Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo is a movie based off a video game with no story. Even the original Super Mario Bros. had more of a story than the GT games I’ve played (granted, I haven’t played one in a while). Which, in a sense, is great from an artistic point of view. You’ve got to involve car racing in some fashion, but other than that, you have a lot of freedom to craft whatever narrative you wish to tell. The possibilities are endless, so just be sure to pick one which is interesting or you have a deep connection to and something to say about it or at least you can make look really good.

Gran Turismo opens with a commercial for the game. There’s a claim that it’s the most accurate racing simulator ever, a brief acknowledgement of the creator, and lots of game footage. Whereas many branded movies as of late try to run away from being labeled as a feature length advertisement, Sony sprinted towards it, making clear right up front what you can expect. And then proceed to deliver that to you over the next two-ish hours in the blandest, least interesting way you could think of.

Gran Turismo is a very, very loose adaptation of the story of Jann Mardenborough, played by Archie Madekwe. Jann is a gamer whose obsession is GT, and his dream is to become a race car driver. But for now, he’s a college drop out who works at a clothing store, and is facing pressure from his working class father to do something with his life. That’s when he’s informed that he’s been invited to a GT race whose winner will get a spot at the brand new GT Academy, where gamers will compete for a spot on the Nissan racing team. We follow him as he climbs the ranks, eventually battling to get his FIA license and land that Nissan contract.

The whole time, he’s positioned as an underdog who has to constantly fight to prove he deserves to be there. The pit crew is against him, his coach Jack (David Harbour) is against him, his father (Djimon Hounsou) is against him. It’s just him versus the world. This despite the fact that in every single racing sequence we see, be it video game or real life, he steadily and relatively easily climbs from a poor starting position up to a good finish. Even his first race on a lower circuit, when he’s trying to land his FIA license, he’s doing excellently until a dirty rival racer (Josha Stradowski) intentionally spins him out. Of course, in true movie fashion, no one (including him) acknowledges this, with everyone instead acting like it’s a sign he’s not ready. That is to say the drama of doubt is wholly and obnoxiously manufactured, so his triumph over it generates no feelings whatsoever. The movie seems to know this, as for each moral victory it blasts you with triumphant music, trying to substitute for their shortcomings.

Not that we’re given any time to start rooting for this kid anyways. The first act of the movie feels like an extended montage. By the time we’re forty-five minutes in, he’s gone from a nobody who loves GT but hasn’t driven a real car much to coming out on top at the Academy. That includes all the time they spend establishing GT as the perfect simulator and making the case for the Academy. Which means we see no training and very little racing, making it feel like Jann hasn’t actually progressed that much, despite the plot telling us he has. And he’s the one we get to know best: despite being introduced to nine other drivers, we spent so little time with them that they don’t even get names, much less personalities. Well, with the one exception of Matty (Darren Barnet), who’s cocky and top of the class, until Jann manages to beat him in the final race.

Maybe that could serve as a preview for the tactics and skill he’ll use to best professional drivers now that he’s with Nissan, but the movie has very little interest in explaining anything to us about racing. It barely cares to show us any racing. We only ever see short snippets, and almost every single one is Jann pretty easily passing someone. Not only that, there are so many quick cuts and driver close ups and random insert shots of various car parts working and staring at the foil or door or tire or steering wheel that you can’t get a handle on what’s happening on the track. So all that we see looks like crap. Our only indication that Jann has any skill is that people say it. When he passes other drivers, it seems be by will alone. With the one exception of late in the movie, when a tactic discussed earlier comes back. But even that one is just stated and not dwelled upon, so although we know it works, we’re not sure why, or if it’s really something new. I was hoping they’d use the GT Academy to get into some of that, but it’s such a short section of the movie that it teaches the audience exactly nothing.

We also have no real clue what’s going on in the racing world. Okay, so he has to do well enough in one of six races in order to get his racing license and get signed by Nissan? Sure, I guess. But what happens if he fails? And why once he succeeds at that is he facing off against the same drivers? Are we in a new season, or does he just join in the middle? How much time is passing? And how different does it feel to be racing pros instead of other gamers?

Alright, you might be thinking, if they’re not particularly interested in the racing or the tactics, then it must be for the drama, right?

No, not really. There’s a boring conflict between Jann and his father, who sees video games as a waste of time (which Jann’s lack of a plan is validating). He meets a girl at a party, whom we see him talking to for maybe 30 seconds before he leaves. They do try to develop a bit of a relationship between Jann and Jack, but there’s no emotion there, no closeness, and barely any mentorship. The closest they come is when Jann is in a bad wreck with devastating consequences, and Jack’s trying to get him back in the game. But all of the interactions are business-centric, so there’s nothing to hold on to.

There’s no humor to speak of, either. This is a serious racing moving, with nothing outside of a handful of moments of levity. So we’re being signaled that we should care, and then given nothing to care about, nothing to be entertained by.

The most surprising thing about the whole film, that which made me sit bolt upright, came when the director’s name flashed onto the screen during the end credits: Neill Blomkamp. Ya know, the District 9 guy? Sadly, there’s little evidence here of what made him so exciting in 2009. Just a reminder that his career has been full of disappointment.

Is he at least telling a real story? Mostly no. Jann was a GT player who hadn’t raced before he was nineteen, that part’s true. And it’s fair to assume he received a bunch of crap for being a gamer pretending to be a racer. But he won the third year, and the previous winners were already racing internationally, so they’d already proven gamers could make it in the big leagues. He wasn’t the first to race at Le Mans, although he was the first to podium. That horrific wreck really happened, but it was four years into his career and after some success, not his first race under contract, so it didn’t cause anyone to question his ability.

I’m not trying to say they should have remade it exactly, not by a long shot. But Jann’s story as portrayed in the film is quite boring and stagnant, and that’s after moving things around and sprucing them up. Sure, he’s the most successful driver to come out of the GT Academy, but otherwise uninteresting. So it drives home just how much of a commercial the whole movie is. The movie is trying so desperately to make racing look super cool that it fails to realize what would achieve that effect: engaging with the very sport it’s depicting.