Gran Turismo Simply Doesn't Have Enough Neill Blomkamp In It
South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has directed five major feature films to date: the Oscar-nominated "District 9" in 2009, the class-conscious sci-fi tragedy "Elysium" in 2013, the oddball "Short Circuit"/"RoboCop" mashup "Chappie" in 2015, the low-budget stinker "Demonic" in 2021, and now the video-game-adjacent biography "Gran Turismo" in 2023.
With the exception of "Demonic," each of Blomkamp's films is explicitly or implicitly about class. "District 9" is about alien visitors who are forced to live in a run-down shanty town outside of Johannesburg. "Elysium" features a posh space station where the wealthy live in comfort while the impoverished live on the overheated, overpopulated Earth below. "Chappie" is an ACAB movie about a police robot coming to fight for the people and against its corporate creators.
"Gran Turismo," meanwhile, is about Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), an expert player of the titular racing video game, who is tapped by Nissan to become a race car driver for real. Although it rarely says it out loud in dialogue, "Gran Turismo" is largely about how the well-moneyed, upper-class realm of auto racing is aggressively rude toward the working-class kid entering their ranks. Jann must overcome a subtle class prejudice to gain recognition by the racing world at large.
Despite a similar theme, however, Blomkamp largely stays out of the way of "Gran Turismo." He seems to be approaching his newest picture with a more workmanlike attitude, performing as a director-for-hire. His quirky sense of humor is absent from "Gran Turismo," as is his aggressive machinery fetish. Apart from a few notable CGI fantasy sequences where cars disassemble and reassemble themselves mid-race, Blomkamp stays away from his usual clanking servos and hydraulic pistons.
Not it's necessarily a bad thing.
Blomkamp, the workman
Blomkamp's film explains, in an introductory sequence, that the 1997 PlayStation video game "Gran Turismo" was created to be as accurate a racing simulator as possible. It became immensely popular and has since spun off into multiple sequels and variants over the course of its multi-decade life. The games incorporated many minuscule details about cars and the mechanical construction thereof, as well as accurate renderings of many of the world's most famous race tracks. An involved player may begin to think he or she could race at Le Mans for real. In 2008, Sony decided to bank on the players' intuition and open the GT Academy, a racing school for expert game players. Blomkamp's movie is about the first class to win entrance into said Academy, and their adventures in learning how to become real-life racers.
The film begins as a pretty disgusting example of corporate onanism, not unlike the way Nintendo was aggressively advertised in the 1989 film "The Wizard." After its first act, however, "Gran Turismo" morphs into a more traditional — and effective — sports movie. Jann is an underdog, his grizzled coach Jack Salter (David Harbour) refines his game, and he overcomes adversities to win the Big Game at the end. The filmmaking is stylish and energetic, the race sequences are excitingly edited, and Blomkamp wisely leans into his script's resemblance to "Rocky." There is nothing novel in terms of storytelling, nor is there a hint of over-stylized unreality as one might have seen in "Chappie."
In intentionally retaining his own impulses for machine fetish or fantastical class struggles, Blomkamp has proven to be an efficient journeyman. He may be more effective, pliable, and adaptable as a director-for-hire than he was striking as an auteur.
As directors evolve
Of course, we, as audience members, now have a choice. We can either mourn the sci-fi maker of blockbusters that Blomkamp once promised to be, or we can celebrate that he has talents beyond his sci-fi interests. One might recall back in 2015 that Blomkamp was eager to make a film in the "Alien" series. He was going to ignore many of the sequels and film an alternate-timeline follow-up to James Cameron's 1986 film "Aliens." For a hot minute, the internet was abuzz with the project, and Blomkamp, while not officially hired to make anything, shared concept art and models he wanted to use for the film.
When his "Alien" fell apart in 2017, Blomkamp seemed to sour on the Hollywood machine. Indeed, he was quoted in the Guardian saying:
"I'm not gonna work on a film for two years and have the rug pulled out from underneath me and then go hang out and have beers. It's exactly why I don't want to do IP based on other people's stuff ever again. If there's something amazing and the set-up is right, I wouldn't say no, but generally speaking, after Halo and after Alien, it would be unwise to do that"
When he was asked about his "Alien" in a recent interview with Uproxx, Blomkamp became openly annoyed, seemingly eager to move past his "sci-fi tentpoles" phase. "It's hard to define," he said "how little I care about what happens with 'Alien.'" Blomkamp then abruptly ended the interview.
"Gran Turismo" is technically named after a video game, but it's also a traditional biography and sports movie, so the vibe is different from playing with an established fictional mythology. Blomkamp has made a boldly entertaining film, unlike anything he has made before.
This is a good thing.