Over the past few weeks I've been completely obsessed with Edgar Wright's Baby Driver.
Looking online, I'm not alone.
Video essays about the editing, the soundtrack, hot takes and fun facts everywhere.
Like did you know that Darling is a moniker for Monica?
Or how the soundtrack in the final heist moves from Blur to Focus.
And it's great that this original gem is getting so much love
But one thing that people might forget is that Edgar Wright would not be able to create this masterpiece
if it wasn't for his parting ways with Marvel.
Instead he'd potentially be stuck in an unhappy multi-film contract a la Josh Whedon.
But weren't there's some other directors who were recently removed from a Disney owned project?
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
"The turning point on Cloudy... was when we decided that we were so miserable we wanted to quit"
"and then we called our lawyer and we said 'we want to leave the movie.'"
"'We don't think we can make a good movie'"
"And they said 'Don't quit, get fired. You get six months' pay if you get fired'"
"We're like 'That's brilliant.'"
"So we're just going to like make the movie we want until somebody tells us to stop."
The ex-Han Solo directors have more in common with Wright than just Mickey Mouse-earred P45s.
Tony Zhou said a while back that most Hollywood comedy films are boring-looking
and basically lightly edited improv
with all the jokes coming from just the dialogue.
"Are you guys on drugs?"
Lord and Miller may be one of the few mainstream Hollywood directors that buck this trend.
Their films are the hyperkinetic dayglo bombs of nervous energy, contrast and comedic homage.
The best example of the Lord Miller approach is 21 Jump Street.
Throughout the whole of 21 Jump Street Lord and Miller make use of contrast
to give texture to their story.
Thematic contrasts are everywhere,
as basic good versus evil.
In comedy the contrast can come from thematically opposing characters causing comedic friction.
The classic example is the Odd Couple.
"You know we're kind of like the original Odd Couple."
"You're the messy one and I'm..."
"Shut up!". "Oh. Very well."
In 21 Jump Street Channing Tatum's Jenko is set up as your typical jock-type:
Self-confident. Good at sports. And a fucking idiot.
His persona is mismatched against Jonah Hill's Schmidt.
A cliched nerd: smart, uncoordinated, with low self-esteem.
Their differences create comedy because of their opposing natures.
An example where this plays out is the house party fight:
Where as Jenko stylishly and efficiently takes out multiple party-goers no problem
Schmidt is left flailing ineffectively against one guy.
Jenko loved high school first time because he was popular
whereas Schmidt hated it because he was not.
Because of these reasons, Jenko is psyched to return, while Schmidt is not.
The eventual shift in hierarchy and how Jenko and Schmidt come to terms of this shift
is most of what 21 Jump Street character beats revolve around.
This fluctuation of status is concisely summed up by a somber Jenko:
"I don't get this school."
But the contrasts aren't just between the characters.
Comedy at its most simplistic is setting up an expectation:
"Oh would it be too much if I asked for a kiss?"
"No."
And then going against it:
"He's a real little Dickens."
Take the dramatic music cue and epic move in after Jenko's line:
"You ready for a lifetime of being badass motherfuckers?"
"Oh I am."
Followed by the silent nothingness of park duty.
The film is 110 minutes of subverted expectations.
21 Jump Street knows it's tropes,
its stereotypes and is well aware of the general absurdity of the set up,
With a couple of characters in their late 20s pretending to be high school students
itself a ridiculous situation,
there are numerous references to how old and out of place they look
"You look really old."
"You look like you're in your mid-twenties for crying out loud."
In reality the cover would be blown within minutes
but the characters self-awarely go along with the situation because the plot depends on it.
As well as subverting genre the film is also aware of the actors and their presence within popular culture.
Tatum was mainly seen as a brainless hunk
but here he plays up this image for comedy.
The most fun subverted stereotype is Ice Cube's "angry black captain."
"It ain't nothing but a stupid stereotype."
As he says embrace your stereotypes
but previous to his acting career he was best known for his work in gangster rap group NWA,
A former gangbangers playing an authority figure is already subversive
but having the first couple of bars of "Straight Outta Compton"
brings a further sense of fourth wall breaking.
There are moments especially later in the film where action movie
conventions are subverted for comedic effect.
When you see a truck of propane
canisters overturned or a petrol tanker full of bullet holes, you expect an explosion.
21 Jump Street aware of the audience's expectations withholds the explosions
Instead later choosing to imply that caged chickens are dangerously volatile.
Traditionally car chases are high-speed affairs that involve really fast expensive conveyances.
Jump Street's main car chases feature multiple traffic jams,
a driver's ed car and three limos
humorously separate from James Bond's various Aston Martin getaways.
Action films also rarely showed the real-life repercussions of the action.
"That was crazy. You killed a guy."
Vomiting after killing someone, the charred body aftermath of a CGI explosion
Jump Street goes ahead and shows that .
Lord and Miller do not spoof these tropes, as much as they create a loving homage to these ideas
in a similar way to Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy.
But this is what Lord and Miller do.
They take the rules and they twist them with anarchic glee.
They simply slay at subversion.
From their opening barrage of Clone High
to their most recent production work on Lego Batman.
This is what makes them so exciting.
Here's hoping that this inventive streak continues to whatever they're going to do instead of Han Solo.
"We're just going to make movie we want until somebody tells us to stop."