Baby Driver (2017)

WARNING: SPOILERS PRESENT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE PIECE.


Edgar Wright is a fan of many genres. Every one of his films has included a heavy dose of nods, references, homages, and influences of previous classic films of a particular genre. Baby Driver is no different, lifting heavily from the heist/car chase repertoire. What makes it stand out, however, is the way it utilizes the soundtrack.

It's not quite accurate to call the film a musical, although it's easy to see why some have jokingly done so. It isn't even a movie about music, a la La La Land. Rather, the music drives everything, from the story pacing to the character beats, and especially the action. Everything is meticulously synced up to the soundtrack. We've seen this before from Wright. You can find little examples of this in prior works. Shaun of the Dead's scene in the Winchester pub, beating the zombie bartender to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" is a perfect example. In hindsight, that gag almost seems like practice for Baby Driver, which utilizes everything from gun shots to money being flipped through to car doors slamming in rhythm to the music. We can also look at Scott Pilgrim versus the World as a warm up, seeing as how that film had music central to the plot, characters, and action as well.

Overall, Baby Driver might lack the same amount of depth and number of layers that the perfectly crafted Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy had (especially The World's End), but it is very much as well structured. Wright is a master at setting everything up. It's little things, like Baby's ability to quickly memorize song lyrics and heist plans, which pays off in one of the most perfectly executed jokes in the third act. It's the scene about the bull on television coming back to apply to one of the characters. It's neat little side details, like the whole bit about how the "moment you catch feelings, you catch a bullet," paying off with Doc getting shot within minutes of deciding to help Baby (the first time he displays anything resembling human emotion).

It's also more interesting or significant things. Wright sets up the fallout with Buddy in a clever fashion that pays off with a genuine "twist" of sorts. Buddy seems to be one of the crew at the start that likes Baby, going so much as to share his earbuds, listening to "Brighton Rock" by Queen and being friendly with his driver. By the end, the actions are similar, but everything has been reversed. When he shares Baby's earbuds again, listening this time to Barry White, it is as an enemy. "Brighton Rock" comes back for the final showdown. Nothing gets thrown away. Even the name "Buddy" should have been an indicator. Wright loves playing around with character names as plot clues. By naming a character "Buddy," he is essentially subverting his own trope, which helps keep things fresh, unpredictable, and exciting.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me love Edgar Wright. His works have trained me to watch films in a very different way than I would, say, a Marvel Studios flick. I'm always paying attention. If it weren't Wright, I likely wouldn't have noticed things like the police lights colored clothing in every single washing machine at the laundromat while Baby and Debora were on their date. It serves as a subtle reminder to the audience that despite Baby's best efforts to get out of the heist business, he's still ultimately a criminal and can be discovered and arrested at any point. He might think he's out of the game, but he'll always be a fugitive.

References and subtle connections require a bit more obsessive diving into because of the soundtrack component as well. For the most part, I've been able to pick up on so many little things in his films just by watching them a bunch, whether it's the names of characters pertaining to their fate in Hot Fuzz or the Jackie Chan reference in the drunken action of The World's End. Here, I feel like I have to dive into the soundtrack as well. Doing so highlights the solid nature of the "B-a-b-y baby" repetition correlating to the song, or just how perfectly each song is selected. There are the obvious ones, like "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up" by Barry White, with the line being sung over by Buddy, "I'm never gonna quit. Quitting just ain't my stick." A bit on the nose, sure, but there are many examples of this made more clear by really digging deep into the soundtrack. He's careful to make sure you get it just by watching, of course, but there is enough there that for those who want to obsess over it, there's a bit more material to dig into.

