Today everyone learned what happens when Taylor Swift tries to remake the Robert Rodriguez classic Sin City into a music video, featuring her own star-studded squad — you get Too Many Cooks.
Social media was overloaded for the past nine days with, actually, pretty neat faux movie posters for Swift’s newest video for “Bad Blood,” off her album 1989. Featuring 18 different celebrities like Selena Gomez, Lena Dunham and Jessica Alba, the ads caused a lot anticipation for the video, which dropped at this year’s Billboard Music Awards. Even Kendrick Lamar had a role, which was apparently rapping over most of the actual song, and spitting barely-passable lines like, “Still, all my life I got money and power, and you gotta live with the bad blood now.” Please, no.
What was a really cool concept — Sin City was a fantastic film — got turned into a clusterfuck of title credits, not unlike the Adult Swim short, Too Many Cooks. Director Joseph Kahn, the same guy that directed Swift’s video for “Blank Space,” returned for this next release, a far cry from the days of “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me.”
Similar in theme to “Blank Space,” as the years seem to have made Swift vengeful and violent, the video tells the story of Catastrophe, Swift’s special agent alter-ego, who is double crossed during a mission by Arsyn, played by Selena Gomez. Cue every member of Swift’s squad, toting rocket launchers, nun-chucks, etc., who make it their personal mission to train her for some final showdown. Spoiler alert: the two end up slapping each other once, and the video ends.
It’s a bit simpler to see how real fans would love this video, however. The celebrity faces are easily recognizable as Swift’s gigantic group of besties, and even her two Scottish Folds’ namesakes made an appearance — it was pretty neat to see Olivia Benson from Law and Order, and Meredith Grey from Grey’s Anatomy, as secret agent mentors.
As a short-film type of deal, like Kanye West’s “Runaway,” “Bad Blood” could’ve been a cool Sin City homage and something we wouldn’t necessarily expect from Swift. Instead, the concept and storyline was lost under the sea of special agent codenames. Sorry Taylor, but there were probably better ways to let Katy Perry know you’re mad at her.
See for yourself:
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