2014. The film Need for Speed: Need for Speed ​​appears on cinema screens, fans go to cinemas to see the film adaptation of their favorite game and… it seems they don’t get quite what they expected. As a result: the film seems to pay off, but it was not very warmly received by both viewers and critics. 57% and 22% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.9 from the first and 39 from the second on Metacritic. Quite average indicators that indicate a passerby. But is it so?

As I said in my last blog about Far Cry 2, I love this movie. But my feelings and emotions from him are still twofold, and I’m unlikely to be able to convey them fully. But still, let’s try to reason and decide: “Does this film really deserve attention, or does it belong on the outskirts of history??».

Name

To warm up, let’s talk about the name, which everyone has already joked about. Need for Speed: Need for Speed ​​- an example of how not to name your movie. The title of the film sounds strange to say the least, but it seems the distributors don’t learn from their mistakes. It looks like this movie started the trend of double titles. Yes, yes, I’m talking about you Uncharted: “Doesn’t appear on maps”. And who came up with this idea?? It’s like choosing between tea and coffee and choosing not to choose at all, mix everything and drink. Separately, it may be tasty, but together… In general, it doesn’t sound very good.

A little about the creation process

The film was directed by Scott Waugh.

Need for Speed ​​was Scott’s first solo experience as a director. Before Need for Speed, he directed two films, but shared the director’s chair with Mike McCoy. Why did DreamWorks entrust the shooting of an expensive blockbuster with the name of one of the most popular racing games to an inexperienced director?? I don’t know. The first reason I see is that Waugh was a stuntman, and perhaps the company thought that he could stage beautiful races and stunts. Were they wrong?? Let’s talk about this a little later. And secondly, he loves cars and everything connected with them. However, like the film’s screenwriters, brothers John and George Gatins.

They just love cars. In their free time, they even restore classic cars in their garage in Van Nuys.

The NFS film crew visited various parts of the USA. They traveled almost across America from Macon in Georgia to San Francisco and Mendocino in California. We visited Detroit, a landmark city for the automotive industry, where the headquarters of automobile companies such as General Motors and Ford are still located, as well as one of the most famous lakes in the world, Bonneville, where automobile speed records are set

Cars and stunts

The cars are truly the heroes of the film, just as they are the heroes of the games themselves. Unlike Fast and the Furious, where the film is built on action, and cars are just a tool for creating it, Need for Speed ​​is built around cars and a simple, not overloaded, but somehow memorable story.

Where do the main events of the film begin?? From the moment Dino invites Toby to build a Ford Mustang CAR. What caused the quarrel between Dino and Toby? The fact that Marshall took a CAR that belonged to Dino without asking. The characters do not get out of their cars for almost the entire film and spend most of the film on the road. Either Toby takes part in street racing, then he runs circles around Detroit, trying to scare Julia, then he escapes from the cops and murderers.

A lot of work has been done on each car. Something was removed, something was added to make them easier to remove, but I would like to highlight the sound separately. He’s beautiful. Dreamworks signed a contract with Magnaflow (manufacturer of exhaust systems for automobiles) to create high-quality sound for the film. Magnaflow worked on every car in the picture and did a damn cool job. Each car in the film has its own characteristic sound, different from any other. You can always distinguish Saleen from Koenigsegg, and that from Lamborghini, even with your eyes closed.

One of the film’s main characters, a Ford Mustang, was specially designed for the filming of the film. Specialists from Ford created a car based on the Shelby GT500. The car was born at the Techno Sports plant in Detroit. The Mustang was significantly lightened to make it easier to perform stunts, and coupled with an improved engine, this also made it possible to reach higher speeds; cameras were also installed in the side mirrors and the shock absorbers, suspension and some other parts were improved. In total, seven Ford Mustangs were used in the film for different purposes and tasks.

Ford Mustang from the movie

Ford Mustang from the movie

Ford Mustang from the movie

In addition to the Mustang in the film, you can see the Ford Gran Torino 1969, Pontiac GTO 1968, Chevrolet Camaro 1968, Koenigsegg Agera R, Lamborghini Sesto Elemento, GTA Spano, Saleen S7, Bugatti Veyron, McLaren P1, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and many others.

We decided from the very beginning that we would not harm these machines, because for us they are true works of art, and it would be disrespectful to their creators. We built replicas of the cars that were supposed to crash in the script and used these "stunt doubles" in the crash scenes – Scott Waugh.

Most of the participants in the filming were real cars, but still the creators could not allow sports cars worth more than a million dollars to crash, and therefore their duplicates were used in scenes with accidents and stunts. They created an exact copy of the body, which was put on a frame made of pipes with a motor, and then smashed.

