F1: The Movie (2025) Suffers from the Worst Case of Cool Guy Syndrome

“gates this movie came out in June” shut up, I watched it three days ago

Tim Goode / PA Images via Getty Images

I have loved F1 since Drive to Survive became my comfort show in 2020. Picture this—you’re an 18-year-old film student who moved away from home for the first time only to almost immediately get put into lockdown where you’re confined in isolation to a room the size of a walk-in closet. Now imagine you’re watching a bunch of cars going Real fast. Not so bad, huh?

So because of this, I was a bit hesitant to watch F1: the movie and only did so after I had gathered enough trusted accounts that it was actually good. Except when I finally watched it, other than all the times I was pointing out the people I knew like so:

I was… complaining about Brad Pitt.

Okay let’s just get right into it (and clearly, spoilers for F1: the movie).

In my opinion, this movie was written by and for 50-ish year-old men despite the fact that the reported majority of fans of F1 are under 35, and a quickly growing amount of them are women. And this will become more obvious the further we get in.

In other words, Brad Pitt plays literally every 50-year-old man who has watched F1 and thought, “psh… I could do that but better.”

Brad Pitt is characterized as an asshole—he’s arrogant, he’s selfish, he’s kind of a womanizer, etc. Except here’s the thing you have to know about him—he’s always right. This is in juxtaposition to his co-star, Damson Idris, who is characterized as arrogant, selfish, entitled... and always wrong. This is because Brad Pitt is old (and therefore wise), and Damson is young (and therefore dumb-dumb).

Damson even points out this discrepancy in a scene where he’s like, "so it’s okay to put your teammate at risk to get ahead when you do it, but not when I do it?" And somehow Brad Pitt wins this fight. They treat Damson like he’s being entitled for doing the same things and acting in similar ways to Brad Pitt. Am I missing something? They never bring his very valid point back up again by the way.

In short, Damson’s arc is about being more of a team leader and less self-centered, which also means he learns to stop spending so much energy on social media. Kids these days, amiright? (Even though he's shown to be reluctant to dive into social media at the beginning? I guess they forgot about that part.)

Brad Pitt’s arc is that everyone else needs to learn to trust him even though he doesn’t explain his plans, doesn’t listen to his team, doesn’t act like a team player unless it was his idea first, and tries to tell other experts what to do. This is okay because remember, he’s right about everything all the time. They even hammer this point home through starting and ending the movie with essentially the same scene. Brad Pitt’s character is like if they made the old, wise mentor the main character instead of the kid he’s mentoring.

But instead of sit here and complain (like I did during the movie), I’m going to offer some small changes that I think would massively fix this flaw to me.

To start, when Brad and the rookie meet each other, they instantly don’t like each other for no apparent reason. We know Brad is an asshole, but he hasn’t actually done anything asshole-ish to Damson when they decide they hate each other, other than walk up with a bag. I think this is because there’s a few (admittedly funny) jabs they take at each other during the beginning, but is a funny joke justification enough to keep a wobbly plot foundation? Kill your darlings Kruger.

Damson doesn’t like Brad because he’s there to take his teammate’s seat (a guy he also doesn’t like—that never comes up again so I’m not sure why they even mentioned their backstory), because he’s old (??) and I think mostly because he hasn’t driven F1 in like two decades. And I’m sitting here like—what does he care? It's not like Brad is replacing him. It’s such a wobbly motivation to hate someone and I didn’t buy it for a second.

So here’s what I would have done. Initially, we can still get the sense that Damson is entitled by having him welcome Brad to the team but still assert like, “hey just remember that I’m the number one guy, alright?”

Then, Act 1 is about Brad building rapport and trust with Damson, and he in turn starts to follow his advice. This leads up to the big crash.

The fact that the crash is no one’s fault really absolutely kills any tension and conflict it could cause. The reason behind the crash is to take Damson out of the sport for three races, which causes the exact same conflict between them that they started with. We have two “they won’t let each other pass and thus crash into each other” scenes in the movie. This movie is about Brad and the Damson—so what was the point of the first act if nothing changes between them?

So I’d have it that Brad, gasp makes a mistake and isn’t always correct. He gives Damson bad advice that leads to his crash.

Forward to the hospital. Brad is going to go check in on Damson when Sarah Niles (the mom) intercepts him and tells him off. Knowing that the crash actually was his fault is going to make this scene hit so much harder than it does now. In the current version—the mom’s rant hardly hits because this whole conflict could be resolved by Damson telling her it wasn’t Brad’s fault, and the fact that he doesn’t right away only adds conflict to this one scene, as he tells her later with no issues.

In my version, Brad has to deal with the fact that he nearly repeated his tragic history with a different young driver, and leaves without saying anything to Damson. This is where the tension and conflict for Act 2 comes from—guy not only knows that Brad’s advice nearly got him killed, but that his teammate didn’t even come see him. The trust between them is broken, Brad has to contend that gambling with the lives of others can lead to tragedy, and they both have this insurmountable bridge to cross to be true teammates again.

The reason Drive to Survive (the documentary) works and drew in so many fans is because it focused heavily on the emotion and the interpersonal conflict behind the scenes of the sport. Watching car go fast can be fun, but on screen, we want to care about the people. I want to see their beliefs and habits be challenged (Brad Pitt gambles and wins every single time in this movie), and I want to see them have to make difficult decisions. Basically, I need to see Brad Pitt be a loser for once. For storytelling reasons... of course.

Anyway, Hollywood—I’m free anytime to look at your scripts and be mean about it. Call me.