6 Recent Films That Got Car Sounds Badly Wrong
A few years ago, I had a jolly big rant about films using the wrong sounds for particular cars. I’ve since spoken to a few people who work in the field of audio post production, and predictably the reason is ‘dramatic license’ - in other words filmakers prefer making things sound cool, rather than realistic.
That’s fair enough, especially when the vast majority of the audience isn’t going to give a damn. But as an utterly pedantic petrolhead, I still want to moan when things aren’t quite right, and if you’ll indulge my curmudgeonly nature, here are a few zingers which aggravated me recently:
Sadly, we don’t live in a world where the M3 still has a V8. But in the fantasy land of the movies, this turbo straight-six F80 version is given an extra pair of cylinders it doesn’t have IRL…
Oh, how happy I was when I watched The Last Witch Hunter the other week. Not because it’s a good film (it isn’t), but because the sound of the Aston Martin Rapide S in it is spot-on. It’s not just a V12 as it should be; I’m 99.99 per cent sure the particular V12 sound used even belongs to an Aston engine.
However, all that good work is undone by one scene (we can’t find a clip of the actual gaffe, but the car appears in the above trailer at the 25sec mark) when it sounds remarkably like a V10 Audi R8. So close…
Last time I checked, the Tesla Model S didn’t have an internal combustion engine. But we can’t blame Kit Harrington for not noticing this omission - the Lord Commander does have a lot on right now, after all.
The sight of Indycars in the unforgivably boring Focus should have been a good thing. However, while the Indycars themselves were the real deal, the sounds dubbed over the top seem to be sourced from V10 F1 cars.
Yep, this one’s a bike rather than a car, but it’s worth mentioning since this is something that filmmakers get wrong all the damn time: a Ducati with an inline-four engine. I get why: most people expect superbikes to have screaming four-cylinder engines, but what’s annoying here is in a previous scene, it sounds like a twin just as it should.
The Fast and Furious franchise has a pretty shoddy track record for engine sounds, and the latest installment is no different. V10 Maserati Ghibli, anyone?
Speaking of incorrectly placed V10s and Furious 7, how about this flat-six powered Lykan that sounds a lot like a Lexus LFA?
We could probably make a whole list out of Furious 7’s engine sound gaffes, so let’s just leave it at these two for now.
What other engine sound mess-ups have you seen in films of the last two years?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I can’t even hear the aston
Nothing worse than the Pagani Huayra in Transformers. Sounded nothing like a car.
You forgot FF6 where the M5’s in London had an V8 unstead of a V10🙄
That Tesla is wrong… ಠ_ಠ
One that annoys me is not a film but that damn direct line advert where the gt86 has a v8 ….
Remember when Top Gear helped film The Sweeney? They tried to make the cars work in a chase as realistically as possible and got kicked out for it.
2 fast 2 furious used a boxer engine in an eclipse…
Yeah I remember the first thing I did when I got home from mission impossible was post here in CT the engine in the M3 was the E92 V8
Fast and furious 7:
A Toyota Supra sounding like a Mitsubishi Eclipse with the engine of a Dodge Neon from The fast and the furious :P
Hmm…also in Fast and Furious 4, the E39 M5 had the sounds from the E60 M5, the V10 one