Hollywood Car Chases are a Beautiful Spectacle
- Mr. Toontastic
- Aug 19, 2021
- 3 min read
When I was very young, there were only two obsessions I ever had in my life: Cartoons & Cars.
I used to love cars a lot. I'd have toy versions of real-life cars. Hot Wheels were the most stylish cars. Die-Cast Model Cars are way better than plastic models (fight me). Heck, I enjoy all of the Disney/Pixar Cars movies, even "Cars 2", Pixar's "worst" movie. That's how much I enjoy cars in general!
But if there's one thing I loved more than cars themselves, its the car chases. You see, a car chase is exactly what it sounds like: One or a group of cars tailing and trying to take down a target car.
Car chases are very dangerous, let's get that right off the bat. Put that in movies (and later video games), and its a spectacle to behold. I love the tension in car chases. Someone is bound to mess up and crash, and boy, you almost want to see it happen in certain points of a chase. If you're chasing someone, you're basically putting the pedal to the metal. However, if you're the Chased, its basically the Cannonball Run. You'd better hit that gas and know how to psyche out your opponent, or else you're dead!
Something about the chase in that movie is built so well that the only thing that comes close to it is the original Driver: You Are the Wheelman games on the PlayStation.
Hollywood has made car chases in movies for decades now (maybe over a century), but some of them admittedly don't capture the magic of older ones. Sure, the cars look amazing, but I feel like the shots often focus on where the crew can shove the camera rather than focusing on the vehicles. I feel like we see more of the actors rather than the actual chase. That, or some random shaky-cam footage that's supposed to emphasize "realism", when really it just ruins the feeling.
We live in an age of drones that can fly overhead and record all kinds of footage, so why not use them to actually film what we want to see rather than what we currently already see. There are DEFINITELY some movies that are egregious with this problem (Yes, even the Fast & The Furious movies fall into this trap), even ones that I do like have similar issues.
What I'm saying is that when you see a car chase in a movie, it should feel like a chase. We already see enough of the actors on screen, so car chases should focus on their driving skills rather than their personal reactions. If there is a modern example I will always turn to that gives a balance of what I like, it would have to be highway chase scene found in The Matrix Reloaded.
Quality aside, that scene was a great mix of action, car chasing, and gun violence as Trinity and Morpheus try to get the Keymaker to safety from these strange albino dudes with long dreadlocks. They jump cars, they shoot our heroes on sight, and there's even a moment where Agent Smith takes over some police officers in order to "take 'em out!" It doesn't skimp on the car chases just to have the actors react to the situation. They show everything. It's the one part (aside from the weird rave scene) that I'll always lovingly remember from that film. No other chase has really matched that quality because they focus less on this style of chasing and more on fight scenes. Not even those live-action Transformers movies get it right since all of the Autobots and Decepticons are almost always in their main robot forms rather than their vehicular ones. Come ON!
I feel like Hollywood Movies should emphasize the CHASE in car chases. You never know what your audience could think.
But what about you? Do you like car chases? Do you like vehicles in general? Name some of your favorite car chases in movies and tv shows (or video games), and I'll check them out. Thanks for reading, and don't forget to...
Be Toontastic~!
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