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Gran Turismo movie reviews dropping - Eurogamer

For a while there, I really thought Neill Blomkamp was going to be the next big thing. Got that badly wrong. Depressing to see him responsible for the likes of... whatever this is.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Gran Turismo movie was fun.

I enjoyed the movie. Its about actual racing, there is barely any side plot. The opening focuses on the online racing, and a little tidbit of his private life (father doesn't understand why he's gaming all day, mother is more supportive), but very quickly he enrolls into the academy, in which David Harbour shines, and from there its about actual racing. The kid isn't acting particularly well, but I guess the real Jann wasn't much of a talker too. Orlando Bloom is rather annoying. David Harbour is easily the best of the bunch.

I think its well directed and well shot. The pacing is high, the races are fun to watch. And there is some nods to the games, like the chase cam and some sounds. I can appreciate such things, Halo series did it too.

Its nothing brilliant, but if you expect 1/5 you might be surprised.
 
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Sushi_Combo

Member
Gran Turismo movie was fun.

I enjoyed the movie. Its about actual racing, there is barely any side plot. The opening focuses on the online racing, and a little tidbit of his private life (father doesn't understand why he's gaming all day, mother is more supportive), but very quickly he enrolls into the academy, in which David Harbour shines, and from there its about actual racing. The kid isn't acting particularly well, but I guess the real Jann wasn't much of a talker too. Orlando Bloom is rather annoying. David Harbour is easily the best of the bunch.

I think its well directed and well shot. The pacing is high, the races are fun to watch. And there is some nods to the games, like the chase cam and some sounds. I can appreciate such things, Halo series did it too.

Its nothing brilliant, but if you expect 1/5 you might be surprised.
Just got back from seeing it. It's definitely not a 1/5 lol. Pretty enjoyable movie, our theatre seemed to be happy about it with claps at the end.
 

MarkMe2525

Banned
I discovered at some point that a smooth launch for rear wheel drive is assured by tuning differential acceleration and deceleration to 0. It can be more if the weight can sustain a straight path. For a lot of all-wheel drive vehicles the same can be accomplished by mirroring Bugatti Chiron Super Sport's default differential settings with front wheel acceleration set to 0%, front wheel deceleration set to about 50%, rear wheel acceleration set to about 55%, rear wheel deceleration set to about 90%, and balance set to about 60-65% depending on changes in time to reach 100mph. That information blew my mind. I was in disbelief at how effective it was.
Disbelief Reaction GIF
I don't know what any of this means, but it got me thinking. If I tune my car in a game to these specifications, should I expect the car to behave as you have mentioned?
 

Hardensoul

Member
Gran Turismo movie was fun.

I enjoyed the movie. Its about actual racing, there is barely any side plot. The opening focuses on the online racing, and a little tidbit of his private life (father doesn't understand why he's gaming all day, mother is more supportive), but very quickly he enrolls into the academy, in which David Harbour shines, and from there its about actual racing. The kid isn't acting particularly well, but I guess the real Jann wasn't much of a talker too. Orlando Bloom is rather annoying. David Harbour is easily the best of the bunch.

I think its well directed and well shot. The pacing is high, the races are fun to watch. And there is some nods to the games, like the chase cam and some sounds. I can appreciate such things, Halo series did it too.

Its nothing brilliant, but if you expect 1/5 you might be surprised.
I don’t know what people were expecting from a movie about one of the most realistic racing sims at the time:

I never knew this was a promotion back then. Racing movies aren’t my thing but I was curious about the true story/game tie in. With that I’ll catch it on streaming.
 
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I don't know what any of this means, but it got me thinking. If I tune my car in a game to these specifications, should I expect the car to behave as you have mentioned?
It is questionable, but in theory the differential controls the difference in tire rotation, so by having them traverse terrain relative to friction and angle you should get similar acceleration on both sides of the car.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Gran Turismo movie was fun.

I enjoyed the movie. Its about actual racing, there is barely any side plot. The opening focuses on the online racing, and a little tidbit of his private life (father doesn't understand why he's gaming all day, mother is more supportive), but very quickly he enrolls into the academy, in which David Harbour shines, and from there its about actual racing. The kid isn't acting particularly well, but I guess the real Jann wasn't much of a talker too. Orlando Bloom is rather annoying. David Harbour is easily the best of the bunch.

I think its well directed and well shot. The pacing is high, the races are fun to watch. And there is some nods to the games, like the chase cam and some sounds. I can appreciate such things, Halo series did it too.

Its nothing brilliant, but if you expect 1/5 you might be surprised.
Music to my ears. I'm in it for the racing scenes on the big screen with the beautiful IMAX sound.
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
Music to my ears. I'm in it for the racing scenes on the big screen with the beautiful IMAX sound.
My area sucks with no IMAX and right now our one theater within an hour is closed fo maintenance.

I'll probably end up watching it wearing my VR headset and hugging my racing wheel.
 
