"Need for Speed" with Aaron Paul

The joke was quick to surface when, in his last scene on “Breaking Bad,” Aaron Paul’s character Jesse Pinkman drove off into the night in a souped-up muscle car: he was driving off to star in “Need for Speed,” a trailer for which had premiered in the middle of the episode. “I literally started this film the night I wrapped Breaking Bad,” Paul said with a hint of wonder in his voice. And that last scene? “ I drove straight from there into this movie.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Paul’s character, Tobey Marshall, seems to be Jesse Pinkman reincarnate. Tobey’s tragic arc even seems familiar: the gifted driver loses everything to his ex-partner in an illegal street race and, when released from jail, goes on a journey of revenge across the whole of the United States. Tobey is different from Jesse, of course. “Jesse was just so insecure, a tortured, easily manipulated, easy-to-beat-up kid,” Paul said. “And Tobey, I think he’s much stronger, confident, driven.” Yet somehow Tobey seems to be the inevitable conclusion to Pinkman, a Jesse after meth—mature, confident, and still authentic.

In fact, the real similarity between Paul’s two most popular characters to date is his ability to imbue them with a sense of humanity and realism that pervades the whole of “Need for Speed.” Jesse Pinkman was the human side of “Breaking Bad,” and in a movie about shiny, incredibly fast cars, Tobey Marshall manages to give the story a human edge. In fact, it almost seems like Aaron isn’t playing Jesse or Tobey at all. Aaron Paul is playing Aaron Paul, the personable, relatable man who seems to fall from the screen into real life. This tendency towards relatability and humanity is one of Paul’s greatest strengths, especially in “Need for Speed.”

While Tobey is behind the wheel, the supercharged Shelby GT500 so dangerously close to stealing the show is suddenly one with his character; he seems almost to personify the cars he drives and he draws the viewer into that experience. Tobey also happens to resemble one of Paul’s cinematic heroes: “Steve McQueen’s such a badass,” Paul gushed. “And I just love that he was a racer before he was an actor. And that was [Director Scott Waugh’s] whole pitch—he wanted to do a throwback to the films that really started this genre. ‘Bullitt,’ ‘Vanishing Point,’ ‘The Smoking Gun.’ And that’s what excited me. That we were really gonna do all these stunts without all the CGI.”

Perhaps the film’s lack of CGI is another reason why it lends itself to believability. When the Mustang jumps two lanes of traffic, when the car is airlifted by a military helicopter, when Paul himself slides the car to a stop mere inches from the camera—they all happened. Almost every stunt in the movie was real, and many were performed by Paul himself. In this way, “Need for Speed” differentiates itself from other movies of the car-racing genre—it seems to be about something real in a way that “The Fast and the Furious” franchise isn’t. Several times throughout the movie, the camera pans out to give the viewer a first-person view of the driver’s seat, giving the audience the sense that they are the driver. In the same way Paul was inspired by the coolness of Steve McQueen in “Bullitt,” the film aims to inspire the audience, showing them that all they need to be Tobey Marshall is a fast car and a white jean jacket.

Before the interview began, I considered asking Aaron if he ever felt as though he was playing a supporting character to the cars themselves. But it was only when I met the man that I realized he was, with brilliant perception, playing a supporting role to the experience.

—Contributing writer Jordan J. J. Feri can be reached at jordanferi@college.harvard.edu.