As some walk away from the British F1 GP this weekend disappointed as their favorite drivers fall foul of bad strategic decisions, others come away disappointed by the release of the trailer for the F1 Brad Pitt vehicle.
That’s not to say everyone is going to be disappointed, there seems to be a lot to like here, but we’ll leave you to your own judgment — here’s the trailer in full:
That name is still bad
Beyond the seemingly complete lack of creativity of the ‘F1’ title of the movie, there are also some weird moments in the trailer that show it might not be planted firmly at the feet of the Formula One faithful. Obviousness like “we need to be fast in the turns” (Obviously, Brad, F1 is almost entirely about ‘the turns’, it’s not the Indy 500), and “we need to build our car for combat” (meaning what, Brad? you’re not allowed to crash into your competitors, this isn’t BTCC) makes up a large part of the dialogue of the trailer, putting a dampener on the movie about a sport that some of us love.
There also looks to be some very cool stuff in the trailer — the driving portions. It seems visceral, bringing the audience as close to the action as possible. There are echoes of 1971’s Le Mans, starring Steve McQueen, especially when you remember they’ve both been filmed on location of the real races over which they tell their narratives.
We’ve also gotten a much better look at the movie’s stars in their roles, most notably Brad Pitt in his race suit. Javier Bardem, replete with a ‘rich man’ suit and sunglasses makes an appearance, although the deuteragonist played by Damson Idris only appears on screen for a moment.
The movie is supposed to tell the story of an aging F1 driver, Pitt, coming back to F1 to race for the fictional APXGP team, and uses real teams and races to tell its narrative. It’s coming in Summer 2025, and it's going to be available to stream on Apple TV+ after its rounds at theaters. Whether it's good or not, only time will tell — but until then we have the rest of this year’s F1 season to enjoy.
Oh, and the trailer.
