Movie tropes that drive car people crazy
We’re completely willing to suspend disbelief for some car stuff in movies. But other things are inexcusable, writes David Linklater.
There are special kinds of car-shorthand often used in television and movies: tropes that exist to tell a story more clearly or enhance action set-pieces.
Lots of them we don’t have a problem with.
It’s OK if a modern car suddenly seems to be devoid of traction and/or stability control so that it can do skids (or if a frontdrive car suddenly develops power-oversteer ability, like the Toyota Prius in from 2010).
It’s OK that lead characters suddenly become accomplished stunt drivers when the action kicks off, J-turning and jumping cars like anybody can do it (when in fact hardly anybody can do either of those things).
Nor do we mind if cars aren’t absolutely period-correct.
It’s OK that the model of Audi Quattro shown in
(2008) wasn’t actually available at the time the show is set, in 1981. We don’t care. It suits the character of Gene Hunt and we want to see it.
Nope, the stuff that makes carpeople crazy happens when there are instances of automotive unreality that are the result not of making things more interesting, but because of laziness and/or lack of knowledge – which then becomes an insult to the carliterate viewer.
Here are five we loathe the most.
Change down to go faster
The notion that a car goes faster if you change down a gear – on a flat road at full throttle, mind – has been a long-running trope in movies that has become positively common in the age of
movies.
Yes, we get it: showing somebody quickly chopping down a gear is an easy way to suggest that they’ve done something dramatic to gain a burst of speed.
It’s commonly used in scenes where the lead in a drag race can change several times over a quarter mile. Seriously?
The same car becomes different
There are lots of reasons why a car might suddenly change specification through the course of a TV show or movie. None have anything to do with the story.
Maybe reshoots had to be done and the original just wasn’t available. Maybe a character should be driving something expensive but there’s a scene where the car gets damaged or destroyed, so something much cheaper is used when crunch-time comes.
This is all insulting to the carsavvy viewer because these changes are made with the assumption that
F&F is a lead offender again: for example, in (2011) a couple of Dodge Chargers change from the very latest model to a previous-generation shape when the time comes for the big stunt set-piece.
Or in the The Age of Adaline (2015), a romantic drama about a woman who stops getting older at the age of 29, a Jeep Grand Cherokee driven throughout the story by Ellis Jones suddenly gets several generations older in a night-time scene late in the movie. In New Zealand’s own
(2016), did anybody notice that the Aston Martin driven by lead character Brady is sometimes a two-door DB9 and other times a four-door Vanquish? Or maybe she just really likes Aston Martins in that colour.
In the past, everybody had brand new cars
Street scenes showing contemporary cars are a great way to anchor a period-piece in a very specific time frame.
However, 99 per cent of the time the same fatal mistake is made: all the cars you see would have been brand-new at the time and more often than not they’re in concours condition. When in fact those ‘‘new’’ cars should be peppered with a mixture of vehicles five, 10, even 20 and 30 years old. And they should look like people actually drive them.
After all, when you look out your window you don’t see a street full of brand-new, freshly groomed vehicles. Unless you live across from a car dealership.
Cars go as fast backwards as they do forwards
Sometimes it’s done for comic effect, which is fine.
But just as often, cars are shown to be just as fast backwards as they are forwards during serious action scenes.
That’s just not possible – if for no reason other than gearing. Which makes the bit in (2011) where our nameless lead (Ryan Gosling) handbrake-turns his Mustang in front of a Chrysler 300 and then drives ahead – but backwards – at the same speed utterly ridiculous.
You can actually hear gear changes, too. Just saying.
Wrong engine noise
That brings us to the tricky issue of having the correct engine sound. We get that capturing engine and exhaust noise is a tricky business and that most sound people would sooner just rely on the big bank of generic car sounds they have on the hard drive at the studio. That’s why so many small hatchbacks sound like V8s in the movies.
(1968) sounded pretty grunty. But the gold standard for car sounds is arguably (1998). Director John Frankenheimer had every car that appeared in an action scene recorded at a racetrack so that the engine noises would be 100 per cent accurate. That’s attention to detail.
The low point in contemporary film is the otherwise-excellent
(2017). In one of the final scenes, lead character Lily rolls up to a restaurant valetparking area in her new Tesla Model S – complete with crisp petrol-engine soundtrack.
You don’t have to be a car person to know that’s a fail.