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?
Comments
At least 1 year ago a Turkish TV series (?) had a Tesla and they used a gasoline engine sound, just watch
https://youtu.be/w3J0mHSalRM?t=38m37s
Not incorrect sounds, but, Fast and Furious 6 - Luke Hobbs describes E60 M5s as having Twin Turbo V8s …..
And the m5 before that as a v10 in Fast and Furious 2009
In the same movie Brian says the custom “ramp car” has a “diesel engine like at Le Mans”.
Judging by the sound the thing clearly has a high revving petrol engine..
the only explanation why Luke Hobbs would describe it like that is if he confused it with the current M5, since the current gen M5 did come out in 2011 (Fast 6 came out in 2013)
First thing i could think about after i see the Tesla.
First thing i could think of after seeing Tesla.
I once saw a random TV programme in my local take away where they gave a Prius the sound of a V8. Not sure what the programme was as it was in Arabic.
I heard somewhere that a few stunt-BMWs in Mission Impossible ran LS V8s, for simplicity and part-interchangeability.
So maybe they just forgot to dub it right.
Another Furious 7 mistake: the Audi R8 at the beginning is a V8, but sounds like a V10. OH COME ON GUYS
NCIS: LA
Audi Q7 TDI with V8 sound
Some you can forgive, but the Tesla! LOL. That’s an epic fail.
And the SE was RWD… 😤