Gran Turismo is one of those game-to-movie adaptations that sounds like a joke. Let’s take a game that’s exclusively about driving cars with no characters or plot and move it into a narrative medium. However, much like the similarly real-yet-fake-sounding Tetris movie from earlier this year, Gran Turismo is based on a real-life story around the game, not the game itself.
In 2008, Nissan and PlayStation got together to create the GT Academy. This was a competition that took the best Gran Turismo players in the world and turned them into real-life professional racing drivers. The movie tells the story of the third GT Academy winner, Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), although bizarrely, it treats him like he was the first.
The movie chronicles Jann’s journey from a guy obsessed with Gran Turismo to his rise through the ranks on the real-world professional circuit. He is guided by Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), a Nissan UK marketing exec who came up with the idea for the GT Academy, and Jack Salter (David Harbour), a former driver turned mechanic roped in to coach the Academy entrants.
Image via Sony Pictures
You probably already have an idea how this movie goes. It’s a race movie, a genre that frequently sees the plucky underdog overcome the odds and become the great champion. Even better if he wipes the smile off a rival’s face in the process. And yes, Gran Turismo is exactly that movie. Problem is, it misses what makes those movies work.
We love to see an underdog beat the odds. Of course, we all know that our hero is going to become the grand champion by the end. However, what makes these kinds of movies compelling is the push-and-pull of expectations. The losses. The setbacks. The struggles that make us root for our hero and cheer when they eventually rub their rival’s smug face in their own hubris.
Gran Turismo does none of this. Every hint of a challenge that Jann encounters in his journey is resolved in seconds. Every race is just a highlight reel of Jann doing cool stuff, designed to let us know how his applied gamer knowledge makes him much better than the professional race drivers he’s up against. Even the rival characters the movie sets up may as well be faceless opponents due to how little conflict they bring to the table. It is, quite frankly, tedious.
Image via Sony Pictures
It doesn’t help that Jann is hard to root for. Not because he’s obnoxious or annoying. No, that would require him to be interesting. The movie makes a plot point out of Danny not wanting to put Jann in front of a camera because of poor press training and limited confidence. However, his limited screen presence and charisma extends to the movie itself. He has two personality traits – he likes Gran Turismo, and he listens to cheesy adult contemporary music to chill out. Other than that, I really couldn’t tell you anything about him.
Fortunately, Gran Turismo does have David Harbour to carry it, as the man is acting on behalf of everybody else here. Jack Salter is the best character. He’s stubborn, abrasive and yet secretly a softie who does want the Academy entrants to succeed despite his protests. His anti-pep talk to the GT Academy entrants is a brilliant scene. His emotional range when talking about his backstory is superb. And we truly feel his frustration dealing with the rich snobs who buy their way into motorsport. Even his character arc is more interesting than our protagonist’s. This movie should be about him. It’s a crime that it is not.
Image via Sony Pictures
So it’s a poor race movie, but does it hold up as a movie about Gran Turismo? For that, we all need to admit what fans play the games for – car porn. The games are about owning a garage full of lovingly rendered exotic cars and racing them in locations around the world. Maybe even taking some pictures of them in Photo Mode while soft jazz plays in the background. No judgment, I own two of these games myself, I get the appeal.
However, the Gran Turismo movie struggles with this too. Despite Nissan’s strong presence in the movie, and the prevalence of many famous circuits, there’s very little attention given to the cars themselves. There’s a single scene where the team briefly ooh and ahh over the Nismo Le Mans vehicle but it’s over in seconds. Instead, this is a movie about the blandest driver alive, and we are mostly going to be looking at his face.
In reality, this movie exists for one reason. Sony Group Corporation would like you to buy a PlayStation 5 and a copy of Gran Turismo 7. Look how cool this superfan is! That could be you! It’s why so many of the visuals of the game itself appear to be from the latest entry and why the DualSense keeps showing up from time to time. This is despite the real Jann Mardenborough winning the GT Academy in 2011. At the time, the most recent game in the series was Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3. It’s a weird inaccuracy that clearly exists because a marketing executive demanded it.
Image via Sony Pictures
Weirdly, despite being a two-hour PlayStation commercial, it gets the series wrong in ways that I feel it shouldn’t. There are a lot of CGI visuals during races meant to emulate Jann visualising the game’s UI and yet none of the UI elements appear to be from any of the games. Polyphony Digital appears to exist in a tiny broom closet of an office, when I’m certain that the developer of Sony’s best-selling first-party franchise would occupy a much larger location. They don’t even use the recurring Kenny G joke to sneak in some of the games’ bossa nova menu music, which feels like a wasted opportunity.
It’s not entirely clear who this movie is for. It fails to stand on its own as a movie without the associated video game baggage. Yet it’s also devoid of fanservice to the games or indeed the cars they’re about in the first place. There are much better race movies out there, and if you want to learn about Jann Mardenborough’s rise to fame, stick to watching his highlights on YouTube. If you just want fast cars on iconic tracks, you’re better off playing the games themselves.
The Gran Turismo movie is out now in UK and European theaters. It will release in the US on August 25, 2023, and in Japan on September 15, 2023.
Published: Aug 13, 2023 03:00 pm