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Ben X

Baby Driver (Boss Baby Successor)

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There's a great interview with Edgar Wright on a recent episode of Adam Buxton's podcast where he tells a totally incredible story that, to my knowledge, he's never told anywhere else. A long time ago, before he was directing films, one of Wright's first jobs in TV was as a researcher on a short-lived British show called Beadle's Hot Shots; this was one of those clip shows where people would send in their home movies in exchange for cash. His job was to watch all the video tapes that came in and pick the best ones. But in this interview, Wright admitted that at least half the clips they screened, he secretly made himself, and 'submitted' as someone else. He got them to send the cheques to his dad. 

 

I thought about this story when I saw that sequence of Baby (I won't call him Miles) at his music-making desk. The stuff with the cassettes struck me as maybe the most earnest moment in the film. Interesting that it's tapes, too, and not a computer; I thought of Wright's earliest attempts at films, made with VCR 'crash' editing. Lot of crashing in this film. Also interesting that Baby's never seen using a computer, even though his collection of iPods suggests he must have had one once. Perhaps vinyl records and drum machines just make for better visuals than even a vintage iMac could match. The sight of that big old iPod box did something to my heart, though.

 

I liked this movie. It has actually given me a lot to think about, which I wasn't expecting. I thought it was a little slow in parts, especially the early moments between Baby and Deb. Perhaps that's mostly because Debora's character is a little under-developed. The last half hour is dynamite, but the ending is a strange sort of fudge. (I suppose it is implausible that Baby would get out of prison after five years of parole, but it's probably also one of the least implausible things in this movie. Do people still rob banks??)

 

We've had versions of Baby Driver before. I can imagine a version of this movie from the 70s which would end with Baby and Debora going out in a hail of bullets. In the 80s, somebody would be so impressed by Baby's tapes that at the end he'd be propelled into a new career as a pop music idol. In the 90s, this would be Natural Born Killers. And in the 00s, the twist is that the whole movie is the visualised internal psychodrama of a Baby who was crippled as a child in that car accident (his real parents survived; his dad is Kevin Spacey and Debora is his mum).

 

You could also read this film as being a sort of parable about the true nature of the millennial generation. They are tied into jobs they can't escape, but they tend to be really good at those jobs. They're under-appreciated by the Baby Boomers who are pulling all the strings, but they also get scorned by the older Gen X-ers who see them as pretentious, self-regarding, and somehow also too safe. They are happy to do creative work with little expectation of getting paid for it. And, for all the contemptuous rhetoric about 'snowflakes' and 'safe spaces', they get shit done in a way that balances their own dreams with an idea of what is good for society.

 

…there's a thinkpiece in this somewhere, I just know it. 

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Good point about the metaphor for millennials! Very apt, including the mildness that the babyboomer 'Spacey' shows at the end: stern but not unkind.

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Look, I forget his in-movie name. Don't give me grief on this or I'll fling you a Monsters Inc. line.

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Did anyone else find Kevin Spacey's about-face at the end really fast/unearned/weird?  In a minute he goes from "sorry I can't help you" to "I loved somebody, once.  I'll die for you"

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5 hours ago, TheLastBaron said:

 

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Did anyone else find Kevin Spacey's about-face at the end really fast/unearned/weird?  In a minute he goes from "sorry I can't help you" to "I loved somebody, once.  I'll die for you"

 

 

Yeah I remember being puzzled by that when it happened

especially when just a bit earlier doesn't he threaten to go after Debra or Baby's family or something if he won't do that last heist? Or does he just threaten Baby? Either way!

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There's A LOT to like in this movie, but on the other hand even most children's cartoons are way better than this at storytelling these days. The core idea of the movie is really cool, I think it's pretty accurate to say that it's an expansion of that music video Patrick linked on the previous page, but in my opinion they didn't really manage to expand that to a good full story, so the whole movie kind of ends up feeling shallow. It's even a lot shallower than La La Land, to compare to another recent musical. But still, I can say that I liked it more than an average movie.

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Here's the opening car chase for anyone who isn't going to go see it in theaters again, but wants to relive that great opening.

 

 

There's lots of great audio/visual matching going on there. First time around I didn't notice that John Bernthals shooting in the bank is timed to the music. Or that the wall blocks whizzing past the camera are in sync with the snare drum at 3:05 and 5:11. The editing here is *fantastic*, but also some great timed stuff, like when they switch the cars at the end. That's one continuous shot where they have 10 seconds to switch places and get into the new car and close the doors before the song ends. :tup:

 

I've watchd this opening sequence 10 times now. It's just so much fun!

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I am really impressed by the deep dive some people are doing on this film but I didn't see any of it in the film itself. I found it shallow and devoid of character development. The filming and the editing is fantastic but in terms of anything else it goes right next to 'Sucker Punch' - pretty, well choreographed, but utterly devoid of anything else.

 

I am starting to feel like Wright needs Simon Pegg to breathe some life into his characters or else you just have Scott Pilgrim and this film.

 

None of it was bad, but with each film he makes I am less interested in seeing 'Written and Directed by' being solely attributed to Wright

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Don't get me wrong, I thought it was mostly shallow and devoid of character development. I just loved it nonetheless because of its endless amounts of charm. How affecting you'll find that charm will differ, I guess! :)

 

I don't think just the technical aspect of the music-matching and choreography would've worked as well for me without the charming cast, humour, directing. Which is why I wouldn't slot this anywhere near a Zack Snyder movie, which I typically find completely devoid of any charm..

 

The movie did seem like it was trying for some subtext about identity during the last act, with all the behind-the-nickname reveals, but it never actually seemed to go anywhere. With the the whole movie directed and shot to very rigid music lengths, I imagine the structure of the story was very rigid after they started shooting. So there's no room for the kind of character building Simon and Nick are so good at when they just improvise whole scenes.

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20 hours ago, BigJKO said:

Don't get me wrong, I thought it was mostly shallow and devoid of character development. I just loved it nonetheless because of its endless amounts of charm. How affecting you'll find that charm will differ, I guess! :)

 

Yeah, I really hated 'Baby', if they had replaced him with another actor I might have liked the whole film a bit more. You needed someone with the charisma of someone like Michael B Jordan to pull him off.

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8 hours ago, twmac said:

 

Yeah, I really hated 'Baby', if they had replaced him with another actor I might have liked the whole film a bit more. You needed someone with the charisma of someone like Michael B Jordan to pull him off.

I'm taking that example way to literally, but if you took Baby and replaced him with Wallace from The Wire the movie would be completely different for me.  They both play a good-hearted kid that falls on hard times and gets mixed up in some bad shit, but the difference is that for me Baby doesn't (and isn't meant to) fulfill the role of being a real person.  Baby for me was basically just like the cars in the film, he was there to get the movie from point A to point B and keep it engaging in-between.  He was somewhere between a very thin character and a vehicle, but he wasn't there as a human being. Having him be a shy awkward kid who spends all his time in his room making beats worked for that better for me than if he were more interesting or outgoing.  I didn't love the film though so I could be totally wrong!

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Interesting, because what you are describing is what I don't like about Baby.

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