The upcoming automotive action-adventure F1 really captures the reality of Formula One races and the real physical danger drivers put themselves in, as revealed by producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Speaking to Comic Book, Bruckheimer stated “The training you see in the movie, these drivers do it every week, that’s their normal routine. We didn’t make this up, we do an enormous amount of research.” Bruckheimer also spoke of the extreme physical toll of Formula One racing captured in the movie, stating “You’re piloting a rocket, they’re going 220 miles-per-hour. The downforce is amazing. You’re taking five G’s in the corners. Your neck is destroyed, you could throw your neck out for a month unless you’re trained.”
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Additionally, Bruckheimer also spoke on the extensive training F1 and driving skills stars Brad Pitt and Damson Idris developed for the movie’s fast-paced racing sequences, and that some of it involved the stars driving during actual Formula 1 races. Per Bruckheimer, “Sometimes we’d be driving in front of 140,000 people. They didn’t know that they were in the car,” with this commitment to Formula One realism really calling upon Pitt and Damson to hone a lot of new driving skills. While the Formula One stunts captured in F1 clearly required a great deal of preparation and planning, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski has his share of experience in that arena that he’s evidently brought to F1.
The Tom Cruise-led legacy sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, Maverick became a crowd-pleasing titan and the biggest hit of Cruise’s career with its $1.49 billion box office haul. Maverick was especially praised for its immersive and exhilarating aerial stunts and action sequences with Cruise’s Maverick and the pilots of the Navy’s “Top Gun” aviation program. Judging from both F1‘s marketing and Bruckheimer’s description of the movie’s portrayal of Formula One racing, Kosinksi and the F1 production team really sought to create a kind of “Top Gun: Maverick on wheels” with F1.
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In F1, Brad Pitt plays retired Formula One racer Sonny Hayes, whose career in the ’90s was brought to an end after harrowing accident. While working as a cab driver and still competing in lower stakes racing events, Hayes is summoned back to the Formula One circuit by his former associate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), who asks him to help train up-and-coming Formula One racer Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris).
The trailers and overall marketing for F1 sell a tremendous amount of heart-racing stunts and race-car action in the movie. Much of the movie’s racing sequences are shown from the perspective of the Formula One drivers themselves, and G-Force speed is clearly the name of the game in F1 as much as it is in actual Formula One racing. Even still, Bruckheimer’s words describing the making of movie illustrate just how much training and planning had to go into bringing Formula One racing to life on the big-screen.
With early reactions for F1 being highly positive (including from ComicBook’s own Charlie Ridgely), it seems like summer audiences could be in for a wild, stunt-filled good time when F1 hits cinema screens. With that said, none of it would have been possible with the careful training and planning that went into F1‘s high-speed and very true-to-reality Formula One racing sequences, with Bruckheimer’s words revealing how crucial stunt coordination is to summer blockbusters like F1.
F1 will be released in theaters on June 27th.
