Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Edgar Wright's 'Baby Driver' Trailer Starts The Song Over



As excited as I am for Baby Driver—it is an Edgar Wright movie after all, and he’s yet to do me dirty—I wasn’t super into the first trailer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still drooling over the movie, I just didn’t adore that first look like apparently everyone else in the world. (I didn’t hate it; I simply didn’t love it.) What I do wholeheartedly dig, however, is this new Baby Driver trailer.



There’s just something about this Baby Driver trailer, this use of Golden Earing’s “Radar Love,” that lands a little harder for me. I feel like everyone was super high on SXSW premiere vibes last time and things got blown out of proportion.

It’s nigh impossible to find anything written about Baby Driver that doesn’t mention the rhythm of the editing. Everything, at least according to people who’ve actually seen the movie, syncs up to the soundtrack, the gunshots, the car chases, everything, and that comes through. (The previous trailer felt overly manufactured to me, while this one has a more natural flow where I can see how it works in the actual movie.)

All in all, Baby Driver looks a lot like a gritty 1970s car chase movie filtered through Edgar Wright’s weird and wonderful brain. And that sounds about as perfect as it gets.

Here’s a synopsis if that’s your jam:
A talented, young getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. When he meets the girl of his dreams (Lily James), Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey), he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom.
Not that it actually matters, but I’m incredibly curious to see how Baby Driver performs at the box office. The studio recently moved the release date up, from a relatively isolated August slot to one right in the thick of summer blockbuster season.

That move shows confidence in what they have, but it’s also a big step up in competition. There was little around it before, but now Baby Driver falls smack in the middle of the new Transformers movie and Spider-Man:Homecoming, among others.

There’s a ton of hype for Baby Driver—almost everyone I know is foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog for this movie. But I also live in an insular little movie-centric niche, and that doesn’t always translate. I don’t know if the real world shares this enthusiasm. Movie folk were all similarly tingly for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World before it’s release, only to watch it tank in spectacular fashion. Baby Driver does have more star power and looks to have a wider appeal—Scott Pilgrim is so, so nerdy—so hopefully that helps.

And Edgar Wright is beloved and adored, but really only in certain circles, he’s not a mainstream superstar. Sure, he’s responsible for a handful of legitimate cult classics, but he’s never had a huge theatrical hit. A few have done well, but he’s never had a movie make more than $31 million domestically (Scott Pilgrim), and Hot Fuzz is his highest international earner, at a hair over $80 million.

Obviously, none of this means a damn thing. If the movie hits, it hits. The studio certainly appears to have faith, and I would love nothing more than to see this be the movie that makes Edgar Wright a household name and gives him free reign to do whatever the hell he wants in the future. We’ll have to wait and see.


Baby Driver opens June 28.

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