Hey, wait a minute, the Gran Turismo movie is just Days of Thunder!
The upcoming film starring David Harbour and Orlando Bloom won’t be out until August, but I really feel like I’ve already seen it.
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We found out last year that Neil Blomkamp is making aGran Turismo movie, which was intriguingly billed not as a videogame movie, but a movie about a videogame. Now the first official teaser is here, and I can say with confidence that yes, it is definitely a movie about a videogame.
Gran Turismo tells the (surely heavily fictionalized) tale ofJann Mardenborough, who in 2011 earned the top spot in GT Academy, a reality television partnership between Sony and Nissan that ran 2008-2016. As that year’s winner, he was given the opportunity to drive for Nissan at the Dubai 24 Hour endurance race. He finished third in his class, which ultimately launched him into a real-life racing career that continues to this day.
The Gran Turismo teaser has everything you’d expect from an “underdog makes good” story: A kid with a dream that won’t die, a backroom operator who sees money to be made, a grizzled coach stuck in the old ways, and of course a elite, privileged, and very pretty villain determined to tear it all down just because he can.
In fact, it all seems awfully similar.
Hey, wait a minute!
The Fresh-Faced Hero
The Grizzled Coach
The Wily Manager
The Greasy Villain
That’s right, Gran Turismo isDays of Thunder—there’s even a “rubbin' is racin'” line in there, although I haven’t quite figured out who the Michael Rooker character is just yet. The whole thing is of course mixed with a healthy dose of The Last Starfighter, another videogame wish fulfilment fantasy flick, albeit one without quite the same real-world grounding.
You remember The Last Starfighter, right?
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Opinions on the Gran Turismo teaser here at PC Gamer are what a review aggregation site like Metacritic would call “mixed.” Staff writer Morgan Park said it looks “pretty okay,” hardware writer Jorge Jimenez is downrightenthusiastic, and I think it’s the film equivalent of the time two racers ended up in a footrace on a drag track because they both stalled their bikes when the light dropped: Kind of entertaining but mostly slow, awkward, and painful to watch.
Anyway, now you’ve seen it. Gran Turismo is set to hit the big screen sometime in August.
Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill.Lotsof Henry Cavill.
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