New Gran Turismo Movie Trailer Feels Like An Ad For Bigger, Longer Ad

Sony Pictures has dropped a new trailer for its upcoming Gran Turismo movie. The film is a coming-of-age story based on the career of real world race driver Jann Mardenborough, who rose to real-world racing by smashing the GT Academy esports competition. The trailer, on the other hand, plays like a Top Gun style recruitment drive, except where Top Gun wanted impressionable young people to sign up for the US Navy, Gran Turismo wants to whip viewers into buying a video game.

The trailer follows Archie Madekwe’s Mardenborough from his early days playing Gran Turismo in his room to his entry into the GT Academy competition, and his ascent to real, on-track racing. Though Orlando Bloom appears throughout as motorsport marketing exec Danny Moore, a character based on real-world GT Academy founder Darren Cox, it’s David Harbour’s Jack Salter, Mardenborough’s trainer, that takes centre stage.

Harbour’s Salter seems to be a classic American movie coach — rough as guts, and full of out-moded ideas about what it takes to be a race driver. These kids with their video games don’t know nothin’ ’bout racing real cars. But wait a second — who could have expected Gran Turismo would model real-world race tracks in such lifelike detail? And its graphics! Maybe it is just like real racing after all.

The Gran Turismo movie’s mission is clear: put Gran Turismo 7 and the PlayStation 5 hardware on screen as often as possible, make it seem really cool and put some inspirational music behind it. Full respect to the team of talented filmmakers creating what is definitely an extremely expensive ad, but the trailer kind of gives the plan away.

Also, what did Orlando Bloom do to cop a butchering in the edit? Bloom gets the trailer’s weirdest moment, the sentence “The Best Gran Turismo Players In The World” cobbled together from what seems like 15 different recordings of his voice.

Gran Turismo is directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9) and written by Jason Hall (American Sniper) and Zach Baylin (King Richard, Creed III). It releases in theatres on August 11, 2023.