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El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (or simply El Camino) is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film. Part of the Breaking Bad franchise, it serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad. It continues the story of Jesse Pinkman, who partnered with former teacher Walter White throughout the series to build a crystal meth empire based in Albuquerque. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced El Camino; Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. Several Breaking Bad actors also reprised their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Robert Forster, Jonathan Banks, and Bryan Cranston. Forster died on the day of El Camino's release, making the film one of his final on-screen appearances.
Gilligan began considering the story of El Camino while writing Breaking Bad's series finale. He approached Paul with the idea for the film in 2017, near the tenth anniversary of the show's premiere, and completed the script several months later. Principal photography began in secret in New Mexico in November 2018, lasting nearly 50 days. The project remained unconfirmed until Netflix released a trailer on August 24, 2019.
El Camino received a digital release on Netflix and a limited theatrical run on October 11, 2019, with an AMC television premiere on February 16, 2020. It drew positive reviews from critics and garnered several award nominations, winning Best Movie Made for Television at the Critics' Choice Television Awards and Best Motion Picture Made for Television at the Satellite Awards. El Camino additionally gained four nominations at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Outstanding Television Movie and other technical categories.

Plot[edit]

In a flashback to shortly before they leave Walter White's meth business,[N 1] Jesse Pinkman asks Mike Ehrmantraut where he would go to start over. Mike says if he were younger, he would go to Alaska, which Jesse finds appealing. Jesse expresses the desire to make amends for past wrongdoing, but Mike cautions that starting over would make that impossible.
In the present, Jesse flees the Brotherhood compound in Todd Alquist's El Camino.[N 2] He goes to the Albuquerque home of Skinny Pete and Badger, who hide the car and give Jesse a place to sleep. The next morning, Jesse calls Old Joe to dispose of the El Camino, but Joe leaves after discovering its LoJack. Pete devises a plan to make it appear Jesse fled after trading the El Camino for Pete's Ford Thunderbird. Pete and Badger give Jesse the money Walter gave them,[N 2] and Badger drives south in the Thunderbird so it appears Jesse is headed to Mexico. Pete stays with the El Camino and waits for the police to respond to the LoJack. Jesse departs in Badger's Pontiac Fiero. He learns from the radio news of Walter's fatal poisoning of a woman,[N 3] and of Walter's death.[N 2]
In a flashback to Jesse's captivity,[N 4] Todd takes Jesse to Todd's apartment to help dispose of his cleaning lady, whom he killed after she discovered his hidden money. They sidestep Lou Schanzer, Todd's busybody neighbor, and bury the corpse in the Painted Desert. Jesse briefly holds the pistol Todd left unsecured, but Todd talks him into returning it.
In the present, Jesse sneaks into Todd's apartment and searches for Todd's money. He finds the new hiding place, but policemen Neil Kandy and Casey enter and begin searching. Jesse hides but holds Casey at gunpoint after Casey finds him. Neil disarms Jesse, who realizes they are not police but thugs also looking for Todd's money. To save himself, Jesse reveals he found the cash. Lou reports finding an old note from Todd, and Casey distracts him by feigning interest. Neil and Jesse bargain over the cash and Neil lets Jesse take a third. As they depart, Jesse recognizes Neil as the welder who built the tether that held him while he was forced to cook meth for the Brotherhood.
Jesse finds Ed Galbraith, the "disappearer", who wants US$125,000 to aid Jesse, plus $125,000 for the previous occasion when Jesse hired him but failed to commit.[N 5] Jesse is $1,800 short and Ed refuses to help. Knowing they are being surveilled, Jesse calls his parents and feigns willingness to surrender. After his parents and the police depart, Jesse sneaks into the Pinkman home and takes two pistols from his father's safe, a Colt Woodsman and an Iver Johnson Hammerless.[9][10]
Jesse drives to Neil's shop, where Neil, Casey, and three friends celebrate with escorts and cocaine. After the escorts leave, he asks for $1,800, and Neil refuses. Seeing the Woodsman in Jesse's waistband, Neil challenges Jesse to a duel for his share of the cash. Jesse agrees, and when Neil reaches for his gun, Jesse shoots him with the Hammerless, which was concealed in his jacket pocket. Casey fires at Jesse, but Jesse kills him with Neil's gun. Jesse collects the driver's licenses of the remaining men and lets them leave after threatening to return and kill them if they tell the police. He recovers Neil's cash and departs after setting an explosion to cover his tracks.
In a flashback,[N 6] Walter and Jesse have breakfast after a multi-day meth cook. Estimating they will make more than $1 million, Walter laments having waited his entire life to do something special and calls Jesse lucky since he will not have to wait.
In the present, Ed drops Jesse off at a car parked near Haines, Alaska. Jesse gives Ed a letter for Brock Cantillo and acknowledges he does not want to say goodbye to anyone else. Driving off, Jesse has a flashback to his time with Jane Margolis.[N 7] He tells her he admires what she said about going wherever the universe takes her, but she dismisses it as metaphorical and encourages him to make his own decisions. Jesse drives on, smiling at the prospect of a new life.