Wright also loves to structure his films almost like visual essays. In pretty much every one of his films, the entire plot is explained in a manner of a few sentences by some character. Ed details everything that is about to happen in Shaun of the Dead while they're drinking in the Winchester post-break up. In Hot Fuzz, Danny basically describes every action that will happen in the end while bugging Nicholas Angel about action movies. None were as clearly stated as in The World's End. It isn't obvious until you re-watch the film, but the entire opening backstory literally spells out the entire plot of it. The same thing happens here. It comes from the briefly featured Griff, who essentially lays out Baby's character arc outright. It's one of those characteristics of Wright's films that train his fans to watch a bit more actively. People want to catch that stuff, but it's often so well woven into the fabric of the dialogue and acting that it can be difficult to suss out what is the "introductory paragraph" of the movie.

Baby Driver also stands out for somewhat similar reasons as Mad Max: Fury Road did: practical effects. In an age where relying on CGI cars for the "crazy stunts" is pretty common, these two films relied on stunt drivers. The rules are pretty clear because they abide by actual, real-world physics. (Mad Max: Fury Road occasionally embellishes this through CGI, but it's still centered around real vehicles doing real stunts.) When you see a car in Baby Driver drift, it's actually doing so in a manner that is possible. That reality-driven action gives everything more weight and makes it more exciting. Watching cars parachute out of an airplane is fun and all, but it's not nearly as exciting as watching one pick up truck push another underneath a tractor trailer before swerving out of it. Wright has always had a good sense of action, building things off of practical stunts and effects, and knowing when and how to properly embellish or utilize CGI. Scott Pilgrim actually used a lot of real stunt work as well, but was cleverly masked by the super stylized look of the comic book/video game nature of that world.

Even more, Wright really lets the audience do some of the work. Sometimes he resorts to cliche exposition dumps, although usually as it is a trope of the genre he's taking from. On the most part, though, he lets a lot of little details go unexplained. Baby Driver probably does that more than any of his past works. We get little hints of backstory or character revelations without having things spelled out in full. Was Bats right about Buddy and Darling? We don't know, but it isn't hard to imagine he is. Then there's the whole reversal of Doc, who reveals a ton just by saying one line of dialogue. "I was in love once," is all he says, and it explains so much without going into detail.

There's a ton of subtle stuff in there. Consider the scene in which Baby pulls out a pink and glittery iPod to play the song "Debora." They don't spell it out, but one gets the idea that he has never actually bought an iPod of his own. His died in the car crash with his parents. Rather, he has inherited iPods from the cars he stole as a younger boy. Those iPods aren't his, which explains why his playlist can go from the John Spencer Blues Explosion to Carla Thomas to Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers to the Damned to Queen to Young MC. He buys music, sure. His record collection probably stacks up with anyone else's in Brooklyn or the Pioneer Valley! But he's generally learning about new music through jacking cars (which is why he didn't know the band was T. Rex and not "trex").

It also applies to character traits. Griff pretty much hits the nail on the head when he describes Baby as someone who thinks he's better than the others. Constantly donning headphones and sunglasses, it's an attempt to place himself outside the goings-on of the thieves themselves. A young man, he clearly thinks of himself as more righteous and innocent, trying to create a mental wall between himself and the "real criminals." Ear buds in and shades on, he almost never seems to respond to anything. He is trying to tune out as a means of emotionally distancing himself.

We can see that change after his heist with Bats, when things start getting more violent and uncomfortable for him. When Bats goes in for some gum, he overhears Buddy and Darling talk about killing Bats like Buddy killed someone else. Baby doesn't have headphones or sunglasses at this point, and we can see him wince. At this point, he cannot continue to separate himself from the others. There's nothing to block out this world around him anymore, and it clearly impacts him, being a decent human being and all.

Of course, none of this happens without consequences. While Buddy is wrong about what exactly "facing the music" means when he threatens Baby, our protagonist does suffer consequences. He ultimately is arrested and spends several years in prison before getting the chance to live the life he actually wants. Griff was right that Baby can't wash his hands in the sink, and he was right that he'd eventually have blood on them! Yet he is able to eventually shed that life through his time in the clink. While in prison, there are even a couple of shots of him washing cars or mopping the floor. He is literally cleaning something while metaphorically scrubbing his past away. That he does get a harsh sentence initially and is able to get out in a reasonable amount of time gives us even more reason to cheer on our hero. There is the philosophical debate to be had about the ethics of doing bad things to horrible people doing worse things to others, but Baby further earns his happy ending by surrendering and doing his time. He faces the music, showing that he is a more morally upstanding person than the other crew members, who all died rather than give up their way of life.

