In just over three months, the Gran Turismo movie will be in theaters. As a longtime Gran Turismo fan, my expectations are in the basement. Movies about racing are very hit or miss. Movies based on video games, possibly more so. But out of all the gaming franchises that might make for good cinema, Gran Turismo wouldn’t land on the favorable end of my list, because Gran Turismo is a game about doing something in real life that you could just make a film about directly. On Tuesday we were treated to the first trailer, and I’m feeling slightly better about it now.
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The reason is because the movie has David Harbour in it, doing what he does best: yelling at teenagers, this time with the help of a megaphone. Hear for yourself:
The film is based on the story of Jann Mardenborough, one of the winners of the Nissan-sponsored GT Academy competition more than a decade ago that sought to turn gamers into sports-car racers. Archie Madekwe plays Mardenborough, who incidentally is seen playing a lot of Gran Turismo 7 in the movie. Of course, GT7 came out 11 years after GT Academy happened, so consider this a present-day retelling of the tale.
We can see loads of motorsport-themed posters and memorabilia around Mardenborough’s room, not to mention a little collection that dates all the way back to Gran Turismo 2. Jann’s got Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Gran Turismo 5 — there’s no doubting his credibility. I wonder how he’d feel about our ranking of the whole franchise.
Of course, things really kick into gear when Mardenborough makes the cut for the competition, and we see tough-as-nails coach Jack Salter — played by Harbour — and Orlando Bloom’s Danny Moore on screen for the first time. It’s Salter’s job to make these “couch-surfing nerds” into real athletes, which involves incessant verbal abuse and making them run a lap of some track. One of them yaks on the grass at one point. The pressure is clearly on.
If you know how the story goes, Mardenborough rises above all his competitors and earns himself a seat in Nissan’s factory program, which also sees him compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I have few notes, other than that director Neill Blomkamp and company need to get straight on the Gran Turismo logo. Here it is in a scene from the Japanese cut of the trailer, improperly colored just like it was on the clapperboard when Sony announced the start of filming back in November:
And here it is missing a chunk of the “G” in “GT,” if you look closely at the bottom right of the far wall:
Those should be easy fixes. I suspect less can be done at this late stage of production to address this flip at the end of the trailer, in which an LMP2 takes flight in a rather awkward way:
Gran Turismo hits theaters August 11.