Gamer to Pro Sportscar Racer: is ‘Gran Turismo’ the Most Meaningful Racing Movie You’ll See?
He’s the Black gamer who swapped his controller for a 300km/h sportscar… without ever having raced on a real track. Sound far fetched? It’s a real story.
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Why should I see Gran Turismo?
The on-track action is thrilling, but it's the true story under the bonnet that’s extraordinary: a sim racer who was so good on the digital tracks, that he levelled up to compete on real ones.
What social causes does the film explore?
Racial Equity, Sports & Recreation, Family & Community
Le Mans. Days of Thunder. Rush. Ford v Ferrari. We can almost smell the fuel and fumes. With searing on-track action and high stakes built-in, Hollywood loves itself a car racing movie. But until now, there’s something else they’ve all had in common: a white guy behind the wheel.
So from the first rev of its engine, Gran Turismo stands out as something different - and it really happened. In 2011, aged just 19, Welshman Jann Mardenborough beat 90,000 aspiring sim racers - video game players on simulated racing software - to become the youngest ever winner of GT Academy.
It was an audacious program funded by Nissan and PlayStation to give the most impressive Gran Turismo gamers a shot at a real-life pro-racing career with Nissan. Overnight, Jann went from battling for overtakes in his bedroom, to grappling with the adrenaline and danger of the real thing.
Now we have the movie version - and sure, it’s an action flick that exists partly to shift more video games. But it also comes with pedigree, having been brought to the screen by Academy Award-nominated writers Jason Hall & Zach Baylin, and directed by District 9 Oscar nominee Neill Blomkamp. This isn’t just glossy paintwork on a carbon fibre shell with no engine humming under the hood. There’s a beating heart to this story, and it’s an inspiring one.
What does Gran Turismo have to say about equity and privilege?
The real Jann Mardenborough was a switched on kid. Obsessed with sim racing, he designed and built his own simulator rig from fibreboard, and scrimped for the cash to buy a pedal & wheels (Jann’s home-made rig is faithfully recreated in the movie). He then spent thousands of hours on Sony’s Gran Turismo game, memorising every inch of the world’s most famed racetracks - all online.
Growing up in Wales in a mixed race family with a non-privileged background, winning GT Academy was a life-changing chance to live his racing dream; one that would’ve been virtually impossible for Jann to achieve the traditional way. For a start, he’d have left his run a bit late - take British star driver Lando Norris, now competing at the highest level in Formula 1, who began his kart racing career at age 7.
The other difference? Norris’s father is a business investor with a net worth of over £200m. On the list of ‘accessible sports’, motor racing is probably tied at the bottom with unicorn polo (a highly exclusive pursuit we just made up). Even in junior karts, competing in motor racing costs around £30,000 a year at a national level. So in the film, when Jann takes his place at the racetrack for the first time, we witness palpable sneers from the moneyed racers he’ll compete against - kids whose Dads have essentially bought their slot on the starting grid.
“I remember getting kitted out after winning the academy,” says the real Mardenborough, reflecting on the eye-watering startup costs. “Fireproof underwear, helmet, gloves. I was shocked at how expensive things were. The socks are £75. And you have three pairs of them. The cost for just basic stuff you need to go racing is astronomical.”
Perhaps that explains the explosive rise of e-sports, a market that pulled in over 500 million online viewers last year. It’s an outlet with all the competition and hype of real-world sport - but instead of millions of pounds, all players need to compete is a solid wi-fi connection and a robust pair of thumbs. In a post-pandemic economy, that opens up competitive gaming to kids like Jann globally: kids who might otherwise never get to hoist a trophy.
What does Gran Turismo have to say about family?
From the opening scene, where Jann and his brother sneak out in Dad’s car for a cheeky joyride and evade a police chase, two things are clear: Jann can really drive, and his Dad is not to be messed with. Hence the sneaking.
As a former professional athlete himself, Steve Mardenborough knows the sacrifices it takes to get into competitive sport and stay there. We see the medals and trophies he picked up over his journeyman years in the Football League (he made over 300 appearances across a 20-year career). This sets up a version of the ‘disapproving Dad’ narrative we’ve seen before - but with Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou in the role, there’s genuine weight to this storyline.
Steve is extra tough on Jann for two reasons: firstly, he recognizes his son’s drive to compete, but doesn’t think his sim racing is the right outlet. He doesn’t really understand it, and doesn’t rate it as a “real sport” like football. Secondly, despite his own athletic success, he’s now in his late 40s, and has been relegated to a working-class career in a railyard. It’s a pathway he doesn’t want to see Jann repeat: “Get an education - just don’t be like me!”
Naturally, it’s an urging that Jann promptly ignores, leaving for the GT Academy to the angst of his parents. This family schism weighs on Jann’s shoulders as he navigates the other stresses of racing life, but it’s followed by a redemption moment between himself and Steve that gives the film a huge emotional uplift at the climax. Both Hounsou and relative newcomer Archie Madekwe are amazing here; if there was a race for genuinely moving father-son bonding moments, this scene would definitely be on the podium.