And then, of course, there is the technical side of things. Wright builds off of things we have also seen previously in Shaun of the Dead when we see that early, complex, impressively choreographed and lengthy one-shot. If it's not longer than Shaun's trip to the corner store, it's certainly more insane! The amount of stuff happening in the sequence is mind-boggling. He does another one-shot that starts near the ground level as Baby enters his home building, then the crane lifts up three floors and waits from him to rush up those three stories and enter his apartment. There are a number of rotating shots and other angles that make Baby Driver a interesting film to watch on a technical basis.

Unique, well-structured, brilliantly paced and acted, Baby Driver is absolutely one of the best films of the year. Edgar Wright hasn't exactly had an amazing track record at the box office, despite only putting out critically acclaimed and obsessively adored films. (His previous four films are rated 92%, 91%, 81%, and 89% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes, yet they grossed $13, $23, $31, and $26 million at the box office. Respectable, given that Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End all grossed more than their budgets, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World only earned back about half its budget.) For such well regarded films, Wright hasn't quite been able to break into the mainstream. (Still cursing Marvel Studios for not giving us the Edgar Wright vision of Ant-Man we so very much deserved.)

While I'm not sure Baby Driver is better than The World's End, a film that is so much more layered and thematically substantial, it's very much at home in Wright's resume. It stands out a bit more because of how well everything is synced to the music. Sony Pictures seems to think they have a chance for a bit of a hit on their hands. They've really made a huge marketing campaign, with commercials and billboards all over the place (certainly, it's the most advertised Edgar Wright film to date). They also pushed the released date up several weeks to release in time for the 4th of July holiday weekend.

As a long time fan of Wright, it's always a bit tricky to see his films individually, and not retrospectively examine where it fits in with his previous films. There's a lot of Baby Driver that you can trace back to Shaun of the Dead or Scott Pilgrim. It makes sense he gravitated towards the later when you hear him talk about how he had the idea for his current feature for over two decades. While not thematically connected to any of those films (outside maybe the basic plot point of someone having to take responsibility for their life), each seems to build up to this. It's absolutely worth going back and watching all of them, then re-watching Baby Driver as well. Many might deride Wright's flicks as being too much of genre flicks, but they're so smart and well-crafted, even non-fans of the genre can appreciate them. I'm sure I'll see the film many more times and develop more thoughts on it.

The bottom line is that these are the kinds of films Hollywood studios need to invest more into now: unique ideas and original properties from writer/directors with a clear creative decision (that doesn't come from the studio itself for the sake of franchising) that trains the audience to be more active viewers, treating them as intelligent beings capable of interpreting things and not needing too much hand-holding. They aren't as lucrative as the mindless, thematically underwhelming world-building exercises that, say, Marvel Studios puts out, but something like Baby Driver really stands out as something entirely fresh and almost a revelation. These are the films that make people want to become filmmakers themselves.

And, oh yeah, good luck if you try to resist buying the soundtrack.

REDUCTIVE RATING: Possibly my favorite film of the year, or really, since Mad Max: Fury Road.

Wonder Woman (2017)

WARNING: SPOILERS


Wonder Woman is a fun superhero film that actually has some depth to it, and could very well be the saving grace for the critically panned DC cinematic universe. It'd be hard to blame anyone for worrying about it going in, given that Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Suicide Squad were (at best) a mixed bag and (at worst) a hot mess. Wonder Woman arrives at the perfect time, not just in the general social context of 2017 (a world that has seen reproductive rights for women under assault, women athletes fighting for fair pay, GamerGaters waging harassment campaigns against women critics, and a President who has bragged and joked about assaulting and accosting young women). It comes at a perfect time in the DCCU as well. Snyder and Ayer attempted to make something different than their Marvel Studios competition, but those are directors that tend to be driven by testosterone and an obsession over the ideal male form.

