Enter Johnny Rotten, the “street poet” of the series, played like an angry Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory” by Anson Boon. His performance captures Johnny’s wide-eyed intensity and unpredictable wrath, never sure if a creative idea is going to piss him off or earn his praise. But it leads to a major problem with the series’ attitude, in that it’s so difficult to replicate a genuine cool in an origin story for a mass-marketed rebel. Just look at, of all things, how “Solo: A Star Wars Story” struggled with its central task of recreating the fresh cool of Han Solo, and was stuck with impersonation. In the case of “Pistol,” rebellious acts, icy glares, and the like veer toward corny branding, all the more so when some character pontificates about revolutions. This saga follows the crystallization of punk rockers, but it hardly has the shocking insight of punk rock.
The most poignant statement this series can make is that the Sex Pistol boys all fought a lot, and that very corrosive energy (“We’re not into music—we’re into chaos,” they’re quoted by NME saying) made it into their songs and performances. Their growing audience wanted to fight too. Along with Boyle’s filmmaking, in which the constant soft lighting on his edgy punks seems like a grave miscalculation, that profession of chaos struggles to create a cause worth rooting for, with little emotional investment in the growth of this band. Every mild plot line undermines the other, leaving the viewer with a historical overview at best as to what one of the world’s most famous punk bands did and did not have.
One can see what drew the director of both “Trainspotting” and the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics to this material—the chance to dive back into the chaotic mindset of youth, to find something realer than English foppery inside the toilet of the underworld. It’s clear, too, that Boyle wanted to orchestrate his own chaotic crowd fever, as in the many concert scenes that have the bandmates dodging bottles, exchanging spit and fists with their attendees. And yet while Boyle wants to trace the impact of the Sex Pistols’ music like his magical-realist Beatles homage “Yesterday,” this venture feels even more weightless. “Pistol” doesn’t have the same sense of being a corporate gig meant to promote record sales, but it does have the same debilitating sentimentality.