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For a while there, I really thought Neill Blomkamp was going to be the next big thing. Got that badly wrong. Depressing to see him responsible for the likes of... whatever this is.
District 9 was so good and unique. Everyone of his films since then has greatly disappointed. This movie looks fine enough, but man, I thought Blomkamp was the next Ridley Scott or James Cameron 10 years ago
 
I don't know if the critics were on crack when they wrote their reviews, but I just got out of an IMAX showing for this and I had an absolute blast.

The cast is solid, David Harbour and Djimon Hounsou were especially fantastic, even had some emotional scenes.

There's lots of beautiful locations, exciting races and pretty great pacing all throughout. I was never bored and was pretty invested by the end.

Cool to see the real guy the story was based on during the credits, pretty cool he was a stunt double for the film.

8/10, definitely recommend.
 

Hardensoul

Member
I don't know if the critics were on crack when they wrote their reviews, but I just got out of an IMAX showing for this and I had an absolute blast.

The cast is solid, David Harbour and Djimon Hounsou were especially fantastic, even had some emotional scenes.

There's lots of beautiful locations, exciting races and pretty great pacing all throughout. I was never bored and was pretty invested by the end.

Cool to see the real guy the story was based on during the credits, pretty cool he was a stunt double for the film.

8/10, definitely recommend.
Cool, I'm also seeing more positive reviews than posts in the OP.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I don't know if the critics were on crack when they wrote their reviews, but I just got out of an IMAX showing for this and I had an absolute blast.

The cast is solid, David Harbour and Djimon Hounsou were especially fantastic, even had some emotional scenes.

There's lots of beautiful locations, exciting races and pretty great pacing all throughout. I was never bored and was pretty invested by the end.

Cool to see the real guy the story was based on during the credits, pretty cool he was a stunt double for the film.

8/10, definitely recommend.

Told you guys, its actually fun.

I expected a piece of shit promotional movie. My friend, who is a film nut and less tolerant than me, he was positively surpised too and gave it 3/5.

Its just that the pacing is spot on I think. The family and social life and obligatory love story barely get any development, which is for the good. Its there but thats about it. Same goes for the online racing, you see it once or twice and then he qualifies for the Academy. Harbour was extremely good. He certainly wasn't phoning it in.

What they did well was the actual animosity against eSport racers on the track. I can imagine it really goes like that. They aren't molded on the track itself but rather from their bedroom, this will ofcourse raise eyebrows. Especially the noob guy cracked me up, he came out of nowhere.

And about the product placement, what do we see? I didn't spot a single PS5 on screen? We see a Fanatec racing wheel sure, but I couldn't spot that many things otherwise.
 

Certinty

Member
Enjoyed it. Not amazing but definitely a good movie, no idea what critics watched. Great pacing, fun action scenes, both leads killed it with their acting, enjoyable plot and what not. Everything I wanted it to be.
 
I saw it last night and I enjoyed it a lot.

Yeah, there is some cringe parts but overall it was great because it was a racing movie that focused on the racing. The stuff that isn't about racing was mostly kept to the side to focus on what's important. The visuals and the sound were great, and I loved the throwbacks to GT sounds and stuff like chase camera.

Good fun and that's all I wanted as a Gran Truism and motorsports fan.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
Just noticed this thing now has a 98% favourable audience score on RT, with critic score holding at 59%.

Kinda feels like some people were in a rush to bury the movie prematurely.
I wager that all you need from a video game movie is for it to be competent enough, and the hype surrounding the brand that it was based on will do the rest.

So for some pretentious old scrote from New York Times who already has a bias against video game movies, this will be nothing more than a generic adaptation with a silly premise, but for a gamer boy who goes into it with an already established familiarity with the source material and huge nostalgia for the game series, he will love it.

Honestly, all it takes for a video game movie to be halfway decent is to be competently written and directed, as well as respectful to the source material. I.e. everything that video game movies rarely ever bother doing because they were usually handled by a bunch of filmmakers who had no clue about gaming and arrogantly assumed that they can make something better out of "them stupid vidjagames for children." At least Neill Blomkamp seems to have a much better understanding of the medium and what fans of the games would expect so even though I haven't seen it yet, I'm pretty sure that he was the right person to do this movie.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
To be honest I just saw the Film Threat review where both guys were gushing about what an amazing experience the race scenes were in IMAX, which given Blomkamp's previous movies suddenly made me more interested. I'm not much of a petrol-head but I loved Ford vs Ferrari, which I guess is a similar sort of underdog story. Does this scratch the same itch?
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I wager that all you need from a video game movie is for it to be competent enough, and the hype surrounding the brand that it was based on will do the rest.

So for some pretentious old scrote from New York Times who already has a bias against video game movies, this will be nothing more than a generic adaptation with a silly premise, but for a gamer boy who goes into it with an already established familiarity with the source material and huge nostalgia for the game series, he will love it.

