The Bike Riders the new film starring Austin Butler jod comr and Tom Hardy as members of a growing and splintering Motorcycle Club initially had a lot of buzz but since its release has been getting some pretty mixed reviews because to some viewers it feels like nothing much really happens the film is very Loosely based on the real life story of a Chicago Motorcycle Club and so many went in expecting a bit more action and the movie has raised a lot of questions how much of it exactly is true to life what was made up and
what's up with those accents let's unpack all that plus take a deeper look at what the film was actually trying to say no worries no Major Spoilers for the film until the final chapter the bike riters is based on a book but not a narrative fiction or non-fiction book like you might at First Imagine but a Photography book Danny Lion's 1968 documentary photo book the bike riters in which he embedded with the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club from 1963 to 1967 the film's director Nichols actually first became aware of the book way back in 2005 when
his brother Ben the front man of the band Lucero wrote a song based on off of a photo book and asked Alliance if they could use a photo for the album cover Nichols became enamored with the photographs and the idea of the lifestyle they represented and So eventually began working on a script around the concept but while the characters do use the real names of people who were in Lion's book and very Loosely follow some of the major plot points of their lives around that time he's made it clear that the film is very much
a work of fiction both because he just didn't have enough information about these people to really make a work about their real lives and also Al because he rather unsurprisingly did not want to step on the toes of the very real and very much still inexistence motorcycle club which is also why their group's name was changed to the vandals for the film he told Entertainment Weekly I fictionalized a movie that was inspired by real things that they said and did in this very brief period of time Lions himself is a character in the film though
instead of being portrayed as the rather rough and messy guy he by his own account was in real life the film softens its edges to create more of a contrast between him and the normal world he represents and The Outsiders of the vandals though in the film Danny mentions being a photo student in real life by the time liance joined in with the club he was already 24 and well out of school where he had actually studied history not photography though the film plays around with its image of lions it does stay true to the
feel of his photos the visual style of the film lifted directly from the photo book this gives the film a photographic documentar esque feeling more concerned with capturing the look and mood of the going on than any real plot which some people have not loved we'll get into that in a minute the film mainly revolves around three people Benny Kathy and Johnny all three based on real life people Benny is a young young quiet hotthead who is looking for a place to fit in in this world that doesn't require him to give up the personal
freedom he holds so dear he's LED more by Passion and action than thinking things through though a big part of this is likely due to the fact that when we first meet him he's only 19 years old our introduction to Benny is based exactly on two pieces of real life a real life recording of Cathy's description of her first time meeting Benny and a photograph from the photo book titled Benny at the stoplight though funnily enough it's not actually Benny in that photograph after all lines explained to the telegraph that after years of assuming it
was Benny during a recent chat with him Benny noted that he had taken another look at the photo and realized hey you know that picture of me at the pool hall I said yeah he says it's not me what check out the tattoos it's not me it's Benny's wife Kathy through whom we are brought into this world and around whom the film is framed real life Kathy was 25 and already a mother of three when she met 19-year-old Benny and they did indeed get married after only a few weeks of knowing each other while we
do see her original partner leave scared off by Austin Butler's smoldering the film doesn't mention her kids there was initially one scene where they were briefly brought up but it was eventually cut Nichols told Entertainment Weekly when I first started showing people the film it was really distracting I hadn't involved that family enough to make it ingal to the film it was really distracting and it made people really not like her but more than that it was just kind of confusing they were like wait a second where are the kids it brought up all of
these questions which in the book when you're reading it makes her really fascinating and it's my biggest regret that as a Storyteller I didn't craft it in a way that it could stay and third is Johnny the leader of the vandals real life Johnny had allegedly started the club after being inspired by Marlin Brando's character in the iconic the wild one Johnny is not as untethered from regular society as the others he has a real full-time job and a wife and kids to some in the group this makes it seem like he isn't as committed
to the life as everyone else leading to others vying to take his spot at the top but he wants Benny to take over and this creates the major point of contention at the heart of the film Johnny wants Benny pulled deeper into the club while Kathy wants them both to get out vinas pulled between these two sides of his life and himself wanting the freedom and community of the club while ALS also wanting the love and safety of a more quiet life with his wife and both Johnny and Kathy are drawn to Benny because he
represents the freedom and excitement that they were searching for outside of their regular cookie cutter lives and their separate desires for Benny's choices represent their desires for themselves for Johnny to prove that the fire will keep burning even as he feels like he's fading away for Cathy to prove that she can have the Thrills and love without the constant danger whether you're a tough biker out on the road or just working a regular 9 to-5 no one wants to have to compromise on the thing things that matter most we all know there are so many
things in life you just have to compromise on like finding a nice apartment but with a neighbor learning to play drums at all hours of the night or finding a new favorite show and just having to hope it doesn't get cancelled but the one place you shouldn't have to compromise is your heal so don't skip out on making an appointment because there's such a hassle to book or go back to that one doctor who doesn't even seem to listen to anything you have to say during the appointment instead check out today's sponsor Zach do the
place where you can easily find and book doctors who will listen to you make you feel comfortable and prioritize your health they make it super easy you can search by location availability and insurance so you won't feel forced to make any compromises zok is a free app and website where you can search and compare highly rated in network doctors near you and instantly book appointments with them online you can read through reviews from real patients to get a feel for each doctor and then when you find one you like you can book them instantly no
