Everything we know about Trainspotting 2 so far

January 27, 2017. Save the date. T2: Trainspotting is heading to big screen near you (February 2 and 3 for you Australian and US folk). 20 years in the making, and with director Danny Boyle and the original main cast onboard, it's a sequel we're gagging to see. There's no doubt that some sequels tend to fall quite flat compared to their predecessors, but this actually looks quite fucking good. It has to be.

Anyway, we delved into the trailer to try and work out exactly will be going down. We already knew it'd be set in Edinburgh 20 years on from the original, with some of the crew involved in the vice industry, but a proper peep at the footage shows us the state of relationships, their taste for drugs well and truly still intact and a few flashbacks to the past. Some of it quite cleverly done, too. Have a gander below.

Just in case you hadn't noticed, Trainspotting isn't about those folk who go out and record the numbers of trains they spot. Those that have seen the original Danny Boyle flick will know that trains appear more than once, though, from the wallpaper in Renton's bedroom at his parents' to one passing when Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy and Spud are standing on the platform of Corrour railway station. One wooshes past early on in T2, as Ewan McGregor makes his way back to Sick Boy after 20 years, and that bedroom wallpaper is still firmly pasted down. Where is that pub Sick Boy works at, BTW!? Looks like he didn't wanna be found.

Ah, Princes Street. Where it all began. It's the Edinburgh street where Ewan McGregor's Renton and Ewen Bremner's Spud are sprinting away from shop security in the opening scene of Trainspotting, loaded with stolen goods to fund that devilish heroin habit of theirs. It's where we hear Renton's classic 'choose life' speech and we reckon the tram scene in T2 may be where we hear the updated version, complete with shout to Instagram, revenge porn and reality TV.

It turns out Renton got married in the 20 years since we last saw him, too. Unless he just fancied busting tradition and sticking an ordinary ring on his wedding finger. That face doesn't represent that of a happily married, though, and a failed marriage could be the reason for returning to Edinburgh from wherever it was he did a runner to. That may well be Amsterdam, where he owns a nightclub in Porno, the book T2's kinda based on. Don't go thinking he married Diane once she reached the legal age. She's none the wiser of what he's been up to in a later scene. "Do you still take heroin?" is the first question she asks, of course.

Spud looks pretty perplexed (when does he not!?) witnessing a street chase in the same place him and Renton were seen legging it 20 years ago. But we can forgive him for that given the stark familiarity of what's going down. The bloke on the run even has a blue T-shirt on, just as Spud did back in the day, and the shot through the railway arch is more or less identical. Looks like Spud hasn't been able to forget everything that happened and this could be a symbol that history's set to repeat itself. It's a questionable outfit from Spud, but the first film was littered with Hibernian F.C references so it's good to see the football socks on show. And maybe he's just wearing his less admirable garms in case he shits himself again. Who knows.

The last time we saw Robert Carlyle's raging Francis Begbie, he was giving a hotel a killer makeover, and not one in the Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen mould. Lamps were being smashed, pictures ripped down and bedside tables slammed against the wall. All down to Renton running away with the £16,000 they'd made from a heroin deal. Anyway, two coppers turned up and, we assume, arrested him for the damage. Bearing in mind he's been in the slammer for two decades, we imagine the police had some dirt on him to send him down for the armed robbery earlier in the film. He's done his time, though, and it's time for Franco to roam the streets once again. LET'S 'AVE IT!

They say prison is a place for rehabilitation, but this is Begbie we're talking about. The guy who launched a pint glass onto a pub full of unsuspecting boozers as an excuse for a ruck. The fella who, as mentioned above, tore a hotel room to pieces and glassed someone just for bumping into him. That guy that battered someone with a snooker cue after he fucked up his shot. Yeah, no chance of erasing the anger from him. And doesn't Renton just know it.

Needles of the injecting kind are everywhere in the first film, what with Renton and co.'s small matter of heroin addiction. This time round the focus seems to be on needles of a different kind: those of a vinyl deck. We're not saying that means they've kicked the smack once and for all (you'll see below they definitely haven't), but this is a clever symbolisation of something that was used a lot the first time round. Especially when music like Underworld's 'Born Slippy' is included on the soundtrack again. It's cute to see Renton's mum and dad haven't changed his wallpaper in all this time as well. More trains, obviously.

We knew Danny Boyle's sequel was loosely based on Irvine Welsh's Porno novel, so it's good to see there's a bit of X-rated on-screen action. We're not sure who's getting down to it in the amateur video, but Begbie, Becks in hand, looks pretty shocked watching it. Is it him or one of the crew? Guess we'll have to wait until January 27 to find out.

"And with that, Renton had fallen in love." McGregor's hapless character in Trainspotting, pumped on amphetamines, had just fallen for Diane in a club to the sound of New Order's 'Temptation', no idea that she's still at school and living at home with her parents. Moments earlier we'd seen Sick Boy tonguing a pill into someone's mouth. Apart from that, there's not much mention of drugs other than heroin in the original film. Things have changed 20 years later, with Begbie snorting a shit load of coke (the perfect accompaniment for someone with severe self-restraint issues) and seemingly being involved with dealing ecstasy. Sick Boy's got one hell of a cannabis crop on the go as well.

Once a junkie, always a junkie. That's how the saying goes, right? Renton might have kicked his heroin habit in the past, but it looks like smack's back on the menu for him, as shown in a scene of him and Sick Boy with belts tied round their arms. At least that means those oddball 'high' moments return, as Spud finds out.

Here we go again. Renton and his love interests. He got himself into some trouble last time, unknowingly bedding a 15-year-old in Diane, so we reckon this one might send him down a dangerous path, too. In Porno, Nikki's a 25-year-old student who spends her time away from education in a seedy sauna and massage parlour. Welsh has said in the past that the characters would be involved in the vice industry so it makes sense how they would've crossed paths. Could he be cheating on his wife? C'mon Rents, you're better than that.

Poor old Spud. The most hopeless of the bunch, he didn't have the best of times in the original. Remember that scene where he caked girlfriend Gail's parents in his excretion? Nasty. Seeing him with a plastic bag tightly wrapped around his head isn't the easiest of watches and, judging by tears running down Gail's face, he's not in a good way. In comes Renton with a cry of "SPUD!" and a kicking of his door. Stay with us, Spuddy.

What have they been up to? Probably involving drugs and women, if most of the trailer's to go by. Whatever it is, it's meant they've ended up in the woods late at night, faced by a couple of dodgy looking geezers (is that Ray Winstone in the car!?) with shovels involved. Funny that. The first film Danny Boyle, Trainspotting writer John Hodge and Ewan McGregor worked on together was called Shallow Grave. Oh, how things come back around.

"It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking earth." Remember that? Renton's famous, unpatriotic outburst, a vodka-fueled rant about his home country despite being surrounded by plush green hills and breathing in crystalised Highlands air. Corrour in the West Highlands was the spot and it looks like the fellas take a trip down memory lane by returning there. Hopefully Renton's calmed down a bit now he's in his 40s.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!? Renton got smashed by a car at the beginning of the first film, rolling over the car bonnet and then laughing into the driver's eyes (some pain threshold the fella's got). This time he's riding on the roof of a motor before getting flung onto the bonnet and onto the floor. Guess what. He gets back up, stares into the driver's eyes and starts laughing. WHO IS DRIVING THAT CAR AND WHAT'S SO FUNNY!?

Dave Turner will be seeing you at the T2 premiere. Follow him on Twitter