Ten months ago I mentioned that the four actors who will soon be playing the Fab Four in Sam Mendes’ quartet of Beatle flicks (due in early ‘28) are, being in their early 30s, are simply too old to inhabit the original fellows.
The Beatles were in their early 20s when things ignited, and their late 20s when they broke up.
You can film-flam and tapdance all you want, but unless the four films are set during the ‘69 and ‘70 downturn period, when the lads were a bit older and three of them had beards, it’ll be simply, biologically impossible for Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Koehgan and Joseph Quinn to become Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, respectively.
My concern was slightly lessened yesterday when I glanced at the four officially released photos. “Yes, all right, maybe,” I told myself. “Mendes is indeed focusing on their closing Get Back / Abbey Road chapter.”
But wait…wait!…not as far as that photo of Mescal’s Macca is concerned. It has him wearing a standard 1964 soup-bowl cut and one of those high-collared Carnaby Street shirts that they all wore in the late ‘63 / early ‘64 break-out period. When McCartney (dob: 6.18.42) was 22. Mescal looks older than his years right now..,he’s 30 but looks 36 or 37.
