I felt a great disturbance in the force this morning, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Those were the myriad bloggers and Instagrammers ready to write their “I’m over Gymkhana” takes. And I get it. The temptation is strong. Maybe one day I will write that post. But that day isn’t today.
Friends, I am old enough to remember when Gymkhana was a weird project that Ken Block and Brian Scotto were working on, with Mike Spinelli somehow tangentially involved. We had these things called magazines and, for whatever reason, this magazine took Block and his Crawford Performance-prepared WRX out for some ridiculous stunt driving.
They didn’t even call it Gymkhana. They called it “Gymkhana Practice” and it ruled. It was just a car on some tarmac dashing around like a very expensive horse. Or, well, like 530 horses. It was pure, and it was excellent.
Like all things pure and excellent, it felt more commercialized as it got bigger. That’s a silly thing to feel since the original was simultaneously an ad for DC Shoes and Monster Energy, but the lack of polish was kind of the point. If someone gives you millions of dollars to make one of these things, it’ll get polished. That’s what the money is for. They even called the second one an “Infomercial” in a nod to what had changed.
You could argue that each one got better, as the filmmakers involved improved, the technology evolved, and the cars got wilder. There was the switch to Ford, and then the final one with Ken, his Electrikhana, shot before he tragically died.
Travis Pastrana had already taken over by then, back in a Subaru, and it was a little more goofy and fun like the originals. It was content to enjoy and not think too much about, frankly. So when it was announced that Pastrana would be driving a 9,500 RPM Subaru “Brataroo” and going to Australia–home of the hoon–I didn’t give it much neural energy.
The 2025 Gymkhana is “Aussie Shred” and, yeah, it shreds. From start to finish, it’s both as beautiful as the later films (great work to Will Roegge, the cinematographer) and as buoyant and pleasingly self-referential as the older ones (props to Scotto and the creative team).
We’ve got a guy in a kangaroo suit on a Segway for the old heads, Pastrana in flannel driving across water for the new kids, and mayhem for all sickos in between.
Do I have a favorite moment? Yeah. Perhaps this is because Mount Panorama is on my list of tracks I have to visit before I kick it, or my love of Aussie Supercars, but Pastrana driving onto Bathurst is a cinematic adrenaline rush as good as anything you’ll see in modern cinema. It felt real and hyperreal at the same time.
Did you catch all the cameos? There are a lot of them. It’s also significant that they filmed it in Australia at all.
“Australia had long been at the top of the list of potential Gymkhana Film locations.” said Scotto. “Ken Block and I attempted to shoot Gymkhana Nine there, but were met with a resounding no, because of the climate of anti-hoon laws at the time. A decade later, when we reapproached the Australian government, we were met with open arms. This combination of the unfinished business we had down under and this being Pastrana’s last film in the series, not only makes it very special to me, but also put the pressure on to push the limit of what we could do both in the car and behind the camera.”
Sometimes pressure creates diamonds.
Top photo: Hoonigan
The post I Think This Is The Best Gymkhana Since The Original, But Watch It And Tell Me What You Think appeared first on The Autopian.
