Movies

Guillermo Del Toro Makes The Case For Why You Must See 'Baby Driver'

Guillermo del Toro Baby Driver
By Ben Pearson

If you ever hear Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Hellboy) speak, you instantly know that the guy knows a lot about movies. He's one of the most outspoken cinephile filmmakers working in Hollywood today, and his Twitter feed is a mixture of articles about film, behind-the-scenes photos, and stories from his own sets. Yesterday afternoon, the director took to Twitter to share his thoughts about Edgar Wright's new car chase film Baby Driver, and if you somehow still needed to be convinced to see the new movie, this should do the trick. Read the 13-part Guillermo del Toro Baby Driver comments below.

Here is the original tweet...

And in the interest of easy reading, here are the rest of the tweets written out in a larger paragraph:

13 Tweets on BABY DRIVER. 1: A long, long time ago (my generation's youth) a maverick filmmaker named Walter Hill made two promises. One: he made a great action flick called THE DRIVER. Two: he promised us, in [Streets of Fire] "A Rock N'Roll Fable". Both movies gave our generation a shot of adrenaline. Now, decades later, Edgar Wright fulfills both promises with the breathtaking BABY DRIVER. The key to understanding it fully- at least for me- is in the fact that it is a fable, complete with its very own Disney prince and princess, but it is also rock n' roll. Meaning- the magic exists in a dirty, genre-tainted world. The film is incredibly precise. Flawlessly executed to its smallest detail: breathtaking Russian arm shots, real-world car mount and foot chases executed with the vigour and bravado of a Gene Kelly musical.This is An American In Paris on wheels and crack smoke. Its a movie in love with cinema – the high of cinema and motion. In love with color and light and lenses and film. But, unlike Edgar's previous films (all of which I love) this stakes new, unironic territory. This is earnest and unprotected . It wears Edgar's heart on its sleeve. It's a riff- a beautiful riff and in many ways send his career in a new direction. It shows us tricks and tunes he hadn't played before. The cast is in a state of grace and so is the entire crew. Imagine that as a carpenter you encounter a precious, precise, exquisite piece of cabinetry. This is how I feel. I've always liked Edgar. But this moved me. It moved me to see a fellow filmmaker come out of a debacle with a movie that declares his credo again. I hope & pray you go and see it on a big screen. I wish you all the joy I felt: I just saw a good pal get the gold. By God – go check it out.

(Note: He's since clarified that he was "too jazzed" and "too high on film" when typing the second tweet, and he initially mentioned Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets instead of Streets of Fire.) That's some high praise, and it's especially poignant considering the "debacle" Wright went through with Marvel Studios and Ant-Man a few years ago. And look, all of this praise isn't to say that the film is up on a pedestal and has completely avoided criticism. Writer/performer/activist Gaby Dunn raised some valid points on Twitter about the film's female characters: https://twitter.com/gabydunn/status/879917803326722048 https://twitter.com/gabydunn/status/879919466737356800  

Del Toro tweeted something else early this morning that I think is just as valid and works well as a response to those criticisms. (To be clear, I'm using his comment as a response to Dunn's comments – this was not something del Toro tweeted at her):

Two things can be true at the same time: some of Baby Driver's female characters aren't as engaging, exciting, or interesting as its male characters; and Baby Driver still kicks ass. While the film isn't perfect, I found it to be a fun, thrilling look into Wright's psyche and exactly the type of original film we desperately need more of as we float through a sea of often-underwhelming sequels, remakes, and movies based on stories that have fallen into the public domain.

Baby Driver is in theaters now.

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