Gran Turismo, the movie about the racing video game franchise, is scheduled to hit theaters next month. The plot of the film revolves around GT Academy, its most famous graduate student Jann Mardenboroughand perhaps his later career as a racer. A recent intro revealed that a fatal crash at the Nurburgring in 2015 involving Mardenborough would be included in the film.
GT Academy is a competition organized by Nissan and Sony that gives Gran Turismo’s best virtual racers the chance to compete in real-world pro racing. Mardenborough won the competition in 2011, rising through the racing ranks and was chosen by Nissan as one of the factory’s Le Mans Prototype drivers for 2015. It’s a story that’s always ripe for a movie adaptation, evenumbrella The infamous Nissan GT-R LM Nismo was absent from the film’s marketing material.
Also in 2015, Mardenborough joined the VLN Endurance Series at the Nürburgring. During the first round of the season, his Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 flew through the air, flipped over tire bars and barriers, then flew into the audience. Major crash in Flugplatz killed one spectator while several others were injured. The incident seems to have taken on some form in the film despite taking place four years after Mardenborough worked at GT Academy.
The Nissan GT-R LM Nismo The show is said to be the pinnacle of Mardenborough’s fame, and the unique front-engine sports prototype was even featured in a Super Bowl commercial. However, the GT-R LM Nismo ran into some significant technical problems and was unable to complete its only race tour, the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans. The show is seen as a shame for Nissan and canceled in December 2015.
The only sporty Nissan prototype seen in the Gran Turismo trailers is a regular Ligier LMP2 in the fictional white and black Nismo paintwork. Mardenborough raced at Le Mans in the LMP2 category twice before being called to join the LMP1 project, allowing the film the ability to skip the failed project without leaving Le Mans out of the script.
The idea that the death of the audience is considered acceptable to use to promote the film but the GT-R LM Nismo is too embarrassing to watch in a Nissan-backed movie it’s shameful. Yes, the possibility of death haunts races, but the possibility of failure is much more likely and much more typical of modern motorsport. Many people eagerly celebrate the gambles paying off, but we rarely hear of cases that don’t go as planned, such as the GT-R LM Nismo.