Cast[edit]

Further information: List of characters in the Breaking Bad franchise

Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, and Jonathan Banks reprised their roles as Todd Alquist, Jane Margolis, and Mike Ehrmantraut, respectively.

Themes and style[edit]

While El Camino's plot focuses on Jesse Pinkman escaping to Alaska, writer and director Vince Gilligan stated that thematically, the film centers on Jesse's transformation from a boy to a man. As Jesse spent the entirety of Breaking Bad as Walter White's partner, El Camino in contrast shows Jesse coming to terms with his past and making his own decisions, free of White's influence.[12] This theme is prevalent in the flashbacks that bookend El Camino, with Mike Ehrmantraut at the beginning, and Walter White and Jane Margolis at the end. Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone detailed that while these scenes serve as a reminder of who Jesse used to be and all that he lost, "all three flashbacks are also about the way that Jesse has been forced by tragic circumstance to grow up and think more about his place in the universe and the impact he has on others. And they're about setting him on the road where Ed [Galbraith] leaves him at the film's conclusion".[7] Aaron Paul described his character Jesse as someone who went through "hell and back multiple times" and is still "paying for those sins", but Donna Bowman of The A.V. Club remarked that in freeing his ambitions from Walter White's manipulations, Jesse found his own redemption and avoided his mentor's fate, finally giving himself a chance for a future.[13][14]
The opening flashback with Jesse and Mike also sets the theme of Jesse wanting to start over while also making things right with his past. Though Mike warned that starting over would make it impossible to make amends, Sepinwall noted that Jesse was able to repay several emotional debts from the series with rectifying gestures throughout the film: giving a proper goodbye to his friends Badger and Skinny Pete, apologizing to his parents one last time, getting revenge against Neil Kandy and Casey, paying back his (literal) debt to Ed Galbraith, and sending his farewell letter of apology to Brock Cantillo.[7] Placing his own analysis on Jesse's final duel with Neil, Gilligan interpreted the scene as more than just Jesse getting the cash he needed for his escape, but also as a way of "exorcising demons" that plagued him from the events of the series. Both Gilligan and Paul speculated that Jesse would still be haunted by these demons, even in his new life in Alaska, but had at least achieved some form of vengeance for his past by ridding the world of an evil person.[12][13]
Breaking Bad was often categorized as a contemporary Western; this theme is also present in El Camino.[15][16] Gilligan expressed his admiration for director Sergio Leone and his love for the Western genre – he originally wanted to film Breaking Bad in the CinemaScope format Leone used for the Dollars Trilogy and got his wish in El Camino.[2][17] Critics noted the duel between Jesse and Neil as being directly in the style of Western films.[18][19] Gilligan referenced The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and other classic gunfights to sequence the scene with comparable camera coverage techniques, likewise composer Dave Porter used Western elements in the scene's score.[20][21] Ben Travers of IndieWire traced the film's Western influences to its "sweeping landscapes, lone survivor, and final stand-off", while Matt Zoller Seitz of Vulture called El Camino's title "unabashedly Western-tinged" and cited the final shot's lack of overt sentimentality as being true to the spirit of classic Westerns.[22][23]

Production[edit]

Conception[edit]

Vince Gilligan, the creator and showrunner of Breaking Bad, had the idea for El Camino while writing the series finale "Felina". He asked himself what happened to Jesse Pinkman after the events of the episode when Jesse escaped from the neo-Nazis' compound after being rescued by Walter White.[17] Though he kept Jesse's fate ambiguous in the finale's script, Gilligan offered two possibilities during interviews: a more realistic one where the police caught Jesse a few miles from the compound, and a second, more optimistic one where he got away but still had to cope with the terrible things he witnessed throughout the series.[24][25]
In the intervening years, Gilligan toyed with both approaches. One early idea involved Jesse hiding close to the Canadian border, getting lured back into crime to help a young woman in the town. This version ended with Jesse in a jail cell in the concluding scene, imprisoned yet at peace for the first time. Gilligan's girlfriend Holly Rice advised against this ending, saying fans would not appreciate seeing Jesse incarcerated after all he had been through.[26][27] He received the same feedback when separately pitching ideas for the film with the writing staff of Better Call Saul, a Breaking Bad spin-off also created by Gilligan that still aired at the time. The staff featured many writers from the original series; Gilligan originally served as co-showrunner during the early seasons before leaving the writers room to focus on other projects.[17][28] They also objected to this ending because they planned on using a similar idea for the series finale of Better Call Saul, which was still to come many years later, and felt this conclusion fit their story better than Jesse's.[29] After the negative reception to the concept of Jesse getting caught by authorities, Gilligan subsequently went with the storyline of Jesse escaping to Alaska.[26]

