Hacker Cinema
F1
2025 · Film · 156 min
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Racing legend Sonny Hayes is coaxed out of retirement to lead a struggling Formula 1 team—and mentor a young hotshot driver—while chasing one more chance at glory.
3 positive9 negative2 mixed18 neutralfrom 32 commenters
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34 comments on Hacker News
Just to be clear, the top grossing movie so far this year: Super Mario Galaxy. And #3: Toy Story 5
In 2025 all the top 10 films were either 3D animation or CGI-heavy action, with one exception: F1 used a lot of practical effects.
Maybe the problem with Moana and Mandalorian is that even lazy uninformed movie-goers recognized an empty cash-grab when they saw the trailer.
This year seems to be turning a bit of a corner. Of the top box office movies so far this year there's Michael, Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, Wuthering Heights, GOAT.. with Obsession and Backrooms rapidly rising.
Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).
I think for a long time Apple could grow by introducing new hardware categories, growing the average spend on hardware (by e.g. moving from upgradable to soldered memory/disks), and additional services.
It has been a while since they introduced category-changing new devices and people hold on to their iPhones/iPads/Apple Watches longer due to smaller changes between generations and long software support periods.
So, the primary way that they see how they could grow is by introducing more ads and more subscriptions. Slowly they make Apple's platforms more gross:
- When searching in the app store, nearly half the page is ads now.
- Pushing F1 movie advertisements through Apple Wallet.
- Ads in maps.
- Pushing subscriptions by putting ads for Apple Creator Studio in iWork apps (Pages, Keynote, Numbers).
- Pushing subscriptions by putting Apple Fitness+ ads in the system setting on iOS (!).
This might work for a while, but eventually, Apple will lose a key differentiator.
> Ads on the lock screen and in the dock next?
Arguably already happened, via notifications. They've long allowed third-party apps to send notifications that are actually ads, and a few first-party apps (most notably wallet with the F1 movie ads last year) have started doing this too. Those made it to the lock screen, and if you happened to dock any of those apps, the obnoxious red notification dot would induce you to click on it.
Any app that did that to me lost its notification privileges permanently and got uninstalled if it wasn't a built-in app, but I suppose Apple could start directly injecting unavoidable ads too.
Hell, you can see it too in the latest F1 movie.
Shots in which the base plate was taken from live footage (crews trained in filming the sport) are stable and show all the action. Shots from Hollywood camera crews can barely keep up.
One may say this is a bad comparison point, and that it was an artistic choice, but I call bullshit on that. So much of the movie was based upon live footage that the ones that didn't just look amateurish.
And yet, both crews are professionals. It is difficult to film these things well.
Regals unlimited pass and their snack saver has made movies a no brainer for me and my friends coupled with their monthly themed events showing older movies we almost always have multiple things we want to see and often go multiple times a week, especially during the gloomier winter months!
At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight
> 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. > $86 dollars. > Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)
It was much worse than just adding it to your library as a gift. The cover art for the album[1] would appear in seemingly random places on your phone. And there was literally zero way to remove it, until there was such an uproar that Apple had to make a special tool.
Apple spent money on this and they really, really wanted to force feed it to every Apple user (not unlike their F1 movie venture). It was incredibly obnoxious.
1 - And it isn't homophobic to note that the Songs of Innocence cover art looked a bit like you were browsing Grindr or something. People have the right to have the opinion that having that image suddenly being featured on their phone might be misinterpreted by others.
This, on top of the nonstop onslaught of advertisements for F1. It seemed like every one of Apple's services were pushing for that movie. They even put it into maps, wallets, into CarPlay (while people were driving!) It was surprisingly shameless.
It's certainly not as bad _right now_ as what you'll see on Windows 11, but this is something that will almost certainly only get worse over time.
Those look like the monitors used on the F1 movie, which is strange, considering it was an Apple production and they maybe should have used apple monitors for product placement . I guess it is a testimony about Kuycon from Apple.
