Annapurna Pictures has released the first Vice trailer for Oscar-winning The Big Short filmmaker Adam McKay's highly anticipated film about former Vice President Dick Cheney. The film chronicles Cheney's political career and the reverberations from his actions that we're still feeling today, with Christian Bale wholly transforming himself to play the political figure. Amy Adams plays his wife, Lynn Cheney, while Steve Carell plays Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell plays President George W. Bush.

Honestly, just go ahead and give this film all the awards already. As impressive as Bale's physical transformation into Cheney is, his subtle and nuanced performance is even more so. Watching Cheney slyly dupe a chicken-eating Dubya into taking control of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government--and by extension the world--is both pure joy and unnervingly close to how the actual conversation probably played out. If nothing else, McKay gets bonus points for including the time that Cheney accidentally "peppered" a good friend of his in the face with quail shot, which is teased in the trailer as one of many, many stranger-than-fiction stories from Cheney's life and career.

Watch the Vice trailer below. The film also stars Tyler Perry, Bill Pullman, Lily Rabe, Allison Pill, LisaGay Hamilton, Justin Kirk, Eddie Marsan, and Shea Whigham. Vice hits theaters on December 21st.

Here's the official synopsis for Vice:

VICE explores the epic story about how a bureaucratic Washington insider quietly became the most powerful man in the world as Vice-President to George W. Bush, reshaping the country and the globe in ways that we still feel today.

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Photo by Greig Fraser/Annapurna Pictures

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