‘F1’: Brad Pitt eyes Tom Cruise’s crown as king of dad movies

The short synopsis could be: “An ordinary middle-aged man does something extraordinary.”

The longer one would bring in those close to him: “A family man rescues his daughter from the clutches of a gang of terrorists/drug traffickers/sex traffickers.”

Or: “A former spy/cop/soldier rebels against the injustice done to his family/community/city.”

Or: “A retired athlete returns to competition in search of one final feat.”

Above all, it must be clear that he’s a seasoned veteran — someone for whom every fall and every punch hurts, someone who knows more from age than from mischief, and who, of course, will triumph by the end of the film.

These are dad movies, a subgenre that has exploded at the box office in recent years. It’s called that because it speaks directly to a specific audience: fathers. While animated films draw families in through the kids, dad movies lure in the man who still believes he could be a hero like the ones on screen — characters played by Bruce Willis (before his retirement), Denzel Washington, Gerard Butler, Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, and the kings of the genre, Tom Cruise and Liam Neeson.

Joining their ranks now, with the release of F1, is Brad Pitt, who plays Sonny Hayes, a former Formula 1 driver returning to the track decades after a terrifying crash. He comes back at the request of his former best friend (played by Javier Bardem) and to mentor a reckless but gifted rookie.

At 61, Pitt had long resisted falling into the dad movie subgenre, but his two latest films — Wolfs (with George Clooney, who’s also dabbled in dad cinema, as seen in The Midnight Sky) and F1 — firmly earn him a place in the category.

The U.S. website The Ringer, known for its focus on pop culture and sports, coined the term “dad movie” in 2019. “Any film a dad enjoys can be a dad movie. But since most dads are fairly similar, it ends up becoming a pretty specific category,” Kevin Clark, one of the creators of the term, told EL PAÍS in a 2021 interview. Over time, however, the definition has been refined, as these films have become increasingly common both in theaters and on streaming platforms.

In the broader definition of dad movies are films that parents might enjoy, not just those in which they (ideally) see themselves represented. According to The Ringer, these are movies starring “ordinary men put in extraordinary situations,” meaning inspiring characters; preferably based on real events or popular novels; with clear and strong moral values.

They are movies in which the protagonist — no matter how much he complains about pain or suffers heart attacks, cancer, or injuries — remains attractive and sexually active. Examples include Master & Commander, both Gladiator films, Ford v Ferrari (Le Mans ’66), many Tom Hanks films with Steven Spielberg, much of Ron Howard’s work, 12 Angry Men, Field of Dreams, The Shawshank Redemption, Sneakers, Lethal Weapon, and The Untouchables.

In the narrower definition of dad movies — films starring a veteran performing a heroic act — the king is Liam Neeson. In 2008, he kicked off the trend with Taken, where he played a retired CIA agent who frantically sets out to rescue his daughter, kidnapped in Paris.

The film spawned two sequels, and Neeson realized there was an audience eager to see him saving his family, airplane passengers… basically, any innocent person. This led to his roles in Unknown, The Grey, Non-Stop, Run All Night, The Commuter, Cold Pursuit, Honest Thief, The Marksman, Retribution, The Ice Road (which has a sequel pending release), Memory, Blacklight, Absolution, and, although more ensemble, The A-Team.

Almost all of Harrison Ford’s films are essentially dad movies. Indiana Jones is basically a university archaeology professor with glasses; Jack Ryan is a CIA analyst with no field experience; and then there are the wrongfully accused characters he played in The Fugitive, Frantic, or Presumed Innocent — as well as his role as the U.S. president in Air Force One. Ford also built a career with a character adored by parents everywhere, yet one they will never be able to match: Han Solo.

Bruce Willis gave us the Die Hard saga (aching muscles, a fun spirit, fighting to rescue his wife while taking down criminals), and if a degenerative disease hadn’t cut his career short, he’d likely be dominating the dad movie genre today. Kevin Costner could also thrive here — he scored big with The Bodyguard — but he hasn’t shown interest in those kinds of scripts, instead choosing to derail his career in his obsession with directing westerns (it seems unlikely he’ll ever complete his Horizon saga).

Russell Crowe tried his hand at the genre in 2020 with Unhinged, but his weight gain hasn’t helped him thrive in this subgenre. Another actor flirting with dad movies is Ben Affleck, with roles in The Accountant and The Accountant 2, and who in The Way Back portrayed a former basketball star seeking redemption as a coach at the very university where he lost his way.

Sports are another fertile ground for dad movies… as long as they’re not too physically demanding. The pioneering film was The Natural, in which Robert Redford played a baseball player with supernatural talent who, at 35 years old (Redford was 47 during filming, a minor detail for him), made a comeback after retiring at 19. Pitt’s F1 follows that classic storyline — a sports star given a second chance.

If Gerard Butler has encroached on Liam Neeson’s turf with the Olympus Has Fallen and Den of Thieves franchises, as well as films like Geostorm, Greenland, Angel Has Fallen, and Hunter Killer, Denzel Washington has also carved out his own dad movie saga with The Equalizer and its two sequels.

On Monday in London, Tom Cruise’s appearance at the F1 premiere and his warm greetings and hugs with Brad Pitt felt like a symbolic passing of the torch. More than Mission: Impossible (which features too many action scenes without physical consequences), it’s Top Gun: Maverick — directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed F1, which explains the clear similarities between the two films — that stands as Cruise’s dad movie masterpiece: young pilots only master planes in simulators and unleash reckless brute force; the old rebel, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, has the guts, scars, and wisdom that make fathers in the audience want to be just like him.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition