Days of Thunder

Zerkfitting

Zerkfitting

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I was checking the Roku channel last night and came across Days of thunder and decided to watch it.

When I saw Days of Thunder in a theater and I didn't like it, it exploited the worst examples of race car driving I had ever seen. It occurred to me later that I had seen most of the scenes in the movie over my years watching NASCAR, I just wasn’t used to seeing them all in 100 minutes. One of the scenes I hadn’t seen before was Trickle wrecking the race winner but I think the Kenseth/Lagano incident qualifies. One of my favorite scenes was the Ford-Chevy rental car episode.

It was fun seeing the cars from that era again. I remember watching the races they were filming, the announcers explained there were movie cars running in the race. I assume they had to be illegal cars to ensure they were able to run up front. It was a good story. I also had to remind myself that it isn’t a documentary. Many elements were based on real world occurrences (or stories).

Check out the real world homage section in Wikipeadia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Thunder
 
its actually one of my favorite movies, I watch it each year the night before the Daytona 500. I know many people frown upon the movie because of its realism but its a movie....... its supposed to be entertainment.
 
Days of Thunder is one of my favorite movies. Always has been. I was just a little kid when my parents bought me the VHS tape (I think in summer of 1991) which was shortly after I had started watching NASCAR. Yes, there are some corny elements to it, and I understand why some folks may not like it too much. Robert Duvall building a Winston Cup chassis in a barn on his farm, talking to the car about all the Smokey-like tricks he has up his sleeve…..yeah, it’s silly and over the top. But it’s a movie, and I think it’s a good one from a fun and entertainment standpoint.

I still watch it at least once a year, usually in early February before the season starts. It’s also really cool for nostalgic reasons with the music and the older style race cars and all that. The late 80’s heading into the 90’s was one of the greatest time periods in NASCAR history IMO.

One thing’s for sure, it’s a hell of a lot better movie than Talladega Nights, which is a complete embarrassment to NASCAR in multiple ways. There are some funny parts to it, but for the most part I think it’s just a big mockery of the sport.
 
My gripe is that for the money they spent and the trouble they went to, it could have been an all time great racing movie on par with Grand Prix, but they copped out and went the easy way with all style and no substance. The basic premise of the movie is solid, but in typical Hollywood fashion they have to take EVERYTHING to the point of absurdity, and getting simple things wrong like having the races in the completely wrong order and the idea of building Cup cars in a old bank barn in the 1990's is just absurd and inexcusable. In the first place, the first time fired up the welder, that barn would have burnt to the ground. Using one of Harry Hyde's old building out behind HMS would have been a LOT more realistic. The entire Nicole Kidman part is a complete waste of film. She is neither believable, OR interesting in that role. The audience has ZERO reason to give a damn about her character. I've been a fan of some of Jerry Bruckheimer's work, but compared to Grand Prix, DoT looks like it was made by high school students.
 
Isn't the wrecking the winner based off Elliott and Earnhardt at the Winston?
 
he rubbed ya. and rubbin son is racin. Classic. I want you to go out there and hit the pace car.:D

 
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sdj said:
I've seen both MOVIES, Days of Thunder and I have seen Rush, both were good movies, with a heavy emphasis on the word "MOVIE".
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me too, I think I have seen just about every one from Micky Rooney "Big wheel" on to the present. Most of the time seeing the vintage race cars are the stars of the show in my world. One of the best redeeming qualities of Elvis's attempt to do one or one of Paul Newman's racing movies.
 
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People who judge action films harshly because some details are "wrong" completely miss the point of action films. Personally, I like Days of Thunder. It's an excellent movie, and cool that many true-to-life characters and stories are incorporated. It wouldn't surprise me if market research showed that the movie had a role in the explosive growth of Nascar fad fans in the 1990's.
 
StandOnIt said:
me too, I think I have seen just about every one from Micky Rooney "Big wheel" on to the present. Most of the time seeing the vintage race cars are the stars of the show in my world. One of the best redeeming qualities of Elvis's attempt to do one or one of Paul Newman's racing movies.
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Big wheel was better than days of Thunder, imo.
 
Days of Thunder uses every NASCAR cliché just like Talladega Nights did. Both are horrible movies. I was glad to see Buck Bretherton get his shot at driving in Talladega Nights. The guy was a car chief and a winning driver. That type of talent is off the charts.
 
StandOnIt said:
If you like 4 banger Offy's it wasn't bad. Pretty fakey scene when Mikey was driving.
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I agree I just wrote off the fakey scenary as an assumed low budget flaw(I have no idea of the production budget etc).
I just didn't have any expectations and never heard of it prior to finding it on TV one day.

Days of Thunder on the hand was talked about and obviously being worked on and promoted for some time. Lots of build up and expectations.
The racing footage resembled something more like bumper cars too me at the county fair. With almost no respect given to how technically difficult racing can be. More like a bad expensive joke, imo.
 
Hey, we are in this movie, so I have to like it. They filmed parts at Daytona with us in the grandstand. I remember the airlift by the helicopter too.
It's great entertainment for me, especially when I need to kill a couple hours.
I am pretty sure we went to see the movie the first day it appeared in theaters. :D
 
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Greg said:
I agree I just wrote off the fakey scenary as an assumed low budget flaw(I have no idea of the production budget etc).
I just didn't have any expectations and never heard of it prior to finding it on TV one day.

Days of Thunder on the hand was talked about and obviously being worked on and promoted for some time. Lots of build up and expectations.
The racing footage resembled something more like bumper cars too me at the county fair. With almost no respect given to how technically difficult racing can be. More like a bad expensive joke, imo.
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eh some of it they did pretty well. The "Drop the hammer" scene was pretty good I thought. They caught the speed pretty well, and it has been used years later jokingly by some drivers. AND some of the knuckleheads around here during the race thread so it left a lasting impression on some of us.:D
 
I’ve always called it Days or Blunder. The racing footage was absurd at best. C’mon the banging that went on on the last laps of the race? Stoooooooopid. And the dirty faces? I saw all the races that the film cars were in, I bought into the hype that this was going to be a masterpiece of the racing movies. It was crap.
 
be9ak7ts16 said:
I’ve always called it Days or Blunder. The racing footage was absurd at best. C’mon the banging that went on on the last laps of the race? Stoooooooopid. And the dirty faces? I saw all the races that the film cars were in, I bought into the hype that this was going to be a masterpiece of the racing movies. It was crap.
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Geesh...you probably didn't like Six Pack either...:D

 
I kinda feel sorry for those who thought Days of Thunder with "Top Gun" Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman was going to be a serious movie about racing. If a person wants to see a serious racing move that hollywood didn't get their hands on, watch LeMans. That was Steve Mcqueen's labor of love filmed in the golden era of racing. He even laid on the inside of a corner with a camera to catch a Porsche 917 cornering at speed and could have easily been killed if something had gone wrong. Easily one of the top five racing films. The plot pretty much sucks, but the racing scenes can't be beat. It is a film for the hard core racing film fan IMO.

 
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StandOnIt said:
I kinda feel sorry for those who thought Days of Thunder with "Top Gun" Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman was going to be a serious movie about racing. If a person wants to see a serious racing move that hollywood didn't get their hands on, watch LeMans. That was Steve Mcqueen's labor of love filmed in the golden era of racing. He even laid on the inside of a corner with a camera to catch a Porsche 917 cornering at speed and could have easily been killed if something had gone wrong. Easily one of the top five racing films. The plot pretty much sucks, but the racing scenes can't be beat. It is a film for the hard core racing film fan IMO.

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:punkrocke
 
I consider Gran Prix one of the best racing movies. The sound is from the real cars on the real tracks of the day. When the movie came out is was shown in a special theater with three screens, the movie was produced for that format (that was back in the 1960s way before Imax). James Garner went to the Bondurant race school to train for the movie, Bondurant said he could be a driver if he wanted to.
 
I could ignore the “Hollywood” nature of Days of Thunder if it were well put together, but the continuity and editing were so atrocious. Cars changed in shot to shot within 30 second spans. That and the dirty faces and constant shifting gears...

“Wheeler knocked me into Gant! Gant spun out!” Green car is Gant, then Brett Bodine, then Gant, then Bodine...
 
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