The Gran Turismo Movie is Fine

Neill Blomkamp’s “adaptation” of Gran Turismo opens with a brief history on the creation of the franchise. Kazunori Yamauchi (who doesn’t play himself in the movie but does cameo as a sushi chef) has spent 25 years building and refining his vision for the ultimate racing experience. Polyphony Digital (his studio) is a team of 300+ obsessives. They are a developer consumed with the most minute details in an industry where attention to detail is king. A single car can take up to 270 days to recreate in game–the sixth entry in the series had 1,197 unique vehicles. We get a glimpse into this meticulous process during the ending credits, as well. They are the best in the world at what they do and deserve to be celebrated. 

Unfortunately, there’s a movie sandwiched between these two sequences. 

Gran Turismo as a film is competent and (I don’t mean this as an insult) inoffensive. It’s a sports movie. It’s an underdog tale. It’s “BASED ON A TRUE STORY.” I accepted video games and movies are different mediums a long time ago. I don’t mind when a team gets loose with the source material as long as the legacy is intact and the choices they make are interesting. Is this an end product that could only be that thing? Or is the name simply attached to sell extra tickets? 

It’s always the latter, but the cynicism varies wildly from project to project. 

There are touches here that imply someone cared about the source material (or had someone looming over their shoulder, at least). The use of video game menu sound effects sprinkled throughout are a highlight. They’re unobtrusive and provide a spark of “if you know, you know” without the eye roll of more obvious Easter Eggs. How this fan service is presented visually is more of a mixed package. On the track, I like the augmented reality that regularly reminds us what lap we’re on. I like that we see what position we’re in. In other scenes our protagonist, Jann Mardenborough, is wrapped in a schematic of the car he’s driving. Piston by piston, spark plug by spark plug. It’s meant to illustrate a connection to the vehicle–he’s leaving behind all the noise of his life–the entirety of his focus shifting towards taking the perfect line on the next turn. It’s a glossy distillation of the countless hours he spent practicing Deep Forest and Apricot Hill in his bedroom. 

But why was this extra flash necessary? 

We know about the work he puts in, it’s literally all he talks about. A shot of his calloused thumbs would have been more meaningful. Though I guess it’s better than yet another scene of his father being disappointed in him (which seems to be all his character ever talks about). 

The inclusion of this CGI isn’t a surprise. If you have an army of animators at your disposal (which PlayStation obviously does) you’re going to take the opportunity to flex. My concern is that by including these sequences I think the filmmakers felt that they had fulfilled their “it’s a video game!” quota. But this clashes with the thesis of the movie–Gran Turismo is a “real driving simulator.” The characters literally explain that track time in the game equals track time in the real world. When Jann puts the pedal to the floor, so do the animators. His Nissan might as well be a spaceship. It doesn’t require any deeper level of understanding or enthusiasm for car culture. It’s easy. I would have preferred a dorky monologue about the Mazda Miata or Mitsubishi Lancer. 

Of course, the argument is that this is not an adaptation of the game but instead the extraordinary experience of one person’s relationship to it–Jann’s journey from gamer to professional racer. It mostly succeeds in this regard. We feel defeat when he slides into a wall–we feel triumph when “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” plays atop the podium like we just watched Michael Mann’s Heat. However, Gran Turismo’s biggest flaw as a movie is that the most exciting sequences, the races that keep the audience pinned to their seats like a five point harness, are summarized. 

I don’t feel like it’s a hot take to say most movies released in the last five to ten years are too long. While I’ll always advocate for artists to cook and do whatever they want–I also have to admit that 90% of what I watch could be cut by at least 10 minutes. Gran Turismo (which clocks in with a runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes) was always going to lean on its montages. The physical training, the pit stops (it’s a sports movie, it’s an underdog tale, etc.). We’re strung along and teased with a showdown against everyone who has doubted (or sabotaged) our hero for the entire back half of the movie. It’s the culmination of Jann’s dream rounding the last turn and heading into the final straightaway. Unfortunately, when it arrives, we’re met with a string of timestamps.

Three hours later. 

Three hours later. 

It’s the equivalent of reducing the final boss of an epic RPG to a quick time event. I’m assuming a major reason that the aforementioned HUD is almost always present is because we don’t watch many of the passes actually happen. I’m not naive, I know we were never going to see a 24 hour race in real time in a medium budget video game adaptation. But we needed to be present enough to understand the landscape and let the drama build on the track. There are hints of this earlier in the film, sections on these circuits have names because they have a dangerous reputation. Instead of marinating us in these details, the script says buckle up, where we’re going we don’t need context. I’m willing to bet that somewhere a (better) three hour version of this movie exists that a focus group banished to a vault. 

Gran Turismo, despite its insane sales numbers, is not a franchise that lends itself to picking up a controller and running a couple laps with friends. You take license tests to progress. It is the opposite of Mario Kart. The most recent entry in the series even features a virtual cafe where the player goes on (platonic) dates with historic automotive figures as they chat about the cars they designed. It’s disappointing that a movie that was so concerned with packing in mass appeal (There’s something for everyone! We’re playing it safe!) it forgot to leave room for some of those eccentricities. It’s not bad, but nothing about it is unique. Like a trip to the grocery store in your mom’s minivan,  it’ll get you where you’re going–but you’re just waiting for the highway hypnosis to kick in.