Three of my main entertainment categories are Formula 1 racing, movies, and Apple, and the new F1 movie happen to fall into all three of those categories, so I'd be remiss not to comment on it after seeing it last night in IMAX. Here's the short version I posted to social media right afterwards, but I've got a bit more to say.

First off, it's impossible for me no to start with the plot, which makes absolutely no sense. For a film that spent a lot of time advertising itself as the most authentic F1 movie ever, I have to say this plot is about as disconnected from reality as you could possibly achieve. Sonny, played by Brad Pitt, doesn't race, he cheats. What's shown in the film isn't "tough racing" it's positively outlandish behavior that would get the driver banned from the sport in real life. I won't spoil things, but basically every time Sonny has an idea for how to improve, the idea is "what if we cheated and endangered the lives of everyone around us?".

Add on top of that a plot that attempts to hit every single cliché you've seen a million times before, and one that seems to think it respects women in the sport while undermining them at every turn. There are maybe 3 women in this film who actually speak and 2 of them are shown as bad at their jobs and only improve once Sonny shows them the way. I don't think was the intention of the filmmakers, but my wife's review after we got out of the theater was, "what the fuck was that?" on this topic.

I've heard from a few F1 fan friends as well say that this movie disrespects the people working in F1 today, as the entire point of the movie is that this 60 year old driver knows more than every single one of them and does every single job for them from driver to chief engineering to calling the in-race strategy for both drivers. Without spoiling the ending, I thought the movie had a good way things could have gone to undo some of this message, but nope, it does something else.

And it has to be mentioned that Brad Pitt has a sorted past. It seems he's improved himself since then, but if the details are all true, it's a pretty tough thing to come back from, even if it seems he's gotten his life together since then. I've written about this before as well, and to sum that post up, I personally can still enjoy art made by people who don't have the best personal lives, but sorted personal issues will absolutely color the art they make for me.

All that said, I did say I liked this movie in the social post, so what's up? Well, outside of the above issues, I still had a good time because director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda are very, very good at filming fast objects going as fast as they can. This movie is visually spectacular, and shows F1 (and racing in general) in a way I have never seen before. The mix of practical cars and CG is brilliantly done, and the racing scenes are genuinely heart pounding. I'm not always one to forgive a poor plot if the visual experience is cool, but I make exceptions when I'm seeing something truly new. This is what the movies are for! Show me something I've never seen before, and F1 delivers in spades. When I reset my expectations to consider the plot pure fantasy and just a vehicle (if you will) to get from one race scene to another, I enjoyed myself more.

I'm glad I watched this in IMAX as well, and I think it elevated this experience quite a bit for me. I have a nice TV and a Vision Pro, but I'm sorry, neither of them come close to the experience of seeing something on a giant screen with thumping sound and a room full of other people experiencing the same thing together. There's a particularly bad crash at one point in the film and the entire audience went dead silent as the sound faded to nothing. The tension in the room was palpable, and it made that moment hit harder than it would have if I was at home. A truly great movie can work on a huge screen in public or a small screen at home, and I don't think F1 is a great movie, but F1 was made to be seen in as big a theater as possible with as many people as possible. As Paul Scheer said on Letterboxd said, this is the sort of movie Nicole Kidman is talking about.

And while I roasted the plot for being stupid, illogical, and unintentionally sexist, I have to admit there were times I was chuckling at jokes and enjoyed the experience as it washed over me.

F1 is a great example of the complexity of art. I think parts of this movie are pretty terrible, but it also showed me some of the coolest racing put to film I've ever seen. The F1 fan in me liked seeming how they integrated the Apex team into the existing grid, too. And people seem to be really enjoying the film, so clearly it's resonating with people.

Its 10-day $300 million dollar box worldwide office, 97% audience score, and 86% Rotten Tomato average show it has wide appeal as well. Summer blockbusters get a whole lot worse than this, so I'm glad that people are at least flocking to see something that'll take them on a ride they've never experienced before. Hopefully it'll also get more people to check out actual Formula 1, which is a sport I really love. Just don't expect every race to be remotely like what you saw in this movie. That said, today's British Grand Prix was an absolute banger. Here's the 8-minute recap if you wanted to get a taste of it.