Chris Hewitt (Re.View Editor): Can I go on
record and say the UK title [Le Mans ’66] is
moronic. Here it’sFord v Ferrari,
which is a much better title. It’s likeAlien
vs. Predator.
Nick De Semlyen (Features Editor): Now I
want to seeFord v Ferrari: Requiem.
Chris: Plus, sticking’66on it makes it sound
like a prequel to the Steve McQueen movie
Le Mans.
James Dyer (Editor-In-Chief, Digital):
[Palpatine voice] Execute order 66...
Nick: It’s probably just a marketing decision.
John Nugent (News Editor): Or a rights issue
— like whenZootopiahad to be called
Zootropolisin the UK. They had to re-record
the entire film for European markets because
they couldn’t clear the rights to the name
from a Danish zoo.
Nick: Is Christian Bale’s accent supposed to
be Brummie?
Chris: It is Brummie. It’s not Scouse, as some
people thought.
John: That is a good Brummie accent,
actually. That bit sounded good.
James: I would go so far as to say that his
Brummie accent in this is almost as good
as Timothy Spall’s in theRed Dwarf
episode ‘Back To Reality’, and that is high
praise indeed.
Chris: This may be the first time you’ve ever
seen Christian Bale laugh on film.
Nick: This may be the first time ‘Gimme
Shelter’ has ever been used on film.
John: It is weird to see Christian Bale look
almost... normal? He doesn’t seem to have
any prosthetics on.
Chris: I think he came straight fromVice.
He’s looking really skinny. He did that yo-yo
thing he said he’d never do.
Nick: He needs to put more gas in the engine.
Chris: So apparently, they did all the driving
for real.
John: That can’t be real? Christian Bale just
crashed his car.
James: That’s actually Christian Bale in that
car. They killed him.
Chris: “It ain’t about speed.” I mean, it’s
mostlyabout speed.
James: That seems like a misunderstanding
of the concept of racing.
John: It’s also about really good acting.
James: This is how you know it’s based on
a true story, right? Because if you named
your lead racing driver in a fictional movie
‘Ken Miles’, it would be laughed out of
the room.
Chris: That’s Caitriona Balfe there, who
plays Christian Bale’s wife. I suspect she getsmore to do in the film. There’s not a lot of
women in this trailer.
John: I hope she’s not just the ‘fretting wife’
boilerplate.
Nick: It is a very blokey trailer, isn’t it?
Chris: The punch is interesting. I wonder if
there’s more to that relationship than just
being best friends. It’s focusing pretty much
on the Ford side of things. We don’t get any
sense of the Ferarri side of this conflict.
John: Oh, so these two are only on the
Ford side?
Chris: Yep. I know from talking with the
director James Mangold that Carroll Shelby,
Matt Damon’s character, was a racing driver
first — and then Ford asked him to come on
board and oversee their challenge to Ferrari.
It was a very different time, because these
guys actually built the cars that they drove
as well.
Nick: Tracy Letts has a great face. Do you
reckon he had to do that face in his audition?
Chris: Tracy Letts doesn’t audition. He’s
offer-only.
John: So what did we think of that?
Chris: The first thing to say is that it’s not
a superhero film. It seems to be a character-
driven drama. It needs more superheroes.
Nick: Yeah. It looks like an... adult...
drama... movie.
John: That’s my favourite genre.
James: As someone who has zero interest in
anything to do with racing, the only thing
keeping me going here is Bale and Damon.
There’s a lot resting on them.
Nick: It’s going to have some capital-A
acting, isn’t it? Major acting.
John: Maybe even Oscar acting. Christian
Bale is always a good shout for Oscars.
Chris: You don’t get a sense from the trailer
of what it’s driven by, other than that
relationship between the two of them —
are they surrogate brothers, perhaps?
Nick: It didn’t sell me on the film, to
be honest. But in Mangold we trust.
James: I didn’t give a shit aboutRush
when I saw the trailer, and I loved the film.
Nick: I wonder if they should have showed
more clips of the racing. Would have been
nice to have more car carnage. It felt like the
beats in that trailer were a little bit generic.
John: Everything we’re hearing about this
film is that the racing is amazing and the
chemistry between the two leads is amazing.
Seems like there’s a lot to get your teeth into.
And Mangold is on a hot streak, post-Logan.
I’m still excited about it.FORD V FERRARIIS IN CINEMAS FROM 14 NOVEMBERUnfiltered, uncensored, uncompromising trailer reactions from teamEMPIRE
Ford v Ferrari
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