There are no incredible scenes with cars in the film. They don’t fly into space, drive away from a submarine, or jump from the roof of a skyscraper. But it’s not bad. Why do we need another Fast and Furious if we already have 9 and a half of them?. There are almost no chromakeys or computer graphics in the film. Almost everything you see on your screens, the actors could see on the set. Yes, without explosions and deaths, but still.

If in the movie a Mustang https://howzitcasino.co.uk/login/ flies into the air and flies several meters. Then on the set, Ford will drive onto a springboard, fly several tens of meters through the air and land on the lawn.

We wanted to recreate one of the greatest car stunts in movie history, like in Smokey and the Bandit when the car jumps over the bridge – Scott Waugh.

Koenigsegg soars into the air (1:35), Ford jumps from a ski jump (4:45), a helicopter flies at minimum altitude over the city (5:17)

If in the film the protagonist’s car drives off a cliff and is picked up by a helicopter, then in real life Ford drove off a cliff and was picked up by a helicopter, although without the actors inside.

Almost all the actors were trained in extreme driving. And Imogen Poots didn’t drive a car at all before filming the film, so the British actress had to not only learn to drive a car, but also get used to driving on the right side of the road, which was unusual for her.

Most of the time, the actors were driving the cars, and they even performed some of the stunts themselves. For example, the scene with Ford gas station on the go. Imogen Poots actually climbed out of a car window at over 100 km/h and helped refuel a Mustang.

But still, during complex stunts, control was transferred to specially trained people. Famous racers and stuntmen took part in the filming: Tanner Faust, Paul Dallenbach, Rice Millen and others.

On the set there were remote-controlled cars, which were doubles of the originals, and while the actor acted out the dialogues while sitting calmly inside the car, the cars were driven by professionals. The stuntmen were located in special cages mounted on a machine above the actor.

Everything was filmed as realistically as possible, with a minimum amount of computer graphics.

And maybe that’s why I love the car scenes in this movie. I’m tired of the endless action and computer effects in Fast and Furious and more. I began to notice that I liked races and chases like those in Need for Speed ​​or, for example, Ford vs Ferrari more. Yes, they don’t have that madness, there’s no driving music, but all this is not necessary. You don’t go to these kinds of films because of metal or endless discussions about family. In such films, cars are not just part of the decor, racing is not just a way to bring the characters together, and the roar of engines is not just an addition to the music, it is the music.

Everything you see in the film actually happened. No chroma key or CGI – Aaron Paul.

Camera work

When director Scott Waugh and my brother George were thinking about a couple of stunts, they decided that the emphasis should not be on computer graphics, but on camera work – John Gatins.

There are simply an exorbitant number of films about cars, and even more so films where there are simply trips and chases, and it seems that everything that can be thought of has already been invented and it is very difficult to put interesting angles and shots. From what other angles can you film a driver or a car?? What other angles can you take to surprise the viewer??

I’m afraid that Need for Speed ​​won’t be able to show something new, something we haven’t seen yet. But it improves what already existed.

During the races, the camera is constantly in motion, conveying dynamism and tension, it constantly tries to make us participants in those events, either showing the race from the first person, putting us behind the wheel of a car, or creating the feeling that we are sitting next to the driver, or generally starting to slide along the road, making us a participant in the race who is also competing with the characters. And if the camera aims to show a close-up of the character’s face and his emotions, then it will still be in dynamics, conveying every bump that the character’s car overcomes. The only time the camera becomes smooth or static is when the viewer turns into an invisible outside observer, when the camera cuts to a wide or long shot showing the area, for example.

It would seem that there is nothing unique. We could already observe all this in one form or another in other films, but the level of performance is captivating. Never before in any film before NFS did I believe so much that the car was actually driving on the road, and not on a perfectly smooth surface, where there was not a single pothole or bump. Need for Speed ​​was the first movie where I really got a kick out of racing, even if there wasn’t much of it in the film.

But they are still present, and to remove them, you need the appropriate cars. The assistant operators were: Ford Mustang, Porsche Cayenne, Ferrari, Audi A6, Mercedes and several others.

Plot and characters

Brief plot summary:

After the recent death of his father, Toby inherits a garage from him, where the protagonist and his team are engaged in tuning cars. But, in addition to the garage, Toby inherits a debt to the bank, and now he must either pay off the loan or lose the garage. After participating in a local race, Toby is visited by his old friend Dino Brewster with an offer to modify a unique Ford Mustang.

The team completes the task and comes to the presentation of the new car, where Toby and Pete meet Julia.

Two years pass and Toby is released from prison for the manslaughter of Pete with revenge on his mind. He calls the millionaire who bought the Mustang and asks him for a car to race De Leon in exchange for half the cars he wins. But upon arriving at the meeting place, the protagonist sees that in addition to the car, the millionaire sent Julia to keep an eye on the would-be racer. And now they have to get to San Francisco in 45 hours.