The Dynamic Island isn't what I'd call a "notification." Apps use it to show you something that you're actively doing or tracking right now. Using it to show ads is like stealing a piece of your visible screen real estate to set up a tiny billboard that says "buy Duolingo!"
> I get ads in my notifications all the time.
FWIW, I don't get any ads in my notifications except for that one obnoxious F1 movie ad from Apple themselves.
iOS and macOS will nag you regarding iCloud if you don't sign up/in. Apple advertised... something, I forget what it was, via an Apple Wallet notification this past year (?). Might have been for the F1 movie when it was in theaters.
Lots of inner monologues that have a sort of stream of consciousness feel to them. Plot is secondary or non-existent. But I do feel like his movies usually have a coherent theme and he gets it across successfully. I don’t know anything about films so am unable to appreciate any technical feats like lighting - but I really like his movies. I feel like a lot of “good” movies are also fairly formulaic; I enjoyed f1 and predator badlands, but it feels like they followed the Hollywood formula and were good movies because the executed it well.
Apple is already sending spam notifications for stupid bullshit like that F1 movie.
I think F1 got significantly more popular in the past few years with Drive to Survive on Netflix, and then most recently with the F1 movie on Apple TV.
It’s a sports league with history and has been around for a while, but I think significant popular mindshare only happened in the last 5 years.
Uhm, have you opened your Settings app? It's had Apple ads for years. And the Wallet app showed a promo notification for the F1 movie.
I did the same, and switched to Apple Music. Soon after that, Apple Music started injecting their F1 movie soundtrack into suggested music for me. There really is no escape from this. They haven't done it since, so at least it's not as bad as what Spotify does. If I come across a good offline music player for iOS I will probably cancel my Apple Music subscription.
Brad Pitt's F1
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16311594/quotes/?item=qt8134908&ref_=ext_shr_lnk
They said this a bunch in the movie F1 that's playing in theatres right now, so that could be why there's been an uptick in usage
Obviously not defending it, but isn’t the F1 movie produced by Apple?
The movie is itself (I think) capitalising on the increased popularity of F1 brought about by the Netflix series. It is a great series and by all accounts has really turned the sport around in terms of popularity, a very clever move by the FIA. Netflix have tried to replicate it for other sports but, I believe, without the same success.
Wow, I read your comment before I clicked. What were they thinking.
I’ve been getting into F1 this summer since the movie got my interest up.
Went to see the F1 movie a couple weeks ago in suburban Northern California on a local theater's "LieMax" screen (ie not one of the ~30 real IMAX 15-perf film theaters in the world but just a slightly larger mall theater screen that (probably) has a newer bulb and more recently calibrated speakers). It cost just over $75 for two adults + a large popcorn, soda and bottle of water.
I was a bit surprised at the price too. Seems maybe 15-20% more than my last theater outing last Summer. We don't go often because we have a dedicated home theater room that's fully sound proof with total light control and 9 custom theater loungers on two levels facing a 150-inch screen with 4K HDR10+ calibrated digital laser projector and built-in 7.4.2 surround THX-rated speakers. While there was nothing wrong with the "LieMax" theater, the picture, sound, seating and overall experience at home are meaningfully better - even when everything works at the cinema and no one is annoying. And I say that as someone with fairly significant professional video engineering experience. Of course, one of the ~30 real IMAX screens is objectively better (when showing 15-perf 70mm film, which they don't always do) but the nearest one is nearly an hour drive, costs even more and has $15 in parking on top. The last time I went was for Oppenheimer two years ago. But short of going there, it's hard to see much reason to go to a local cinema if you have a high-end home theater rig (other than just having a night out).
There's not even an advantage to the claimed "big screen" at the LieMax. While I prefer a slightly larger theatrical field of view than most people (around 45 degrees), my FOV at home is 46 degrees sitting 12.5 feet from the floor-to-ceiling screen (https://acousticfrontiers.com/blogs/Articles/Home-theater-viewing-angles-distances-and-sightlines).
