F1: What Hollywood Needs to Learn From the Brad Pitt Racing Movie

Warning: This portion contains spoilers for F1.

Well here’s thing I wasn’t expecting to accidental earlier this weekend: the Formula One movie is 1 of the champion films released truthful acold this year. 2025 has had immoderate coagulated hits, specified arsenic Sinners, The Assessment, 28 Years Later, and Final Destination Bloodlines (really!), and present we tin adhd F1 to the list. Top Gun: Maverick manager Joseph Kosinski is backmost with yet different nutrient and potatoes workplace crowd-pleaser starring an aging movie prima who proves he’s Still Got It™ via a fast-moving conveyance arsenic metaphor for masculine self-actualization, this clip replacing combatant jets with, you guessed it, Formula One contention cars. It’s the benignant of movie that knows precisely what it wants to beryllium and executes it with attraction and precision.

Let’s delve into the film’s spoilery details and however F1 proves that Kosinski is 1 of the champion blockbuster directors presently working.

A Fine-Tuned Machine

What makes F1 being arsenic bully arsenic it is thing of a astonishment is that it’s fundamentally 1 elephantine advertisement. Yes, it’s telling a communicative astir Brad Pitt arsenic Sonny Hayes, a has-been Formula One racer who gets a 2nd changeable astatine glory decades aboriginal arsenic portion of a failing F1 team, but fixed however progressive the real-life FIA is successful the movie (Ferrari F1 racer Lewis Hamilton adjacent has a producing recognition connected it), it’s hard to reason that trying to widen the entreaty of the Formula One World Championship isn’t 1 of the superior motives for the movie getting made successful the archetypal place. In the aforesaid mode that Top Gun: Maverick is simply a portion of slickly-produced Air Force propaganda, F1 is simply a $200 cardinal dollar branding workout for the world’s premiere racing league.

That said, 1 of my cardinal beliefs is that you tin marque a bully movie retired of anything, and F1 proves that and past some. In the aforesaid mode that likewise firm productions similar Lord and Miller’s The LEGO Movie oregon Greta Gerwig’s Barbie transcended their cynical origins arsenic glorified artifact commercials by hiring astute creatives to pb the complaint (hell, this is the Transformers brand’s full thing), F1 sees Kosinski and Maverick screenwriter Ehren Kruger jumping backmost into the mode that brought them truthful overmuch occurrence connected their erstwhile effort: the proverbial “dad movie,” with a disciplined directorial benignant and 1 of the fewer remaining bankable stars serving arsenic a awesome to the assemblage that they’re successful for the benignant of aged schoolhouse movie-making sensibility we utilized to instrumentality for granted.

At a clip erstwhile galore large fund movies are, to bargain a operation from Darth Vader, choking connected their aspirations, it’s refreshing to beryllium successful beforehand of F1 and consciousness similar everyone progressive was simply trying to marque the champion movie they could. There are nary misguided franchise ambitions, premature sequel teases, nostalgic callbacks to amended movies from years ago, distracting metatextual conceits, oregon a consciousness that the movie is compromised by committee. It’s besides not seeking to outsmart the genre it’s moving with, thing that’s plagued caller films similar Glass Onion oregon Joker: Folie à Deux. F1 is astir arsenic classical a sports play arsenic you tin get, conscionable with outstanding execution. The operation of unpretentious script, charismatic cast, fantastic racing sequences, and Kosinski’s crisp storytelling instincts guarantee that the movie ever stays, well… on track.

If each the pieces enactment well, it doesn’t substance if you person nary erstwhile concern successful Formula One (I didn’t!). F1 is incredibly engaging amusement either way. In galore ways it’s reminiscent of different Pitt film: 2011’s Moneyball, which turned enactment meetings astir shot statistic into riveting play by sheer unit of volition and beardown nuts and bolts craft. F1 conveys what newbies request to cognize astir the athletics without derailing the communicative astatine hand, and that’s a rarer feat than you’d deliberation successful today’s cinematic landscape.

F1 Ending Explained

If you guessed that F1 ends with a precocious stakes Formula One race, past springiness yourself a golden star. After being recruited to flailing F1 squad APX GP by proprietor and aged person Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), Sonny Hayes finds that the squad is simply a catastrophe down the scenes. With lone fractional a season, oregon 9 races, to crook things around, Sonny butts heads with APX’s young superstar Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and squad method manager Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon). After galore ups and downs, including Sonny convincing Kate to alteration her car plan to facilitate a much assertive racing benignant and a near-fatal clang connected Joshua’s part, each roads pb to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the last contention and the team’s past accidental for glory. No points for guessing that the squad wins the race.

F1 is astir arsenic straightforward arsenic large movies get nowadays, but that winds up being a important asset. With truthful galore of today’s blockbusters feeling half-formed oregon someway embarrassed by their genre expectations, F1 sticking to normal proves that making these kinds of movies doesn’t person to beryllium truthful complicated. Everything the movie needs to marque the last contention a cathartic infinitesimal for the assemblage is perfectly established: the precocious stakes for everyone involved, Sonny’s tendency to recapture the feeling of “flying” that helium describes to Kate aft they commencement a romanticist relationship, Joshua accepting that his ego is much astatine responsibility for his failures than his teammates, the assemblage wanting to spot APX committee subordinate Peter Banning (Tobias Menzies) enactment successful his spot aft sabotaging the squad for idiosyncratic gain, and immoderate genuinely exceptional camerawork and editing.

That’s not to accidental that movies shouldn’t effort to enactment their ain spins connected formulas oregon propulsion successful twists connected bushed premises. Of people they should. But uncovering a caller mode to efficaciously prosecute the assemblage wrong the boundaries of genre anticipation volition ever beryllium much satisfying than trying to beryllium clever and flouting those expectations with chaotic abandon. Understanding that rule has been Kosinski’s top spot crossed his career, from 2010’s cult favourite Tron: Legacy, to the underrated 2013 archetypal sci-fi introduction Oblivion, to the cardinal dollar occurrence of 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. His adjacent champion spot is getting retired of his ain mode and making his sanction connected reliable trade implicit flashy sensibilities. Not that we don’t emotion our idiosyncratic auteurs similar M. Night Shyamalan oregon Guillermo del Toro, but coagulated journeyman enactment is conscionable arsenic respectable and hard to really propulsion off.

We’ll spot however audiences instrumentality to Kosinski’s latest, but arsenic we caput into a summertime movie play acceptable to beryllium dominated by dinosaurs and superheroes, F1 stands arsenic 1 of the year’s champion surprises truthful far. Hollywood’s struggles with accumulation mismanagement, VFX prime control, and fatally flawed franchise attempts are well-documented, but movies similar F1 amusement that you tin inactive present prime amusement wrong the system. You simply request a manager who knows what their movie is and what it’s not, and takes that mindset each the mode to the decorativeness line.

Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You tin travel his fixations connected Twitter.