We already have Across the Universe, but while a beautiful ode to the Beatles and their music, it’s more of a musical adaptation of their work than anything else. So for a while, I’ve wondered when we’d get a movie talking about the Beatles and the big personalities of George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney.
There have been attempts (looking at you, Nowhere Boy), but none that have been particularly successful in bringing to life the love of the Beatles and the band that brought us so much classic music. So, imagine my surprise when, suddenly, there’s a trailer for Yesterday, a movie that completely erases the Beatles from history, tasking one man with bringing them back to life.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a singer who has, seemingly, thrown in the towel, when he gets into a bike accident. When he wakes up, no one around him knows who the Beatles are. When he performs “Yesterday,” his friend Ellie (Lily James) is in tears because she has never heard it, and then their friend says that the greatest songwriters are Coldplay.
First, take a look at the trailer:
Yesterday, everyone knew The Beatles.
Today, only Jack remembers their songs.
He’s about to become a very big deal.#YesterdayMovie. Coming soon.pic.twitter.com/Tc5pesq4X3
— Himesh Patel (@HimeshJPatel) February 12, 2019
Maybe it is because it’s reexamining the lyrics of the Beatles in 2019, but there’s something about this movie that really excites me. So often, these songs are seen as outdated or things we know so well that we can just brush them off, but if you look at when the Beatles wrote some of their work (especially Revolver through Let It Be), it was at a time of great struggle and tension in the United States, but also throughout the world.
Their music isn’t just the fun bops about love of their early work, and taking their lyrics and bringing them to light again in 2019 forces us to reexamine what they were saying, and I think Yesterday is a great way of doing so. From Danny Boyle and the mind behind Love Actually (Richard Curtis), the movie just speaks to me in a way that no trailer has in recent years.
Don’t get me wrong; this could be one of those cheesy movies about the power of music that none of us end up liking, but I think if the trailer is anything to go off of, we’re in for quite the treat with Yesterday. Also, thank the lord above that the song wasn’t called “Hey Dude.” That is the last thing we ever need in this world.
Yesterday hits theaters this June 28th.
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