Indeed, Wonder Woman winds up standing out from most superhero flicks. It offers a much needed respite from muscular dudes punching each other and dictating what is "right." She actually winds up fulfilling the role that Superman is supposed to play in being positive, loving, compassionate, and embodying all that is good and pure.The action in the film is good, which is an important aspect to a genre film, but it is the deeper themes that make it pop. As a character isolated from the world, there is an innocence to Diana that has been absent from the genre since Sam Raimi's Spider-man. Her innocence and ignorance to the outside world is the lens through which we, as the audience, get to see ourselves. Through the superhero genre, the film is surprisingly introspective.

With a villain like Ares, there was much room to tackle substantial themes about the nature of mankind or war. That he drives the film and serves as the primary foil, yet isn't actually forcing anyone to do anything, is what makes that story compelling and meaningful. As he tells Diana, he simply puts an idea into people's minds, and they do the rest. He isn't forcing anyone to create weapons of mass destruction or to go to war, yet they do. At the center of this conflict is the notion of whether people are inherently good or inherently bad. Diana was raised to believe that men were good, but that Ares corrupted their souls. She must confront the fact that her worldview - previously black and white (good/evil) - is actually more complex than that. Steve Trevor himself is a good person who, throughout the entire film, lies, kills, steals, and smuggles. He allows a situation to unfold which destroys a nearby town because he looks at the bigger picture. He sacrifices the town, in his mind, for the sake of the world. This enrages Diana, but in the end, he commits the ultimate act of selflessness, sacrificing himself to destroy the gas bombs, for the same reason.

Ares isn't just speaking to Diana when he informs her that he hasn't forced anyone to do anything. This is a line that should cut the audience as well. In these superhero films, the idea of "good" and "evil" are pretty cut and dry.  The "evil" perpetrated by villains might be large in scope, but is small in focus. There is always the central point. Take down the bad guy; you save the world. Centering the film in World War I is thematically smart here. It doesn't just provide a slightly different visual reference than Captain America: First Avenger (let's be honest, the look of WWI here and WWII there isn't that different); it allows that greater point that we as the audience know this isn't the end of war, and that Ares isn't the cause of it. When Steve Trevor describes gas weapons as "more terrible than anything you can ever imagine," we in the audience can immediately think, "Oh, no, it can get much, much worse!" We are aware of fire bombs, nuclear missiles, hydrogen bombs, and all manner of more deadly weapons of mass destruction. We also recognize the naivety of the characters who refer to WWI as the "war to end all wars." And in the end, when Ares is stopped and the war winds down, we know there is another war on the horizon. More to the point, if WWI ultimately ended because Wonder Woman brought down Ares, it would be reasonably safe to assume WWII ultimately began completely, earnestly because of mankind.

All of that speaks to the nature of man and war. Ares may have put ideas for weapons in the minds of people like Dr. Poison or General Ludendorf, but he didn't force them to do anything. The engaged in war on their own. Granted, this theme gets a bit undercut when Diana decides to show mercy to Dr. Poison. This was a great moment, highlighting the strength of Wonder Woman's character (empathy and compassion), but it does suggest that perhaps yes, she was a good person before she was corrupted. They don't go into her backstory, which is actually a brilliant decision. Horribly scarred, we are left to guess why she works for Ludendorf or even feels some allegiance to him. Perhaps the best scene of her story is when the undercover Captain Trevor compliments her and tells her that she is worth so much more. Wearing a mask to cover her scars, she conveys shockingly much through her eyes. One gets the impression that she is scarred because she has been mistreated by the German military, or has been a victim of this war. For a moment, it appears as though she is touched to feel genuinely appreciated - that is, until Diana walks in and Trevor's attention is drawn away to the beautiful Amazon. That moment, too, suggests much for the character. It is not hard to imagine that she is immediately made to feel inferior: a scarred, damaged woman, ignored when a gorgeous, slender, perfect woman appears. This is a person who presumably has every reason to be bitter at the world around her (arguably, the world of men - as it is men that are conducting the war effort that possibly damaged her, and it is men who seem to value women almost exclusively on appearances).

