QOTD: Seeing Gran Turismo?
The Gran Turismo movie, appropriately named Gran Turismo, opened on Friday.
Did you see it? If not, do you plan to?
I am a bit hesitant to see it, since Hollywood has a tendency to screw up racing movies -- with Ford Versus Ferrari and Rush being exceptions -- and because the ads didn't make it look very good.
I also did not like how one ad highlighted the line "if you take the wrong line, you could die." That's a paraphrase, but the quote is somewhere along those lines. While that's technically true, the commercial seemed to suggest that the movie was overselling the drama. Yes, you could crash if you take the wrong line while racing, and in theory you could die if you crash, but there's a wide spectrum between a harmless off-track excursion and death.
Maybe I am being unfair -- maybe the movie shows more of the nuance that's present in real life.
And hey, David Harbour is a good actor. So maybe this movie is worth it?
What say you? Did you see it? Was it good? Are you going to see it? Should I see it, and if so, should I try to catch it in the theater or wait til it streams?
[Image: ymgerman/Shutterstock.com]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
More by Tim Healey
Comments
Join the conversation
Nothing is better than; Herbie: Fully Loaded
I was not planning to see this movie and did not have high expectations based on the preview(s) I had seen.
But yesterday was National Cinema Day (so said my spouse) and tickets at the nicest theater in town were 4 bucks and I was in possession of 4 bucks because the nice nurse with the CR-V paid me to replace her front fog light (also yesterday) which I did without removing the entire front fascia which the Honda dealer said was the way they would do it and they wanted to charge her $700(!) dollars and I got the part for 60 bucks including shipping (which some of you think is a ripoff because rockauto doesn't including shipping with the part cost). So I decided to see a movie.
Gran Turismo was the movie playing at the biggest nicest (only) Dolby Cinema screen at the multiplex, the one with the largest screen and the fancy projector and the big crowd and the upgraded sound, so I said sure we'll choose that one.
And I purposely went into this movie not knowing anything about it beyond the preview (not my usual approach to movies; I'm reading the book now for Dumb Money which comes out in September. Started the Oppenheimer book before that movie but that book drags; there are better nuke books).
• I was pleasantly surprised. The movie got good audience reactions in the crowded theater.
If you have any interest in driving simulators, there is some interesting interplay in the plot between how things work in the 'game' vs. real life. Stick around at the end and you see the actual people the movie is based on.
She needs a new shop, then. When I wrote service we tried to come in under the estimate -- underdeliver and overpromise. Not to mention no one likes a bad surprise at checkout, especially those with tight credit and tight budgets. We even had pad money so if something did go wrong we'd still probably stay under the estimate. This might be a future "Tales From the Service Advisor".
I was a huge GT fan and played V1-4 to death on my Playstation, even got the whole wheel and pedal setup for it. Then started tracking a real car and lost interest in the virtual version. The preview make it look so over the top with cars flying thru the air and everything bursting into flames. So silly and fake... then you see the NASCAR wreck from the last week and suddenly it doesn't seem so out of place. When the movie comes to streaming I'll likely watch just because I enjoyed the game so much.