Development[edit]

El Camino follows Jesse Pinkman, portrayed by Aaron Paul, after the events of Breaking Bad.
The original idea for continuing Jesse Pinkman's story began as a short film or "mini-episode" of about 15 to 20 minutes in length. Realizing a short would not be cost-effective, Gilligan opted to make a full-length feature film.[17] He initially thought about titling the project '63, referring to its unofficial status as the 63rd episode of Breaking Bad.[12] However, during the meeting where Gilligan pitched story ideas with the Better Call Saul staff, series executive producer Thomas Schnauz advised him to change this proposed title.[17][12] Schnauz, who served as an executive producer and a writer on both television series, reasoned to Gilligan that Breaking Bad essentially focused on Walter White's story, whereas the film and its title should be unique to reflect that they centered on Jesse Pinkman.[30][12] Gilligan agreed and eventually settled on the title El Camino, referring to the car Jesse drives away with in "Felina".[12]
Near the tenth anniversary of Breaking Bad's premiere, Gilligan started sharing the idea with former cast and crew members as a means to celebrate the milestone.[2] Aaron Paul, who portrayed Jesse in the series, affirmed that around this time, he received a phone call from Gilligan, who hinted at a return for his character.[31][32] Paul initially believed this meant a cameo on Better Call Saul, which was a prequel to Breaking Bad. Gilligan then revealed his intentions to continue Jesse's story after the events of the series, much to Paul's excitement.[33] Though he thought Breaking Bad concluded satisfyingly, Paul still felt attached to the character of Jesse Pinkman; fans regularly asked him of Jesse's whereabouts, while he occasionally wondered about Jesse's fate himself.[34] At the end of the conversation, Paul showed eagerness to be involved with any idea Gilligan had for a Breaking Bad continuation.[31]
Gilligan presented Paul with a completed screenplay seven months after proposing his idea.[35] Paul spent three hours in Gilligan's office going over the script and almost instantly felt able to pick up on Jesse's mindset and emotional beats.[34][36] Following his initial read-through, Paul was so impressed that he felt speechless, and likened this initial reaction as being similar to the one after his first reading of "Felina".[34][37] Once he was finished with the screenplay, Paul continued to express happiness and excitement for the film, which he called a "love letter" to Jesse and Breaking Bad's fans, and lauded Gilligan for approaching the script with caution and care.[31][37]
Though Gilligan had been involved with feature-length films before, El Camino would be the first he directed and produced.[2] While he considered the concept of a sequel film for an extended period after Breaking Bad's conclusion, Gilligan stated he likely would not have been able to make it had Better Call Saul been unsuccessful.[38] When Gilligan made his initial film pitch to Sony Pictures Television, the studio behind both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the executives in the room quickly agreed to come on board. With his script in hand, Gilligan then selectively shopped the film to a few potential distributors, settling on Netflix and AMC due to their history with the show. Gilligan intended for El Camino to have a theatrical release, which Netflix previously provided for some of Breaking Bad's season premieres. El Camino's unspecified budget surpassed the $6 million budget per episode by the end of the show's final season.[2]

Writing[edit]