The end gets a bit thematically muddled. After highlighting that men were warring independently of Ares, it does ultimately end with his defeat. They show him whispering ideas to Dr. Poison and to Ludendorf, and presumably he secretly prolonged the war serving as a member of the British government as well, so what exactly is the cause of the war? On one hand, it's kind of brilliant to set it in WWI because it defies some superhero expectations. Normally, we know a villain is the source of the bad that happens. Here, the "bad" is war in general. Yet we also know that ending WWI does not stop war in general. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, et cetera, are all on the horizon after we see Ares brought down. We also know that nationalism was the driving force for WWI and prior wars. Yet once he is brought down, everyone stops fighting. Is the implication here that he did instigate the war and force people to do things? Or is it that men can be corrupted by all manner of forces, not just divine? If it weren't Ares compelling the German soldiers to fight, it was their ambitious, power-obsessed leaders. If that is the case, then was Diana correct in the first place that men are inherently good unless otherwise corrupted - by gods, by governments, by society? And if that is what it is implying, then what was the point of her having to come to terms with the idea that people are actually quite complex? That people aren't really "black and white" like that? That it isn't that we're "inherently" good, but that we have the capacity for good?

Either way, there are other themes present in the film as well, and it is refreshing to have a superhero flick that actually attempts something a bit more meaningful than the basic "with great power there must also come great responsibility" tagline. That is certainly part of it, to be sure, but it is hardly the only thing. Wonder Woman also balances the tone between the seriousness of those elements with the fun action and well-placed comedic relief that makes the superhero genre entertaining. For a film that is nearly two and a half hours, it's also paced well. It doesn't often feel like it's dragging outside the opening exposition dump, which is a prerequisite of the superhero film. The scenes in the present, which bookend the film, serve only to remind us that the character is part of a larger universe. To that end, it feels completely unnecessary; it doesn't hurt the film, though. Otherwise, the movie is entirely contained within itself, lacking much of the "universe building" that plagued previous DC installments.

The very existence of the film is something of a tent-pole event for feminism. The most popular female comic character in her own solo feature directed by a woman is itself a symbol. As for whether the content of the film is particularly feminist, well, that's going to vary depending on who you ask. It is perhaps unfair to expect it to mean something greater when all they are trying to do is make a fun, entertaining blockbuster film that adequately adapts a beloved character to the big screen. We shouldn't expect deeper meaning here than we do in, say, a Spider-man film. That baggage of "meaning something more" is unique here because, again, female character/female director is a rarity in the genre, and in Hollywood as a whole. They set out to make a good superhero film, and that's exactly what they've done.

Internal messages are a bit of a mixed bag. Some could easily look at it as very much substantially a feminist film: a woman saves the world from a war started and conducted by men in which their masculinity is ultimately the driving force, the savior is from an island of women warriors who are also compassionate and nurture life as much as they fight to defend it, an overqualified heroine is rarely listened to or respect and constantly has to call the patriarchy out on their bullshit, and all saving the day by exhibiting the more "feminine" traits of love, empathy, and compassion in the end. (My personal favorite quasi-feminist moment came with the discussion about the watch. When Captain Trevor steps out of the bath, he thinks Diana is asking him about his penis. She's actually talking about his watch. He explains that it is what he needs to know when to wake up and go to work and all of these other things. Diana responds, "You let that little thing tell you what to do?" Of course, I might be reading way too much into this. I got the impression that they do a switch here. He thinks she's talking about his junk, but she's talking about the watch. This leads the audience to laugh because of the misunderstanding. A relatively solid joke, but now we're thinking about his junk. Then she makes the comment about that "little thing" dictating what he does. I would argue the subtext is that they have swapped, where he's still on the watch, but her comment also refers to his dick. You know, men "think with their dicks"? I'm probably alone in taking it this way, but I thought that was pretty funny.)

