Hollywood has found itself on a bit of a hot streak in terms of video-game-to-film adaptations. The Last of Us’ zombie apocalypse tale garnered several Emmy nominations for HBO, while The Super Mario Bros. Movie continued to smash those gold question mark blocks to the tune of almost $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. With those recent successes in mind, executives must have been salivating at the prospect of transforming more recognizable IPs into oodles of gold coins. If you regularly watch television or scroll through social media, it’s more than likely that a ceaseless barrage of Gran Turismo ads has bombarded your screen in recent weeks. But that brand isn’t very recognizable outside the gamer-sphere, which begs the question: Who was this movie for, exactly?
Gran Turismo is a racing simulator video game series that’s been a staple for car enthusiasts since its first installment came out in 1998. The brainchild of Kazunori Yamauchi, the Playstation series is renowned for cutting-edge graphics, faithful digital renderings of a large number of officially licensed vehicles, and an adherence to incredibly accurate driving physics.
I’ve never booted up one of the Turismo games (I prefer my races with a few more bananas and blue shells), but the surging popularity of F1 makes it the perfect time to cash in. And as fortune had it, there was a ready-made underdog story thanks to Jann Mardenborough, who utilized his childhood love for the Gran Turismo game series to become a bona fide professional formula racer. But despite the backing of devoted car fanatics and the narrative trappings of a classic sports biopic, Gran Turismo, the film, more closely resembles two siblings fighting over the only Playstation controller.
Mardenborough’s real-life story is truly quite impressive. Having grown up playing Gran Turismo, he signed up for the GT Academy competition — a joint effort by Sony and Nissan to let gamers compete for the chance to become an actual motorsport driver — during a gap year in college. Mardenborough became the youngest participant to win the competition and has since carved out a respectable racing career.
The movie follows a heavily fictionalized account of Mardenborough’s (Archie Madekwe) rise as he transitions from gamer to driver. But under Neill Blomkamp’s direction, the movie is constantly at war with itself. Important milestones in Mardenborough’s life are chopped up and rearranged to formulate your standard sports drama narrative, and much of the story feels as if it’s drawing from a premade sports checklist. An underdog protagonist, a gruff mentor, and bitter rivals tick all the boxes, even if most of the characters end up as one-dimensional stand-ins along Mardenborough’s journey. Balance that hollowness with the movie’s requirement to double as a glorified commercial for the eponymous simulation series, and there are just too many competing interests for this to be a coherent package.
Despite the script’s scattered approach, the cast does the best they can with the limited chances they’re given. The film centers almost exclusively around Mardenborough, but he spends plenty of time working with his coach Jack Salter (David Harbour), a former racer who never made it to the top. Salter is the archetypal surly mentor, but Harbour balances his tough love approach with an inherent warmth. Orlando Bloom makes a return to movie screens as Danny Moore, a Nissan marketing executive and business-minded foil to Salter as part of Mardenborough’s support team. While there’s none of the stylish charisma of, say, a Legolas or a Will Turner, Bloom props up Moore with a smarmy confidence befitting someone crazy enough to pitch the idea of GT Academy.
In another film, Moore might be set up as an antagonist, but that duty here falls to Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski), a hot-headed racer representative of the old-money European motorsport elite, and a character who has no other characteristics or personality traits beyond that. Djimon Hounsou and Geri Halliwell-Horner (Ginger Spice!) are trotted out for the emotional beats as Mardenborough’s parents, but like the rest of the supporting cast, they don’t have too much to do, making them feel peripheral.
The first hour or so, centered almost completely on “the brand,” was almost excruciating. I turned to my left to see that my father had dozed off, missing out on a Moore monologue that was a not-so-subtle sales pitch for the game series. Moore even exclaims “this whole thing is a marketing extravaganza” in one early scene, lest we forget what the heck is going on here. But once the movie moves past the dull table-setting, the second half reveals a competent racing film that hits most of the right beats and provides plenty of vehicle glamor shots.
Frustratingly, the frequent cuts and different camera angles during races remove viewers from the visceral thrill of the competition, making it seem more like a procession than the dangerous and exciting showdown it should be. But a couple shots that settle back into the driver’s seat offer a candid glimpse at the physical toll these races take on their drivers. It’s worth reiterating that Mardenborough’s personal story is quite impressive, but the movie’s competing interests don’t let it shine as it should. Despite the late surge, Gran Turismo loses too much ground at the start, so there’s no chance of a podium finish for this flick.
Gran Turismo
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