Vince Gilligan, the creator and showrunner of Breaking Bad, wrote and directed El Camino.
Unlike most of his work from The X-Files, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, where he collaborated with a writers room to develop his scripts and meet his deadlines, Gilligan wrote the film's screenplay alone until he felt it was ready to present. Regarding El Camino as a coda to Breaking Bad, Gilligan believed the film would primarily appeal to fans and would not be as enjoyable to those who had not watched the series. This influenced his decision to write it as a direct continuation rather than inserting exposition scenes to try to attract new viewers.[2] He felt El Camino could be seen independently from both Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul, similarly to how the two series could be seen independently from one another. However, he also believed the three works existed together in a larger framework, and that viewers needed to watch all of them together to receive the full experience.[17]
When thinking of which Breaking Bad characters to use for El Camino, Gilligan considered bringing back Skyler White, Walter Jr., Hank and Marie Schrader and Gus Fring, but could not find a way to incorporate them into Jesse's story. Saul Goodman was also considered, but Gilligan desisted as he was unaware of the potential plans Peter Gould and the Better Call Saul writers could have for the character in that series.[27] An early concept included bringing back Uncle Jack as a ghost that goaded Jesse throughout his journey, but Gilligan discarded this idea as too dreary as he felt Jesse already suffered enough.[17] Of the characters he ended up using, Gilligan felt most excited to bring back the sociopathic Todd Alquist, as he maintained fascination with the character and wished he could have been further explored on the series.[12] Jesse Plemons, who portrayed Todd, expressed surprise at his deceased character's sizable role upon first reading the script, and described his portion of the film as Todd, free from supervision of his elders, having his best day.[39][40] He also likened his scenes with Jesse to a dark buddy comedy.[39]
With Todd and the rest of the neo-Nazi gang canonically dead at the end of "Felina", Gilligan felt the film needed a new villain to introduce conflict for Jesse in the present storyline. For this reason, Gilligan created the character Neil Kandy, the welder who Gilligan labeled "Nazi-adjacent" due to his prior business dealings with the gang. He also described Neil as being more sociopathic than Todd, saying it would take someone of Neil's caliber to create the dog run that physically tethered Jesse without asking too many questions or even caring about Jesse's condition. Gilligan worried about introducing a new character not seen in Breaking Bad, but also called it "Drama 101" to include Neil as he gave Jesse a villain he could prevail against and provided the film with more visceral flair.[17]
Peter Gould and the Better Call Saul writing staff regularly consulted Gilligan as he developed the screenplay.
Gilligan would keep the Better Call Saul writers room involved throughout El Camino's production, including during the writing process.[41] This was to not only ensure the two projects' continuity did not interfere with one another but to also take in suggestions to improve his screenplay. Upon completion of his first draft, Gilligan immediately sought the advice of Gould, who developed Better Call Saul with Gilligan and became its sole showrunner after Gilligan reduced his own role in the series.[42][28] The decision to bring Jane Margolis into the story resulted from this consultation, as the initial script did not include the character. After Gould read the first draft, he advised that Jane could appear in the ending, "where it would mean the most to the audience". Gilligan thought about the suggestion for a couple of weeks and eventually agreed. He incorporated the idea into his script, and Jane ultimately delivered the final lines of El Camino.[12][43] Krysten Ritter, who reprised the role in the film, called the ending with her character "so beautiful" as it "sent Jesse off into the sunset with Jane riding shotgun ... He was going to be okay, and she was there with him".[44]
One of the biggest elements removed in later drafts was the very first thing Gilligan wrote for the script: the contents of Jesse's letter to Brock.[45] Gilligan planned on having it read in voice-over while Jesse drove through Alaska in the final scene; Paul described it as "the most honest, beautiful, caring letter imaginable – really, just pouring his heart out and saying he's sorry".[46] While the Better Call Saul staff praised the letter's contents, Gould and several others felt it would be better left to the audience's imagination to determine what Jesse wrote. Gilligan subsequently decided not to use the letter to conclude Jesse's story, and the voice-over would never end up being recorded.[41][47] Paul agreed with Gilligan's decision but mentioned he felt "crushed" it did not appear in the final cut.[26] He retained possession of the letter after filming finished and shared his hopes that the letter's contents will eventually be revealed to the public.[47][46]
Gilligan wrote the scene of Walter and Jesse sitting in the diner in a light-hearted tone, although he showed interest in participating if Gilligan called for it.[79]
Bryan Cranston's cameo as Walter White was filmed in absolute secrecy during his two-day break from the Broadway play Network.

Cranston would ultimately end up appearing in El Camino, having flown to Albuquerque in a private jet to shoot his scenes within the span of 36 hours.[11] At the time he starred in the Broadway production Network, a role for which he eventually won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor, but used a two-day break in January for filming.[80][81] As Cranston had grown his hair out since the series ended, the makeup team used a bald cap and fake moustache to help him achieve the appearance of Walter White, with additional visual effects added during post-production to perfect his look.[82][83] Filming for the diner scene occurred first, with the set containing only crew members and their families serving as extras in order to keep the shoot confidential.[80] Despite the enclosed filming location, numerous locals spotted the show's iconic RV in the parking lot of the diner, but the crew used the excuse that they were shooting a commercial for a Breaking Bad tour to deflect attention.[12] Cranston shot the hallway scene the next day then immediately returned to the airport, arriving in New York in time to perform that same evening.[80][83] To prevent paparazzi photos, Cranston heavily disguised himself when escorted from and throughout the set.[80] When filming completed for the day, Cranston and Paul were told to avoid seeing each other.[56]

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