Honestly, all it takes for a video game movie to be halfway decent is to be competently written and directed, as well as respectful to the source material. I.e. everything that video game movies rarely ever bother doing because they were usually handled by a bunch of filmmakers who had no clue about gaming and arrogantly assumed that they can make something better out of "them stupid vidjagames for children." At least Neill Blomkamp seems to have a much better understanding of the medium and what fans of the games would expect so even though I haven't seen it yet, I'm pretty sure that he was the right person to do this movie.
I mostly agree but I kinda see it from the opposite side. Expectations are so low for a video game adaptation, all they gave to do is make a safe, formulaic, crowd-pleasing Hollywood movie and pack it full of fan service. Then gamers will fall over themselves to heap praise on it for being surprisingly not total shit, even though they’d never watch this sort of movie if not for their nostalgia for the source material.

Look at the Mario movie. It’s your typical, generic “good enough to keep your kids entertained” Illumination product. If you had the exact same movie except with original characters/setting, nobody would give a single shit about it. It only gets by because it’s based on such a popular IP and is absolutely packed with nostalgia references.

Same goes for Sonic.

So I don’t see it so much as out-of-touch movie critics biased against video game movies. More like, gamers have really low standards as long as they love the source material. A video game movie doesn’t have to be a good movie, just good fanservice.
 

Gamerguy84

Member
To be honest I just saw the Film Threat review where both guys were gushing about what an amazing experience the race scenes were in IMAX, which given Blomkamp's previous movies suddenly made me more interested. I'm not much of a petrol-head but I loved Ford vs Ferrari, which I guess is a similar sort of underdog story. Does this scratch the same itch?

Ford Vs Ferrari is a great movie. I could watch it 100 times. This is definitely pretty good but not up to that level IMO.

I plan on watching it again at home though, some pretty intense moments.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I mostly agree but I kinda see it from the opposite side. Expectations are so low for a video game adaptation, all they gave to do is make a safe, formulaic, crowd-pleasing Hollywood movie and pack it full of fan service. Then gamers will fall over themselves to heap praise on it for being surprisingly not total shit, even though they’d never watch this sort of movie if not for their nostalgia for the source material.

Look at the Mario movie. It’s your typical, generic “good enough to keep your kids entertained” Illumination product. If you had the exact same movie except with original characters/setting, nobody would give a single shit about it. It only gets by because it’s based on such a popular IP and is absolutely packed with nostalgia references.

Same goes for Sonic.

So I don’t see it so much as out-of-touch movie critics biased against video game movies. More like, gamers have really low standards as long as they love the source material. A video game movie doesn’t have to be a good movie, just good fanservice.
Can't say for sure because the only one out of that bunch that I saw was Sonic 1 and 2, and I think those were just good movies regardless of the source material. I mean, I'm not even a Sonic fan at all, and without tooting my own horn here, I consider myself to be a fairly experienced moviegoer and I enjoy slow artsy movies just as much as popcorn schlock.

Obviously it's not high brow cinema, but Sonic movies are actually a very good example of what I talked about - they were good enough to be a crowd pleaser, and licensed characters were just an icing for the fanboys. Although I do agree that they would probably be ignored by most people if it wasn't for the popular license.
 

xBlueStonex

Member
Well, that's a surprise! Gran Turismo was number one at the US Box Office this weekend.

xL9WO6e.jpg
You're missing something important:

Warner Bros'. holdover blockbuster Barbie would’ve topped the box office for the fifth time (in six weekends) if Sony hadn’t juiced up numbers for Gran Turismo by $3.9 million from sneak preview screenings held across two weeks, as opposed to the standard practice of previewing movies on Thursdays.

$17 million inflated opening on a $60 million budget. Big oof.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I enjoyed it for what it was yesterday evening. Was a great close to the racing weekend after being at Daytona for an absolutely insane and off the rails final race of the regular season for the Coke 400.

The car sounds were fantastic, especially in 4DX with the bass through the seats. More of an action film side of the sport, which was to be expected, and some of the special effects were a really cool touch.

Well worth the $4 per ticket yesterday at Regal.

Pulled a Leo in the theater with that Kaz cameo.
Leonardo Dicaprio Reaction GIF by Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
 

Unknown?

Member
I enjoyed it for what it was yesterday evening. Was a great close to the racing weekend after being at Daytona for an absolutely insane and off the rails final race of the regular season for the Coke 400.

The car sounds were fantastic, especially in 4DX with the bass through the seats. More of an action film side of the sport, which was to be expected, and some of the special effects were a really cool touch.

Well worth the $4 per ticket yesterday at Regal.

Pulled a Leo in the theater with that Kaz cameo.
Leonardo Dicaprio Reaction GIF by Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Wish I could but I have to wait for the blu ray release! :(
 
I enjoyed it for what it was yesterday evening. Was a great close to the racing weekend after being at Daytona for an absolutely insane and off the rails final race of the regular season for the Coke 400.

The car sounds were fantastic, especially in 4DX with the bass through the seats. More of an action film side of the sport, which was to be expected, and some of the special effects were a really cool touch.

Well worth the $4 per ticket yesterday at Regal.

Pulled a Leo in the theater with that Kaz cameo.
Leonardo Dicaprio Reaction GIF by Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Never seen the movie but expected there to be some sort of kaz cameo in there. Happy to hear this. I love that Leo GIF 😂
 
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