Edgar Wright’s Music Video For Daft Punk And Pharrell Has Flying Stone Heads
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A number of notable movie directors have either gotten their start directing music videos or gone on to helm them for friends or big acts. The list includes the likes of Spike Jonze, David Fincher, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Hell, Martin Scorsese even directed Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video in 1986 (remember when Jacko dance fights with Wesley Snipes?). Now we can add one more name to this list, as Edgar Wright has directed this new video for “Gust of Wind” by Pharrell Williams and Daft Punk.
Wright, as many of you probably know, is most known for directing movies, especially the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy that includes fan favorites Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the most recent installment, The World’s End. He also has an extensive background in episodic television, which is where he first worked with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and tag team of terror that would help to, in large part, define his career up to this point.
“Gust of Wind” marks his first foray into the music video format, and this is a relatively simple affair. There’s one location, what appears to be a forest in the midst of fall, where the leaves are changing color and falling from the trees as dancers run around, performing gymnastic style moves to the beat in a kind of balletic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon way. There’s even some synchronized hand dancing and one of those oversized hats that has become one of Pharrell’s recent trademarks.
And then Daft Punk shows up, which is where this video derives the strangeness you have come to expect from Wright’s work. Known for their secret identities, the electronic duo are personified here by having their iconic helmets translated into what appear to be giant stone space crafts of some sort that hover and harmonize in distorted, electrified voices.
This track may not be as catchy as some of Pharrell’s other work, but I guess it’s fine (I’m really the absolute last person to ask about this sort of thing), and if you’re a fan of either him or Daft Punk, you’ll probably enjoy this. At least it’s not that “Happy” song, which has become almost impossible to escape over the last year.
After a high-profile departure from Marvel’s Ant-Man, Wright has a number of projects in the works. He’s been linked to a film adaptation of the cult classic television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which sounds like a damn near perfect match, as well as an adaptation of Andrew Smith’s young adult coming of age novel Grasshopper Jungle. As great as it could have been to see his take on a big superhero comic book movie, we’ll watch any movie that Wright directs with little to no hesitation.
