A recent resurgence in mass audiences’ interest in racing, and the characters around motorsports, has resulted in no shortage of modern racing movies, culminating this week in the release of the first trailer for a movie based on a racing game: Gran Turismo.
In promoting the movie today, director Neill Blomkamp nerded out about the technology previously used in the filming of “Top Gun: Maverick” that he was allowed to play with, and which allowed him to put cameras where they’ve never been before. That, he claimed, would make audiences feel like they were actually in the cockpit of the racecars featured in the movie and would help him recreate the camera angles associated with the racing game.
And while I’m rooting for Mr. Blomkamp, I find myself frequently disappointed in the racing scenes featured in many movies. Although they often take advantage of fascinating technology, and put cameras in interesting places, a good racing scene harder to come by than you might think.
More: Get Your First Look At Sony’s Gran Turismo Movie, Which Premieres On August 11
Racing, as it is depicted on camera, even at live events, is often kind of boring. Although race cars are traveling at speeds that our puny monkey brains simply should not be capable of processing, and racecar drivers take on very high, and very real stakes, cars just look slow on camera.
To account for that, a lot of filmmakers use quick editing, fast-forwarding, and a variety of other tricks to make racing scenes feel more exciting. But not matter how many unnecessary shifts, how much unconvincing technobabble, nor how many silly passing maneuvers are put into a movie, many films’ attempts to add visual flair fall flat.
And I think that’s because racing, although it requires fast reflexes and high speeds, is actually very slow and methodical. Races tend to happen over many hours, and see drivers repeating the same circuit over and over again, as they strive for a yogic oneness with the road. Try putting that on film.
That’s not to say, though, that racing in movies is never exciting. Some films, whether it’s because they’re more obsessed with appealing to motorsports enthusiasts than to human beings or because they simply give up on the strictures of cinéma vérité and give into raucous expressionism, provide viewers with really excellent racing scenes.
To my mind, the two films that do this the best are the famous “Le Mans”—which abandons aspirations of being a good movie in favor of being a wildly accurate vibe—and the less well known, but aggressively entertaining, “Redline”—which utilizes the freedom of animation to create racing scenes that are as exciting as other movies could only dream of being.
What do you think, though? What movies get their racing scenes spot on and why?