Need For Speed in cinemas now!

Need For Speed certainly comes well-hyped, if only because it was expected to follow in the footsteps of the Fast & Furious franchise, which has spawned many films, some okay, some not so much. It is early days, but the film is opening to mixed reviews, from gamers to film goers alike.

There is a likely hood that the film will not be a huge success, with movie review sites such as The Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic giving the movie 23% and 37% retrospectively, although interestingly enough IMDB has given the movie a much more decent score of 7.5/10.

As tradition would have it, filmgoers don’t really flock to spin-offs from video games and gamers are often not so keen on films, so it may well fall between those two stools and not get it right for either sector. One thing that will strike a chord with many people watching though is: who does their car insurance? The director insisted on using real cars in all the sequences and this does pay off from the angle of looks. CGI can be very disappointing with high-speed action, so at least all of the crashes look real – because they are!

From video game to big screen

Need For Speed is by no means the first and certainly won’t be the last spin-off from a video game. Whether it will be remembered as a successful attempt at bringing a video game to the big screen is doubtful.

The list of iconic transfers is of course long and full of big names: Silent Hill is considered by many to be the very best of all crossovers but if a quick poll was done in the average High Street, Lara Croft would undoubtedly win, if only because of its stars, Angelina Jolie and Daniel Craig.

Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat and Final Fantasy all collected huge numbers of fans, many of whom wouldn’t know a games console if it got up and bit them on the leg.

Interesting, it seems that the video-game movie business is still a big thing, with many directors keen to director a big name-game film, with World Of Warcraft being highlighted as the next big game-movie blockbuster.

Fast & Furious in all its incarnations is a given in this list but to show that the shoe can be on the other foot, some real fans have identified at least ten films (and there may be many more) homaged in the video game Grand Theft Auto so the traffic is sometimes two way – or every which way, when it is like what we see in any of these driving games!

 Do films like this have any effect on car sales?

 Most people are influenced by films they see, if only slightly. There can be few people who leave a cinema or put down their tablet, phone or what have you having seen a film and don’t think of at least one aspect of it afterwards.

 Real petrol heads may well be influenced to buy something newer, faster, leaner and meaner after seeing Need For Speed but the general, in which case car insurance is definitely recommended thing, whether it be from Express Insurance, GoCompare or another big brand.

The effect on actual car sales is likely to be minimal to nil. If only because the target audience for this film are not really the car buyers of today, being generally too young and too hard up to be in that market.

 Did they get the casting right?

 Casting this sort of film is always a bit of a gamble because really the cars and the crashes are the stars. Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul is the lead and is well-enough supported by the cast, including the British actress Imogen Poots as his love interest.

 The people are rather two-dimensional, though, with very simplistic morals and motives, so in some ways it wouldn’t really matter who was cast as who – they don’t have a lot to work with, script-wise, so bigger names would have probably been a waste of money for the producers.

The only way to decide that question is to go see the film yourself and make up your own mind.

Image sources – https://flic.kr/p/664h7m