Gran Turismo is one of several video game adaptation films that premiered in 2023, but thus far, it is one of the only ones in which it takes place in the real world. This is because it is based on the story of Jann Mardenborough. One other film released in 2023 followed a similar concept: Tetris starring Taron Egerton. As we enter a new video game movie adaptation, basing the plot off a real-life story is still a novel concept.
Jann, played by Archie Madekwe, who was also in Midsommar with Florence Pugh and See with Jason Momoa, is who this film is truly about. His experiences, dreams, and goals are centered in this story, and it was exhilarating watching him take the lead here. I was not expecting this to be as emotionally powerful as this film ended up being. There were moments when I was staring wide-eyed in shock or gasping in amazement, and those moments stuck out to me because of how invested I was in Jann’s story.
At several points, it is reinforced that Gran Turismo is not a racing game. Rather, it was designed to be a racing simulator. The series was created by Kazunori Yamauchi (portrayed in the film by Takehiro Hira) to be the most realistic, accurate portrayal of professional racing. This process is shown throughout the film, from the notable (and notorious) tracks that Yamauchi and his team visited, to the cars they studied, and the varying pieces of them, that they painstakingly recreated. I have never played Gran Turismo personally or many video games about racing (simulation or otherwise). They weren’t to my taste, but that did not prevent me from appreciating the world painted before me on the screen. In much the same way as most players of Gran Turismo have never been inside a real racing car, you don’t have to personally experience something to appreciate it. Of course, the difference for me is that I am not placing my person into the body of a vehicle designed to go hundreds of miles an hour around pinprick turns. To each their own.
Gran Turismo gives us insight into the Mardenborough family and how this dynamic impacted Jann to make him the man he would become.
Djimon Hounsou plays Jann’s father, Steve Mardenborough, a former professional footballer. Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell-Horner plays Jann’s mother, Lesley Mardenborough. Lastly, Daniel Puig plays Jann’s brother, Coby. The relationships between Jann and his family are not evenly explored – with such a powerful concept as racing, certain details have to take a backseat. Even so, the little moments that are presented make it clear that they have a strong family bond, but like most families, there are issues. Everybody has them, no matter how much love exists between them.
From the beginning, it is obvious that Steve has a closer relationship with his younger son Coby, who shares his father’s passion for football. He struggles to understand Jann’s seeming obsession with Gran Turismo and tries to shake him out of a life of playing video games his entire life. We see this most clearly when, after stealing their father’s car, Jann takes all of the blame and joins his father at his job working on trains. It turns out he’s not being punished for stealing the car but for having pie-in-the-sky dreams, something Jann is understandably frustrated about. This is an all-too-common issue between parents and their children, whose goals and ambitions seem like a foreign concept, forever out of reach. Even so, Steve tries to take an interest in his son’s interests and asks questions about it long before the plot really kicks in. Some children never get that much from a parent who doesn’t understand them.
Lesley, on the other hand, embraces her son’s interests, even if she doesn’t share them. When Jann wins the preliminary competition to enter GT Academy, she doesn’t hesitate to support him in doing this. Jann is able to counter his father’s points by making it clear that, for the first time, his dream can be a reality – standing in the way of Jann when his previous arguments had been about how unrealistic his prospects were come off as hollow and hypocritical. This, of course, ties greatly into what it means to be a parent. Many of Steve’s issues that spring from Jann’s training to be a real professional racing driver are about how dangerous it is. He is concerned for his son’s safety, not just his future career opportunities. For Lesley, despite her support of Jann entering the academy, the true dangers of a career as a professional racer are made painfully clear partway through the film.
I didn’t know who Jann Mardenborough was before watching the film, and I never followed news pieces about racing, so when a dramatic crash during a critical race occurs partway through the film, I was stunned. I momentarily forgot that this film was based on a real story, and so I felt true dread at the possibility that he might not make it.
I wasn’t thinking about how much of the film was left or whether or not the event that was portrayed was real (it was). I was simply focused on the story.
The nitty gritty details of a harrowing, fatal accident during a sporting event happen infrequently, but they still happen. There is a line when the group first joins the academy – If you miss a line in the game, you reset, you miss it on the track, you can die. Nothing reinforces this point more than that terrible crash, which the real Mardenborough insisted on being included so that his real story was not sanitized.
Jack Salter (David Harbour) and Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom, whose character is based on Danny Cox, the founder of GT Academy) are the adults in the room. The former is the pessimistic chief engineer, and the latter is the optimistic (read: desperate) man behind the scenes who has orchestrated the entire event for Nissan. At one time, Salter was a professional racer who left the world behind after something terrible happened – a critical point that brings him and Jann closer during the film’s second half. On the other hand, Moore is a marketing executive in motorsports, and this deal is his saving grace. By their very definition, each man wants different things from this whole situation. Jack Salter has to be brought around to believing that this is even possible, and this is while he makes it his mission in life to prove that they can’t do it. We truly understand his reservations later. If this film were about them, the dynamic between them, and the strife that could have come out of it, would have been the driving force. As it stands, this is Jann’s story, and Gran Turismo never forgets that. We see the consequences through his lens and nobody else’s.
GT Academy takes up a portion of the film, and while there are ten candidates, only four truly stand out. Leah Vega (Emelia Hartford), Antonio Cruz (Pepe Barroso), Joo-Hwan Lee (Sang Heon Lee), and Matty Davis (Darren Barnet). The latter two are interesting, as they both star in Netflix shows (XO, Kitty, and Never Have I Ever, respectively). Because this is based on a true story, liberties are taken regarding the people involved – save the Mardenborough family. It seems most of the characters are amalgamations of real people or wholesale inventions for drama. Certainly, the real people involved are represented, but that’s all they are: represented. When it comes to taking liberties with stories based on true events, it means that their actions can be played in a good, or a bad, light and not impact a real person who is still alive.
Jann Mardenborough can have all of the real-life rivals or naysayers in his real life, but those people, and their motives, are complex enough to warrant their own films.
Boiling it down to safe, easy-to-portray, fictionalized caricatures removes some of the threat of upsetting people, their families, and their lawyers. Ultimately, most play second fiddle to Jann’s development and are a stepping stone in his journey.
Matty Davis, however, is a prime example of a quality supporting character. His rivalry with Jann seems to pit them against one another with potentially lethal results.
During this particular confrontation, Jann makes it clear to their mentor/trainer that he was not afraid to hit the brakes but that something was wrong with them.
His mentor is doubtful because Jann is not a professional race car driver and couldn’t possibly know what he thinks he does. He is proven correct in a brilliant reinforcement of how dedicated Jann is to Gran Turismo and its meticulous addiction to realism. By the time the final competition between them occurs, it is obvious that they both have immense respect for one another. They’re rivals in the truest sense. However, Matty’s rivalry with Jann pales compared to the one he forms against Nicholas Capa (Josha Stradowski).
Stradowski, now known for his role in Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, is the bane of several characters’ existence. He is presented as a rich boy playing at being a race car driver because he can afford all the training and fancy tools necessary to make it in this world. He doesn’t respect Jack Salter, a team member, and this disrespect prompts Salter to abandon Capa and his team for Danny Moore’s risky proposition. Throughout the film’s second half, Capa’s antipathy towards Salter is spread toward Jann, with near-disastrous results. How much of this is supposition from myself or actual fact is up to you. All I can say is they managed to make his character a villain, and every good story has one.
Gran Turismo is, at its heart, a story about a man with a dream who seizes the opportunity to make that dream a reality. By the time this opens up wide, I hope it is given the attention and support it deserves, especially as we continue down the path of what art is and how it should be valued.
Lloydd Marshall Books 