Yesterday and Metal Lords Don't Rock Hard Enough

These two music-themed comedies seem to wear their influences on their sleeves, but without much heart.

I happened to watch two music-themed comedies recently that initially appear to revere their source material. Yesterday imagines a world in which The Beatles and their music suddenly blink out of existence, which then allows the one man who remembers—a talented but down-on-his-luck singer/songwriter—to finally taste success. Metal Lords, on the other hand, follows a pair of high school outcasts who attempt to bring metal to the masses at their school’s Battle of the Bands while also struggling with various levels of teenage melodrama. Unfortunately, neither is able to show what makes their respective music great, and as a result, The Beatles and heavy metal ultimately become little more than set dressing. 

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we get into the meat of the matter: Metal Lords is a far better movie than Yesterday, to the point where I would actually recommend Metal Lords to anyone looking for a straightforward teenage comedy with some cool tunes scattered throughout. Both films have their obvious flaws (after all, that’s why we’re here), but Yesterday might as well have been called Nice Guy Entitlement: The Movie. Nothing that the main character receives, whether it be the fame that is meant to be the thematic center of the film or the affection of his childhood friend, feels deserved. But of course he gets it all anyway without having to fundamentally change. Not only is the musical component subpar—we’ll get to that shortly—but the plot and characters are paper-thin. Metal Lords manages to have mostly competent character arcs in an adequately metal package.

With that being said, Yesterday begins charmingly enough, with protagonist Jack Malik struggling to make a name for himself as a musician. Then, after being struck by a bus following a mysterious worldwide power outage, he begins to notice that no one other than himself can remember The Beatles. The whimsical premise sets up much of the comedy that follows: Jack performs “Yesterday” for some friends after his accident, and they’re spellbound by this “new” song. Jack’s career starts to pick up as he gains more and more attention, with audiences going gaga for this fresh pop sensation. In typical superstardom fashion, Jack eventually has to wrestle with the price of fame.

That’s as far as the film gets, though, when it comes to The Beatles. Jack puts some acoustic and pop punk spins on familiar tunes and…that’s it. Yesterday’s thesis seems to be “The Beatles’ music is beautiful and catchy”, but it never explores why that is. What of Paul and John’s vocal harmonies? What about the creative processes that spawned these legendary songs, or the more adventurous and psychedelic turn that the band took later in their career? Well, none of that is very important to the plot of Yesterday. Jack doesn’t learn anything about The Beatles. The closest he gets is remembering song lyrics by visiting various Liverpool landmarks referenced in the songs. However, none of this amounts to a compelling case for why anyone should care about The Beatles. Even when Jack has an extended conversation with an actual member of the Fab Four (I won’t spoil who it is or what they talk about, just in case), their identity has no bearing on the scene itself. Yesterday is less of a comedy built around The Beatles’ music and more of a limp, occasionally humorous film that happens to include a dozen decent covers of some Beatles tunes. 

Metal Lords is not only the better movie of the two—it at least attempts to immerse its characters in metal music and culture. Right from the start, the film is far more heavy-handed with its trivia, memorabilia, and paraphernalia. The soundtrack might be somewhat pedestrian, with an overreliance on 70’s and 80’s classics and little in the way of extreme metal, but the costume and set designers did a great job with the characters’ wardrobes and the posters in the band’s practice space. Three separate Celtic Frost references, some respectable cameos, and a very deliberate shout-out to Wata (from the band Boris) add up to a win in my book. 

So where does the film go wrong? The answer is fairly straightforward. It even has a name: Hunter Sylvester. Most of Metal Lords’ actual metal content is centered around Hunter, a brash, abrasive, and generally unlikeable amalgamation of almost every metalhead stereotype to ever exist (metal subgenre arguments might be legendarily petty, but only a high schooler would try to pass off their boilerplate thrash band as "post death metal"). Hunter is the one character who genuinely loves metal, but his expressions of this love are consistently juvenile or selfish until the last few scenes. His goal in life is to speak “truth to power”, even if it puts his life and one solitary friendship on the line. This could be seen as admirable in certain situations; however, the issue with Metal Lords is that few viewers will want to accept Hunter’s various treatises on metal because Hunter is a jerk. 

The bright spot in the movie is Kevin—the main protagonist and Hunter’s best friend—who initially serves as a simple foil for Hunter but later grows into a confident, earnest young man. This is due in part to his foray into heavy metal drumming, which is awkward at first but eventually garners attention from Emily, his soon-to-be girlfriend, and Clay, the chill frontman of the school's most popular student band. However, throughout his entire character arc, Kevin never seems to believe in metal in a way that can stand up to Hunter's. He maintains his status as Hunter's foil just because he's not a sociopath. Thus, while Kevin is able to apply some of the lessons that Hunter tried to teach him earlier and finally "speak truth to power", metal is not an important part of the equation. It could be swapped out for any other musical genre and Kevin could still follow the same trajectory. Kevin is still a great character, but in a film that so clearly wants to be about the transformative power of metal, his relationship with the music seems incidental.

At the end of the day, Metal Lords is still a fun, if predictable, metal-themed romp. I was mildly disappointed by the film's capricious feelings towards metal, but at least it functions as a comedy. Yesterday should be avoided at all costs. It has absolutely nothing to say about...well, anything really, least of all The Beatles. To put things into perspective, I was highly skeptical of Metal Lords with and ended up enjoying it. I had zero expectations for Yesterday and was still let down.