Ford v Ferrari 2: Ben in Tights
This might already be well documented at this point, but I have to come clean: I have a mild fascination with Matt Damon and a more-than-mild fascination with Ben Affleck. They fascinate me. I am fascinated. I will explain.
As a society, we’ve progressed past the need for these two men. They’re vestigial, the male nipples of Hollywood, and yet they keep hanging on, despite the bombs (The Last Duel, Downsizing, Live by Night) and disappointments (Suburbicon, The Last Thing He Wanted, Deep Water) of the last decade. Off-screen, the ‘Fleck’s whole persona (phoenix back tat and all) has been one of a man who gazed into the abyss a bit too long—although whether he yearns for deliverance or for damnation, I’m not too sure—while Damon is a guy who readily admitted in an interview that he just recently learned he probably shouldn’t be using the f-slur.
You’d think they would be completely unremarkable at this point—they may be the most mathematically-middle-aged men alive—but they are so radically behind the times that they come full circle back to remarkability. They’re civilian time travelers, walking around like everything is normal, butterfly-effecting everything they touch, completely unfazed by their temporal displacement.
Imagine: it’s 1998. Matt is coming off of the awards circuit for Good Will Hunting and is attempting to get a certain Harvey interested in a Mr. Ripley re-adaptation. In between, he and Ben are getting together again to make a little movie about ‘90s cultural icon Michael Jordan, hot off of Space Jam, and his line of shoes.
But that didn’t happen. That would have made too much sense. It’s 2023. MJ is as popular as ever, but movies like this basically don’t exist. Just eat your Aftersun veggies and your Skinamarink mashed potatoes and maybe you can have some Shazam pudding for dessert. But a well-written middlebrow drama, made for adults, at least slightly above an eighth-grade reading level, with an actual theatrical release? That couldn’t possibly exist in this day and age?
But the bad-wigged boys did it again! — Air!