On the way, they stop in Detroit, where they pick up Finn (one of the team members) and show off in front of the cops in order to record a video for the Monarch and attract his attention, which they succeed in. Shortly after this, Toby receives an invitation to a race from the Monarch (the Monarch is the organizer of the race).

Dino doesn’t want to meet Toby on the highway, so he hires assassins to kill the protagonist.

Toby and Julia stop at a gas station, where they have a confrontation with a policeman, having looked away from him, Toby gives up the driver’s seat, and Julia gets behind the wheel, and the protagonist falls asleep.

In the morning they are attacked by Dino’s people, but the heroes still manage to escape and arrive safely in San Francisco. Where, after Toby successfully registers for the race, a truck crashes into the Mustang at full speed. Julia ends up in the hospital, and our racer gets a car thanks to his ex. This car turned out to be the same Koenigsegg that Dino rammed Pete with.

On De Leon, Toby saves Dino from a burning car and reaches the finish line first, but he is again imprisoned for violating parole, although this time for only six months.

Revenge is accomplished. Dino Bambino goes to prison for Pete’s murder, and Toby proves he was innocent.

When the main character is released from prison, he is greeted by Julia in a new Mustang, after which they drive off into the sunset to a long and happy life with a debt to a millionaire of 4 million dollars.

Agree, it’s quite difficult to write a high-quality story about a game that primarily focused on racing. Until 2014, as far as I remember, there were only 2 games in the series that more or less focused on the plot: The Run and Undercover. But in the first, the plot still left much to be desired, and the second, although it dealt with the story better, had they made a film based on it, everyone would immediately begin to blame the film adaptation for plagiarism of Fast and the Furious (in both the first Fast and the Furious, and in Undercover, the story tells about a policeman who infiltrated a gang of racers.) So I had to invent something of my own, and it turned out that it turned out.

The story is not complicated and even clichéd. We have Toby – he is a racer from God, and therefore he has no equal on the track. We have Dino – an antagonist, a long-time rival of the protagonist, who is inferior to the main character in everything, but tries in every possible way not to show it. They have a conflict in which the protagonist loses something/someone, and therefore throughout the film he will take revenge on the boss. We have Julia – a girl who doesn’t get along very well with Toby at first, but after a couple of scenes they are already in love until the grave. And of course, the hero overcomes all obstacles, wins the race, bypassing one opponent after another, saves the antagonist, because the main character is not like him and proves to everyone that he is right. End.

In addition, the film does not provide clear answers to some questions. Why did Ingram decide to give Toby the car?? Yes, he could get $4 million in supercars, but at the same time lose a unique Mustang. In addition, he saw Toby driving only once and immediately believed that he could win De Leon, where the best of the best compete? Why didn’t Dino destroy Koenigsegg in two whole years, because this is direct evidence, the storage of which, by the way, costs a tidy sum? And most importantly, what was Toby’s plan in the first place?? Prove your innocence? How? Winning De Leon? After all, he couldn’t know that his Ford would crash and Anita would be able to fit him the same Koenigsegg, whose front bumper was involved in Pete’s death, and which, in fact, should have fallen victim to the press long ago. Take revenge? And again, how? Overtaking Dino, shaking his pride? A rather weak punishment for the death of a friend whom you almost considered a brother. Yes, if Dino had not won De Leon, he would have lost his business, since this was one of the conditions of the main investor, but Toby did not know that. In short, if you start to think about it, the story just starts to crumble. But the fact is that while watching, you simply don’t notice it because of two absolute advantages of the film:

Firstly, because of the excellent production of the action, which keeps you in suspense and does not make you want to yawn.

Secondly, because of the actors who were able to make the viewer believe in characters that were, at first glance, clichéd, and as for me, the cast is one of the main advantages of this film.

Nice to see the faces of the racers. Not the stone face of Dominic Toretto, who remains calm even if a burning fuel tanker is rushing towards him. And the really tense faces of people who drive very fast cars at exorbitant speeds and participate in dangerous races where any mistake can cost their lives.

Brenton Thwaites, Luke Bracey, Taylor Kitsch, Liam Hemsworth were considered for the role of Toby Marshall, but in the end the protagonist was played by Aaron Paul, and this is just a 100% hit. Aaron really comes across as a street racer, he’s not pumped up, he’s not shiny with a bald head, he’s just… ordinary, but at the same time memorable. Aaron Paul is the perfect actor to play the main character for NFS.

We’ve been looking for our main character for quite some time. He was supposed to be a simple guy, but courageous and charming. Even when silent. And we saw it in Aaron Paul. This is an amazing actor. You believe everything he does – John Gatins.

Toby himself, as a character, is simple, like the plot in this film. He’s a simple boy from a simple town with a simple, down-to-earth goal: to pay off his father’s debt. Toby is a born racer whose talent was traced back to childhood. He is reserved, silent and often besieges the young and daring Pete, whom he considers his younger brother.