What does Gran Turismo have to say about trauma?
It’s one thing to crash your ride on a computer screen - reset, crack the knuckles, start again. It’s a different universe when you’re physically strapped in to the very real, high-powered metal & glass machine you’ve just sent rocketing over a blind crest at 300 km/h.
It’s that scarcely believable situation Jann Mardenborough found himself in as he progressed through the training program that eventually saw him racing real Nissan GT-R coupes. Jann described it as a shock to the system: "Before this point I'd never been on a track, driven a sportscar, or power-slid a car. All my experience was on Gran Turismo!”
Despite vastly improved safety, every time a racer hits the track there’s a chance they’ll lose their life - or take someone else’s. The film harnesses this gravitas, taking Jann from the nervous excitement of a kid burning rubber to the numbed shock of the aftermath of his first major accident. At a rising section of Germany’s famous Nürburgring track, his GT-R catches air and flips, cartwheeling over the fence into the crowd and tragically killing a spectator. Watching on television, Jann’s distraught parents have no idea if their son is alive or dead.
It gives Jann the character a crossroads moment as he recovers in hospital and processes his shock and emotions after the crash. He feels a gut-wrenching guilt that he accidentally caused an innocent bystander to lose their life, despite it being a freak incident (similar flips have happened to drivers with decades of racing under their belts). Jann also can’t shake the sense that he let his team down. He questions if he still has what it takes to be a genuine sports car driver - or if he ever did.
As for the real Mardenborough, it’s an incident from his racing past that he insisted was shown in the film. “It would have been a disservice to the viewer not to include it,” he says. “The idea that you follow your dreams and live happily ever after is not life. It’s not easy to talk about. It was the darkest moment of my personal and professional life.”
How does Gran Turismo relate to real life events?
Those sneers we mentioned weren’t always to do with money. Of all sports, Black people are hugely underrepresented in motorsport, for complex reasons including industry practices, classroom culture, and a lack of funding & opportunity for minority athletes.
Research from the Hamilton Commission, which aims to improve representation in motorsport, found that the proportion of Black employees in Formula 1 - from drivers and engineers to strategists and track marshalls - is less than 1%. Broadening out from the racetrack, the commission also found that 83% of people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups had experienced racism within sport as a whole.
The findings are significant because the commission was established by Sir Lewis Hamilton, a 7-time Formula One World Champion who holds the record for the most wins, podiums and pole positions in the sport’s history. He’s also the only Black driver to ever race in the sport’s highest echelon (Jann Mardenborough reached Formula 3, a racing class two tiers below F1).
But Hamilton is yearning to change that, setting up the commission that bears his name to give young Black racers the kind of opportunity he had to fight “twice as hard” for when he started out, "being the only person of colour on the track.” Hamilton told the BBC, "There's a lack of diversity through big organisations, from the top all the way down to the bottom. There's very little black leadership. People particularly from African and Caribbean heritage, because they don't see anybody here that looks like them, they don't think, 'that could be me'.”
What are critics saying about Gran Turismo?
- “It’s made with a spontaneous humanistic grace, and the racing sequences are dazzlingly directed and edited.” | VARIETY
- ”Director Neill Blomkamp slip[s] a relatably human underdog story amid the solid auto-racing thrills for extra pleasure.” | THE FILM VERDICT
- “A deeply inspirational and often quite emotional story that far exceeds its video game roots.” | BELOW THE LINE
- ”Does a terrific job of marrying immersive action with a story that sometimes packs a real emotional punch.” | STUFF.CO.NZ
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from Gran Turismo?
Okay, it may be backed by the deep coffers at Sony’s gaming division, but that’s no reason to pull into the pits and write off Gran Turismo. While it isn’t shy about amping up the exciting bits, it’s clearly been created with a deep respect for Mardenborough’s origins.
Sure, you can check off some sports movie clichés: the Dad who wants his son to pack in his dreams for a ‘real education’. The grizzled ex-driver who coaches because his past crash still haunts him. The last-gasp performance that clinches victory by a thousandth of a second. But that’s just movie fairydust (or should that be carbon brake dust?) sprinkled on a grounded, moving story that’s anchored by surprisingly good performances.
Speaking of moving, these Nissan GT-Rs are movie stars in their own right: the race sequences are right up there with the best we’ve seen. Some of the shots are phenomenal (the camera operators must’ve had ice in their veins). But you don’t have to know anything about cars - or even like racing - to invest in Jann and his goals. The stakes at each racetrack are quickly explained, before the talking stops, the visors drop and the speedos hit the limit.
In exploring what it takes to crack pro-sports as a minority athlete with zero backing, Gran Turismo pulls off a neat double-podium. On track, it’s a high-octane popcorn ride, but its core demo might come away with more than wafts of burning rubber.
In luring a generation of teens from their gaming rigs into the cinema, Gran Turismo gives them the green light to a deeper understanding of courage and grit, and what it takes to compete against the odds. And for once, it’s not a white guy spraying the champagne.
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