The Bikeriders explained

What is The Bikeriders about?

Cast

• Kathy – Jodie Comer
• Benny – Austin Butler
• Johnny – Tom Hardy
• Zipco – Michael Shannon
• Brucie – Damon Herriman
• Cockroach – Emory Cohen
• Wahoo – Beau Knapp
• Cal – Boyd Holbrook
• Corky – Karl Glusman
• Funny Sonny – Norman Reedus
• The Kid – Toby Wallace
• Danny Lyon – Mike Faise
• Based on – The Bikeriders a book by Danny Lyon
• Written by – Jeff Nichols
• Directed by – Jeff Nichols

Benny’s fork in the road: Johnny or Kathy

The Bikeriders is a coming of age story. You have Benny in the role of the “adolescent”. Then Johnny and Kathy each offer him a different future. Johnny wants Benny to take over leadership of the Vandals. While Kathy wants him to stop riding and have a more traditional life with her. 

Nichols has the biker gang face a similar fork in the road. Initially, the Vandals are merely a club where guys hang out and ride together. Simple, straightforward. Benny’s essentially the embodiment of that ethos, something Johnny points out when he first asks Benny to consider becoming leader. “You’re who all these guys here are trying to be.” The success of the Vandals as a brand leads to more and more complications, until the whole thing isn’t the same. You have the identity crisis between the original Chicago guys and the newer, post-Vietnam recruits who have a larger bandwidth for chaos. That comes to a head in the showdown between Johnny and The Kid. 

Despite Benny’s dedication to the Vandals and Kathy, it was on his terms only. As long as Kathy let him do what he wanted, they were together. And as long as the Vandals didn’t ask much of him, he hung around. When Johnny initially proposed leadership to Benny, what did Benny say? “You’re a grown up, man. You’ve got a house, you’ve got a job. I don’t want that. I don’t care about none of that.” And when they have their final conversation, after “taking care of Cockroach”, this is what Benny says: “I don’t ask nobody for nothing. And I don’t want nothing from nobody. It’s not me. Never gonna be me.” 

When Benny runs off, it’s because both Johnny and Kathy demanded more of him. They were asking him to step up and be an adult, each in their own way. The death of Johnny is a tipping point. Benny’s loss of innocence. He can no longer maintain the illusion that people don’t need him and that he doesn’t need others. So he returns to Kathy. And cries. 

Crying is something Bikeriders sets up around half-way through the movie. Kathy has a big speech to Danny about what it takes to make a man cry. 

Kathy: You know my dad always told me it takes a lot to make a man cry, an awful lot, you know? They don’t get hit on the head and start crying. Not a real man. Well I seen my father cry twice. All my life. Once when his father died. And once when my mother almost died. And I mean really cried, you know? And I always believed him. Whereas Benny… I’ve seen him get worked over with blackjacks. I’ve seen him getting stitched up with no nothing, I mean, just like stitching him up while he’s wide awake and everything else. You don’t see that guy shed a tear. The closest I ever seen him come to it was that day. Not for the pain or nothing, no. You know what it was? …. He didn’t want to lose his foot ‘cause then he couldn’t ride no more. 

So when Benny cries, it’s meaningful on multiple fronts. He’s lost his father figure. Not only that, he feels partially responsible since he had abandoned Johnny. He also realizes it’s the end of riding as he’s known it—being on a bike will never be the same. So what Benny’s dealing with already mirrors half of Kathy’s story about her father. What’s the other half? That her father almost lost his wife. The previous scene between Kathy and Benny was her confronting him over what happened at the party. She mentions that if the men had their way with her, she probably would have used Benny’s pistol to take her own life. 

All of that is what causes Benny to suddenly grow up. He’s no longer living in this fantasy where consequences aren’t real. So he finally commits to Kathy. Having lost something meaningful, he refuses to lose her, too. His tears are as much for Johnny as they are for her. 

At the very end of The Bikeriders, there’s a moment when domesticated Benny hears the roar of a motorcycle and you might think he longs for that life and regrets being so tied down and settled. But then he smiles at Kathy. And it’s a genuine smile. He’s happy. 

I want to point out how that look shared between Kathy and Benny is a direct contrast to Johnny’s last moments at home. Before he goes off to face The Kid, Johnny tries to say goodbye to those he cares about. But his daughters aren’t home. And his wife doesn’t even make eye contact with him. He asks her questions. Stares at her. But she watches the TV. It shows how disconnected the two of them are at this point. Which ties back to Johnny explaining how he had pretty much abandoned his family to lead the Vandals. Benny makes the opposite choice. As much as he may miss what had been, he’s content with what is. 

The state of America 

In narrative, details do a lot of work. For example, many stories have a nadir, a moment where things are at their worst. Say someone has a big audition for a role of a lifetime. But they miss the audition. Why they miss the audition can be anything. A car crash. A hangover. A friend calls them and says it’s been rescheduled when it hasn’t. Etc. etc. The choice the writer makes is usually very relevant to the story’s themes and morals. 

For example, maybe the check-engine light had turned on in the very first scene of the story. The character had been irresponsible so never fixed the car. That irresponsibility is a general character flaw and why their career hadn’t gone anywhere. As things unfold, they get their life together in various ways, except never fix the car. Until, finally, they get this audition and it’s the car that costs them everything. The takeaway there is that loose ends can often come back to bite you.

