F1: Brad Pitt’s Movie Promises Epic, Authentic or Hollywood-esque?

“F1”: The Movie That Promises to Revolutionize the World of Motorsport

Director Joseph Kosinski, known for his work on “Top Gun: Maverick”, ventured into the world of Formula 1 to create a film that promises to be a box office success. With the help of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, the production seeks to offer an authentic and exciting experience for motorsport fans. The film, titled “F1”, stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a retired driver who returns to competition. Damson Idris joins the cast as Joshua Pearce, a young and promising driver. The plot focuses on the fictional APX GP team and the challenges faced by the drivers. The key to the project is authenticity. The creators set out to “thread the needle” between the realism of Formula 1 and the appeal of a summer blockbuster. To achieve this, they were granted unprecedented access to Formula 1. The APX GP cars participated in the formation lap at the 2023 and 2024 British Grand Prix, alongside the real cars. The immersion didn’t stop on the track. APX GP hospitality units were installed in the paddock and a complete team garage was built in the pit lane, integrating the fictional team into the spectacle. In addition, authentic shots of the paddock with real drivers, recognizable to “Drive to Survive” fans, were included. The film has been advised by Lewis Hamilton at every stage of the process. The Ferrari driver, who also appears in the film, contributed his experience to ensure the greatest possible precision. Hamilton also helped Pitt and Idris in their training for the driving scenes, using cutting-edge camera technology to create impactful racing scenes. The film has also sparked Hamilton’s creative interest, who is involved in the production through his company Dawn Apollo. In addition, he is working on several scripts for future films.

Description: Brad Pitt stars in the upcoming F1 movie, which will be released in US cinemas on June 27. The film seeks to attract an audience unfamiliar with Formula 1. In the first test screenings, only 18% of American viewers had prior knowledge of the sport, compared to 50% in the United Kingdom. The creators have received positive feedback from these screenings.

This is the highest-rated movie I’ve had in terms of recommending it to your friends. It was above 80%. I’ve never had a movie that people recommend to their friends… ‘definitely recommend’ with 80%. It’s incredible.

Jerry Bruckheimer

The film faces the expectations of other Bruckheimer films, such as “Days of Thunder” and other productions like “Top Gun”, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Armageddon”, which generates great anticipation. The film hopes to attract new fans to the sport, although not everything might sit well with the most dedicated followers. Carlos Sainz, at the New York premiere, suggested to F1 fans that they keep an open mind about Hollywood films. While the creators made every effort to make the film as close to real life as possible, Hayes’ return to competition after three decades is where Hollywood’s creative license comes into play. This aspect is handled well, but beyond that, the film aims to take the F1 action shown every Sunday during a race and transport it to a movie theater. Multiple sources who were in the room when the drivers had their own screening before the Monaco Grand Prix, said that the group burst into laughter at one of the crash scenes, filmed in a wet race at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, which is supposed to be a critical moment of great drama and tension. While that moment may seem exaggerated on screen, the entire sequence was borrowed from two real-life events: the Formula 3 driver Alex Peroni’s air accident at the same corner in 2019, followed by the infamous fire that Romain Grosjean managed to escape in the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Everything you’ve seen is real. Everything you’ve seen has happened. It’s not fake. It doesn’t come from another dimension. That means a goal we had was really to feel the authenticity of what we are showing the world.

Jerry Bruckheimer

The film also uses real images from Formula 1 to frame Hayes’ story: Martin Donnelly’s terrible accident at the 1990 Spanish Grand Prix, which left the driver lying on the track. The accident has been moved to 1993, and Donnelly was replaced by Pitt’s character. The accident is presented as the one that ended his promising career and led him to decades in the racing wilderness. That story explains some of Hayes’ traits, including a pre-race ritual he does before getting in the car, and also helps to form the rougher edges of his personality. A potentially problematic aspect for a sports fan could be how Hayes races once he finally returns to Formula 1: in one race, he intentionally causes three different safety car periods in collisions with other drivers to benefit his teammate Pearce. When asked in the F1 media briefing if there was any concern about the representation of a character who flagrantly broke the rules, Bruckheimer said: “We never wanted Sonny to cheat. We wanted to find out how far you can go to get to the limit.” Giving Hayes those rougher edges undoubtedly helped incorporate the Formula 1 grill. Red Bull was initially reluctant to participate, fearing that a film produced by Hamilton would frame the energy drink-backed team and star driver Verstappen as the bad guys. Verstappen, who skipped the F1 drivers’ screening and the New York premiere, spent a lot of time not participating in “Drive to Survive” due to what he considered a negative portrayal.

Description: The F1 movie saw cars from the fictional APX GP team appear on the track during several Grand Prix weekends in recent years. The participation of the rest of the grid is done as background fodder, an ornament to the main story itself, one centered solely on the orbit of the APX GP team, as the inevitable and perhaps cliché early rivalry between Hayes and Pearce predictably evolves into one of mutual respect, as an unexpected, and perhaps, a bit random, antagonist is revealed in the last quarter of the film. Hayes’ relationship with his technical director, played by Kerry Condon, can also be considered questionable in a sport that has struggled so much with female participation. Condon’s first car, described as a “shitbox” at first, only improves when Hayes, without a single F1 race start to his name for over 30 years, tells her how to improve it during a scene filmed in Williams F1’s actual wind tunnel. He wants her to build him “a car for combat”, to help with his aggressive approach to grand prix racing, a slightly risible phrase that appears later in the most unpleasant scene in the entire film. The romantic relationship that blossoms between the pilot and the technical director is perhaps inevitable for a Hollywood blockbuster, but also undeniably problematic for a film in which F1 had a close involvement, given the ongoing struggle of women in the paddock to be seen on an equal footing with their male counterparts. That is one of the most obvious parts where the repeated references to “authenticity” fail. The script itself was clumsy and relied on many well-worn cinematic tropes, but another way to look at that would be that many of the scenes simply serve to bridge the gap between one racing scene and the next. It’s those moments that this film will excel for audiences. Purists may not like some of these elements of the film, but they will for the same reasons that newcomers will adore it. The film is a thrilling ride, especially when seen in IMAX, and the scenes on the track are undoubtedly the most spectacular and adrenaline-fueled ever created for a racing film.

In the end, moviegoers will be treated to a heart-pounding showdown in Abu Dhabi, featuring the APX GP cars and the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and the Mercedes of George Russell, which is legitimate: both drivers drove on the track with Idris and Pitt after the end-of-season tests in Abu Dhabi last year to put together the culminating moment of the film. Fans will notice a legitimate lockup from one of the two F1 stars, which Kosinski kept in the film.

The additional cameos add enough Formula 1 world to feel credible, without simply veering into the “Drive to Survive” world that it tried so hard not to reproduce. Those who watch it for the first time will see race scenes commented on by the iconic duo of David Croft and Martin Brundle, whose voices lead Sky Sports’ coverage that for years has served as a global world signal. For anyone leaving the cinema with the burning desire to watch their first F1 race, the film will have provided them with a taste of what they will find in the television coverage. However, they might find that reality is a little different. In the end, the film struggles to explain some of the technical minutiae of Formula 1, something inevitable in a sport with such convoluted regulations and with things like tire life and engine modes playing a key role in the outcome of each race. Much of this may seem especially critical in what is supposed to be a fun racing movie about the sport. None of this may matter in the grand scheme of things. Formula 1 seems to be in a special place right now; everything it has touched lately has turned to gold and its namesake movie may be no different. While a cynic might want to be skeptical about the success this movie might have, and although there are legitimate reasons to question the exaggerated claims of authenticity, it has all the ingredients needed to be another big hit in a long list of recent F1 successes.