need to call and listen to Bad hold music while hoping they'll have an availability there are tens of thousands of toprated credible doctors and Specialists to choose from and you can easily filter them to find the ones that are actually near you take your insurance and treat pretty much any condition you're searching for the typical wait time to see a doctor booked on Zach do is between just 24 and 72 hours and you can even score same day appointments using Zach do has made finding and booking a doctor so much easier for me if you
want to give them a try go to Zach do.com thetake and download the Zach do app for free then find and book a top rated doctor today that's zocdoc.com thetap Zach do.com to take one big point of interest and contention with audiences have been the accents used in the film actors especially Butler and Hardy in particular in recent years often get Flack for their ability or lack thereof to do various accents on screen so it's not really surprising that it's come up again with this film where everyone is going for era and region specific accents
but while their accents may sound a little odd to our modern ears they're actually pretty spot-on Lions had recorded hours of interviews with people in the club during that era and so in preparing for the film the actors were able to listen to these recordings to get a feel for the specific way these real people spoke people have specifically been kind of hard on Comer's accent as Kathy but when listening to her next to the real Kathy you can hear that she was actually really spoton that's when I saw him for the first time and
took my breath away so I was getting ready to get up and all of a sudden I seen venny and he was standing at the end of the bar and I said my God I says who's that good- looking blind I says he don't look like the rest of these guys you know as Regional accents have been sanded down over the decades into the more newscaster as General American accent it's become easy to forget that not that long ago the way people sounded was very dependent on where they grew up and lived and accents varied
widely across the country so the accents here actually help provide a sense of time and place so now let's take a deeper look at what the film was actually trying to say with all of its quiet brooding making Danny the narrator of the film would have made logical sense since it's based off of the story of lion joining in with the club and documenting them and so some people felt that the choice to instead turn to Kathy for the narration was a but it actually makes a lot of sense since the narration is based on
the real life recordings of Kathy detailing these experiences and having her at the center gives us the fish out of water entry into this new world through someone who was actually in it instead of just watching it from the outside though to be fair to liance he was a full-fledged member of the club for a year of the time he was with them but Kathy really lived the life and through her we can see how being drawn into that world and Drawn to people like Benny can change you she escapes into what she thinks is
a world of freedom from her stuffy life only to find that this freedom is just another cage instead of a fairy tale where she gets to ride off into the sunset away from her old life she has to really stop and take stock of what she actually wants and fight to make that her reality you don't like oh get worried and while having Kathy frame The Narrative can make us feel like we're at a bit of a remove from what's Happening that's actually in line with what everyone is feeling they not only hold each other
at a distance they have a hard time even truly understanding themselves and in the same way that for the vandals at least initially the life wasn't actually about the bikes and the leather and the denim but what all of it represented so too is the film's focus on the aesthetic and the feelings of this world rather than the plot which is why the film can at times feel aimless or like not much is going on every character comes to this realization that the freedom they were chasing wasn't what they thought it would be in their
own way and overall the film captures the feeling of the upbeat idealism of the 60s slipping away and being replaced by the more Grim gritty reality of the' 70s the club was originally formed as a way to create a community and a sense of belonging for men who had been looking for something outside of the repressive structure of the 1950s but by the time the late' 60s and early '70s have rolled around there's a whole new group of disgruntled young men who have a much darker view of the world made Grim by the reality of
either serving in Vietnam or having the draft looming over them while the original Club was more about looking and feeling tough and getting into a scuffle here or there to prove you were a tough guy the later darker version of the group begins seeking out ways to inflict real damage on the world around them as an externalization of their deep pain Major Spoilers for the end of the film ahead feel free to pause here and come back after you've watched the film as the film nears its end the two opposing forces of the old way
and the new way finally reach their boiling point and Johnny is murdered while this follows the fact that he was indeed murdered in real life it also serves the narrative point of highlighting how the fact that he couldn't fully let go of this idea of himself that he had attached to the club and that led to him hanging on to it long after he knew he should have left resulted in dire consequences his death marks the end of any last vestages of the club as essentially a community group for lonely men and its full turn
into a darker more criminal Enterprise Benny and Kathy began to pull away from the club due to this shift Benny was certainly never afraid of a scuffle or a bit of criminal activity that's going off with them guys what I need to think for but he was also still a teenager when he joined it's not really a surprise that he might have a different outlook on life as a fully grown adult the very end of the film rests on the film's central idea about the facades we created to protect ourselves and the things we cling
to and project bdy and Kathy have left the club behind and made their way to safer Suburbia they say they're happy with their choice but we see signs that they're not 100% sold on this internally but in the same way that they push to create their life of freedom in the motorcycle club it seems that they're now determined to do the same in creating this new calmer life even if it's going to prove to have its own difficulties though it should be noted that it seems that real life Cathy and Benny did stay together until
her death and even had a son that no one in the production knew about until he showed up at one of the film premieres so maybe there is hope in that uneasy rebuilding of Life One Last Time that's the take click here to watch the video we think you'll love or here to check out a whole playlist of awesome content don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications and make sure to subscribe to our patreon for exclusive new videos
