn’t just about getting high – it’s about grabbing onto anything that dulls the pointlessness of existence. And in that way, the film was never just about heroin. It was about self-destruction, friendship, bad decisions, and the kind of people who either make it out – or don’t.
And Renton’s final “choose life…” speech has been lifted, parodied, recontextualized, slapped on posters, and repeated by people who probably never actually watched the film. Renton’s not inspiring anyone – he’s sneering at the whole system. Ultimately, he plays the game not because he believes in it, but because it’s the only one left.
That was the 90s, when we all believed things could get better.
20 years later, Renton’s speech in T2 Trainspotting had changed with the times: “Choose Facebook. Choose Twitter. Choose Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares.” If Trainspotting was about rejecting the lie of a stable, respectable life, T2 is about confronting the fact that there was nothing waiting on the other side.
The old promises had already crumbled, and all that was left was the performance – curating your existence, screaming into the void, waiting for the algorithm to decide whether your life was worth seeing.