Yeah, F1 was extremely literal - characters would often describe what's going on in Brad Pitt's head while he's driving. On the other hand, it's a "big, dumb action movie" and at least it took itself seriously and didn't wink at the audience like so many modern blockbusters do.
I wonder how much of that is because the movies themselves changed vs everything else that has changed. Back in 2002 most people still watched tv on CRT that were very small by today's standard and had very low resolution. You either had to go out and rent a movie, rewatch something you had recorded or bought or watch whatever was on and enjoy the ads. Now we have a huge choice of movies and tv shows at our finger tips any time. Yes, the screen is still much smaller than in the cinema but I also sit much closer. I can pause the movie when I need a bathroom break. I can eat and drink what I want. A movie has to be really good for me to want to spend $40-$50 on going to see a movie with my wife. No travel required, no sitting through ads, no risk of someone in the audience being obnoxious.
I used to go to the cinema quite a bit. Now I only go once every 1-2 years to see something on IMAX that I hope will really benefit from it. In recent years that was just the two Dune movies and most recently the F1 movie. Unfortunately, even the biggest IMAX theater in my area is still not what I'd consider a proper IMAX like the Metreon in SF so I'm always underwhelmed. Not sure if that's because this IMAX is too small or because even IMAX stopped being amazing due to growth and improvement of other screens.
I used to watch a lot of smaller movies in the cinema. That's stopped entirely. With any movie the question now is how long till we just can watch it at home. Smaller movies which I'd be more willing to support frequently even seem to skip the few months where you have to rent them and go straight to streaming. So unfortunately even less incentive to go to the cinema.
Culture around it doesn't help either. Friends used to recommend movies that they watched in the cinema. I can't even recall when that happened last.
> F1
Let me guess, an old man Brad Pitt enters the movie screen and says something like: “I’m gonna, I’m gonna… I’m gonna WROOOM! I’m WROOMING!!”?
Weird, I thought it was one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years. Wasn't at all what I expected to see, but was incredibly memorable and impactful.
F1 on the other hand was maybe the worst offender as far as literalism is concerned.
yes, and advertising the new f1 movie.
It's a hit at the box office, but not so with the critics. The previous F1 film "Rush" (Lauda vs Hunt) is still better. imdb 8.1 vs 7.8, metacritic 8.4 vs 7.6, letterboxd 3.83 vs 3.81 (with a lot of f1 cheaters not accounted for). It's more comparable to "Gran Turismo", which had equally good race fighting scenes. And more realistic simulator training brought to the track.
It shows they must be REALLY worried about this movie. All the reviews I’ve read say it sucks. I’m an f1 fan and from what I’ve read it sounds all pretty dumb and fake.
Enforced by who?
The same company that decided to put F1 Movie ads in Apple Wallet?
I will go to the F1 movie playing this sweet U2 song that came on my phone.
> I didn’t find the piloting to yield a particularly smooth video
Considering the context, I thought it as pretty impressive. I'm sure if it were for a feature film it could have been a bit better in aesthetic composition and framing but a movie would have had a lot of rehearsals, section-by-section planned coordination and also not have been shooting a full lap as one continuous shot. Given that this was a Red Bull marketing video vs a movie, I suspect they didn't have Max for very long (hence having to go ahead with the shoot despite the lousy weather). IIRC, there are even F1 rules strictly limiting the number of laps an F1 team driver can do in an F1 car outside of officially sanctioned practice sessions.
Interestingly, we'll soon get to see a feature film interpretation of F1 racing. A major movie starring Brad Pitt was shown shooting around the pits last F1 season and Brad Pitt was interviewed about it on one of the F1 pre-race shows. I expect we'll see some dramatic aerial shots when it comes out.
As a side note, these kind of drone shots are often done with a wide angle lens which gives some extra leeway for image stabilization and re-framing in post-production. I expect that was probably the case here because I don't think there was enough room in that bullet-shaped drone for a camera gimbal.