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Five reasons 'Baby Driver' will be the biggest film of the summer

Edgar Wright is finally back, and he's got a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Five reasons 'Baby Driver' will be the biggest film of the summer
13 March 2017

If you’re in the market for a great trailer, then sit down, buckle in and wrap your skull-holes around this joint:

That is the trailer for Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s new sure-to-be-amazing flick. It’s not out until August, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all collectively excite ourselves about the prospect in the meantime. If you’re still not quite sure what to get excited about, here are five reasons Baby Driver will be the film of the summer.

1. It’s Edgar Wright’s first film in four years.

Edgar Wright was supposed to direct Ant-Man back in 2015, but he had a bit of a bust-up with Marvel and ended up leaving the project, with only a shared screenwriter credit to his name. As such, the last film he directed was 2013’s The World’s End, and he’s been hankering to get back behind the camera – it’s about bloody time. This is also the first film that Wright has written all on his lonesome, so it’s fully his movie – as can be seen in the above trailer, which drips with his unique, flashy style. Along with Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, it’s also a film minus his trusty stablemates, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg – let’s just hope it makes a bigger dent in the box office than Scott did.

2. It’s got a great soundtrack

The plot is this: a getaway driver with tinnitus uses music to drown out the ringing and won’t do a job without his headphones in. This is the central pin upon which the film hangs – almost everything is set to music, meticulously edited and shot to go along with each carefully-chosen song. It’s good, eclectic stuff, too, with the likes of The Beach Boys, Randy Newman, Beck, Queen and Simon and Garfunkel, who give the title of the film its name, after one of their songs.

3. The cast is huge (and brilliant)

This is a pretty flawless ensemble line up of top-quality stars, ever-reliable veterans and young up-and-comers. Just look at this for a bill: Lily James, Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, Jon Hamm, Sky Ferreira, Meryl Streep and Flea (from The Red Hot Chili Peppers). Ansel Elgort (who you’ll recognise if you cried your way through The Fault In Our Stars) plays the central character of Baby, a role which will hopefully propel him further into the mainstream, but with a bit of cred in tow. 

4. There are LOADS of car chases in it

When I was younger and somebody suggested we watch a film, I would ask the same question every time, without fail: “Does it have any car chases in it?” If it did, then I would watch it, if it didn’t, chances are I wouldn’t. The car chase is an overlooked, too-rare fixture in films nowadays, and that makes me sad – if I still used my old film-selection metric now, I’d never watch anything. Thankfully, Wright has packed this movie to the gills with relentless, inventive car-chases – ten-year-old me would 100% watch.

5. It’s been getting glowing reviews

Its first screening was at SXSW over the weekend and it’s absolutely slaying the critics – at the time of writing it’s currently got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning nobody has disliked it yet. Annoyingly, Scott Pilgrim also received high praise from the critics, but didn’t set the box office alight – hopefully this will buck the trend. Early word shines a light on the top-notch cast, ingenious use of music and exhilarating action, particularly the (ten-year-old me, pay attention) car chases. It’s also been noted that it’s a different direction for Wright, with a lot less of the slapstick and pop-culture comedy that saturate his previous films – this is a more serious, streamlined beast, and it’s all the better for it. Although it’s clearly still funny in parts.

Oh and here’s the cool new poster, too:

It’s out in cinemas on 11 August, and I can’t wait because VROOM VROOM SKREEEEE SMASH BANG PIAOW PIAOW VROOOOOOM.