Conversely, people might not see that much feminism outside those very basic premises. The ultimate conceit is that men are not to be blamed for their actions (they are good unless otherwise corrupted). Diana is freed from her temporary bondage by Ares after she sees Steve Trevor sacrifice himself (so she's driven to success by the actions of a man). Some have criticized the film for sticking to a traditional male gaze of the character, and her physical beauty is frequently framed in a manner that highlights it. From Steve Trevor criticizing her new outfit as being "too distracting" (because she's too beautiful) to one of his buddies asking for a photograph of her because she's so pretty, the film doesn't exactly do much to knock the objectification of Wonder Woman. These are all presented as little, harmless jokes. Even more, the origin story involving Zeus as her secret father makes some sense in context of this universe, but isn't exactly on point. Wonder Woman's origin has always been strange and has changed, but having her be the literal daughter of Zeus rather than a creation of the gods (or even being altered to be a child of a goddess) still ultimately adds this layer of male-driven action. She wouldn't be powerful without the male Zeus.

Probably one of the strangest moments is when Diana literally gets distracted and goes, "oooh, a baby!" It's easy to crap on this moment when viewing the film through the feminist lens, but I'd argue this is more just clumsy film-making than anything worse. I think the point of this scene was to two primary things. The subtext is that she is an Amazonian princess, a people that are nurturing, compassionate beings. It was perhaps meant to highlight that side of her character. On the surface, it was probably meant more as just a little joke, given that she had never seen a baby before. They don't have those on Themyscira, remember. She was the only child. Trevor says, "That one isn't made from clay," as he drags her away. I think this was meant more as a joke about never seeing a baby more than anything, but it isn't handled super well, and they don't really go too into it.

It might not be entirely accurate to argue Wonder Woman is itself a feminist film as much as it might be to argue it's more of a "feminine" film. It still engages in a number of the more "masculine" traits of its counterparts in the superhero genre, but the compassion, empathy, and desire to protect, mixed with almost more of a ballet-style of combat, make this a superhero film that maybe breaks out from the boy club in more subtle ways. Granted, I'm a CIS, straight, white dude, so you have to take everything I say on the subject with a grain of salt. (I don't think this disqualifies me from having a valid opinion on the matter, but having a life from a male perspective means I probably see things a bit differently than women, so I will refer to them for more insight on the topic.)

All in all, it isn't perfect, but it does enough things really well, and different from the rest of the superhero crop. By virtue of being self-contained and focused on the character herself, it provides fans with what they've been craving from DC movies for years now. It's strange that we had to wait until after Suicide Squad and fifteen separate Marvel movies to get this, but Wonder Woman lives up to its long-awaited hype. After three films that massively disappointed fans, it turns out that it is a woman director who could breathe actual life in this otherwise male-dominated spectacle that is the DC cinematic universe. And, of course, it is nice to finally get a recognizable musical anthem associated with a character.

Just as an aside, I do think it is important to acknowledge Patty Jenkins as the director, but not ignore that the bulk of the creative team was male. The story was conceived and written by a team of men, and it was based on comics largely written and drawn by men. Wonder Woman might be the most famous fictional female character, but it has been a rare occasion in which women have been given creative control over her. It was a bit strange seeing the "special thanks" part of the credits and seeing nothing but male comic book writers and artists. They are all great creators, of course, but it is a little jarring to remember that there have something like four women writers to pen a Wonder Woman series (a character that has been in existence for 76 years).  A solo Wonder Woman feature is great, but progress doesn't stop with its existence. It does little good if women still can't get their feet in the door for writing and directing gigs.

REDUCTIVE RATING:  Really good!   (But, if you were one of those dudes who complained about those select few shows for people who identify as women, you were going to hate this movie no matter what - and also, grow up.)