If it’s a hangover it might be part of a story where the protagonist starts off as responsible but a new friend is a negative influence and the protagonist loses their way. The night before the audition, instead of preparing, they go out with the new friend and party. When they wake up, they’ve missed the audition. It’s similar to the “loose ends can come back to bite you” in that the main issue is a lack of responsibility but it’s specific in that it’s about the people we let influence us. 

So in The Bikeriders, what do we see? The club goes from something relatively positive to legitimately negative. You could do something where the change happens because Brucie takes over but isn’t a leader so can’t control the rebellious impulses of the members and things descend into chaos. What did Jeff Nichols go with? The Vietnam War. Specifically, new members who had been in Vietnam and were now back home and changed by their experience. 

That choice turns Bikeriders from a story about a local biker gang to a larger statement about America. Especially as the change in the gang mirrors a well-documented change in the national zeitgeist. “But Chris, this is based on a true story. Didn’t Nichols go with Vietnam because that’s what really happened?” Sure. But he’s not making a documentary. Bikeriders is a piece of art that’s trying to say something. And part of that is how this loss of innocence in a biker gang reflects a similar loss of innocence in America.

With that in mind, you could make a larger argument about Johnny and Kathy becoming symbolic figures. Johnny represents a fantasy of being more than you are—which is why the origin story of the group was Johnny watching Marlon Brando in The Wild One. He was inspired by the imagination of Hollywood. And everyone who joined was chasing a similar idea of escapism from the day to day. While Kathy represents a much more traditional life and idea of family. 

The change in the Vandals from a legitimate group to a criminal organization could be a statement on how corrupted the American Fantasy has become. It’s the same energy as Taxi Driver, American Psycho, Fight Club, and The Social Network—where this quest to be more than average is often only possible through destruction of self, others, and society. You might argue that Benny’s choice to be with Kathy and his satisfaction with their life is a reminder that bigger isn’t always better. That simple can be far more rewarding. 

If you want to be even more emphatic, you could say Bikeriders is specifically saying that people need to grow up and stop fantasizing about being “bikeriders” or “world-changing tech founders” or “a Pulitzer Prize-winning author” because those things aren’t what you expect them to be and, really, you don’t need them to be happy with your life.

Interpretations can, will, and should vary. I’m merely pointing out the ingredients. 

Chain of consequence

One technique in narrative structure is to build the story around an escalating element. For example, in Alien, you go from discovery of the facehugger to the chestburster to the adult Xenomorph. Each section is more intense and consequential than the previous one. 

In The Bikeriders, I really liked how Nichols escalates Benny’’s relationship with consequence. You have the scene where Benny runs from the police. He breaks all these traffic laws and would get away if his bike didn’t run out of gas. Even though he’s arrested, nothing serious comes of it; Kathy mentions the state suspended Benny’s license. He drives anyway. 

The next instance is the fight at the bar that ends with the shovel-shot to the head and stab to the ankle. That has more serious consequences. Benny almost loses his foot. He’s laid up for a while. It causes tension in his relationship with Kathy and they almost separate. But they quickly work things out. His foot heals. More serious than before but something time heals. 

Then Benny runs away. While he probably couldn’t have stopped the shift of the Vandals, or saved Johnny, the film sets those things up as a direct response to Benny’s refusal to become a leader. Johnny told him “You are who these guys want to be.” By not stepping into that role, he allowed someone else to become the model, to set the zeitgeist. And that resulted in The Kid’s rise and eventual dethroning of Johnny and the transformation of the Vandals from a riding group to a crime organization. 

The Kid joins the Milwaukee chapter

This is a bit of irony that might get overlooked. 

So The Kid fails Johnny’s loyalty test. Instead of standing by his friends and showing he’s ride or die, The Kid was willing to leave them behind and join the Vandals on his own. That goes against everything we know about Johnny and that version of the Vandals. It’s not what family would do. Instead of moving on with his life, The Kid goes around until he can find another chapter to join. We find out it’s the one from Milwaukee.

You may remember that Milwaukee was the first branch the Vandals ever had. And that Johnny had initially rejected the idea. Big Jack was so adamant about it that he challenged Johnny for leadership. Even though it was a serious fight, neither one wanted to seriously hurt the other. Which was why they picked fists over knives in the first place. Johnny wins but allows the Milwaukee chapter. 

It’s that decision to allow that chapter that starts the series of events that eventually leads to The Kid’s entry into the Vandals and his murder of Johnny. So he’s hoisted by his own petard. 

And just want to note to pay attention to the difference in Johnny’s fights. There’s something noble and innocent to the one with Big Jack. While the “fight” with The Kid isn’t honorable, familial, or respectful. That dichotomy ties back to the themes about morality and America that we had talked about earlier. 

Is The Bikeriders based on a true story? What happened to Kathy and Benny?

One famous photo is of Benny standing at a pool table, looking down. We see a recreation of it in the film. And the picture’s used at the end of the movie. But there’s a twist. The Telegraph recently spoke with Danny Lyon and wrote: Lyon had tried to reach Kathy and Benny several times over the years, unsuccessfully, but when the movie came out in the US, it emerged that the couple had had a son, Kirk, who got in touch. Sadly, Kathy, Lyon discovered, had passed away, but Benny was still alive and living in Florida. “So I call Benny up. We have a great talk. He’s totally upbeat. And then he says, ‘Hey, you know the picture of me at the pool hall?’ I said, yeah. He says, ‘It’s not me.’ What? ‘Check out the tattoos. It’s not me.’”