You all know I love lists, and I realized that I’ve seen about basically half of the 123 (counting the borderline inclusions of Days of Thunder, Stroker Ace and Jurassic Park) movies featured on NASCAR movie paint schemes since 1989.
There are a few more retrospectives and interviews I want to bring your way that are currently irons in the fire: chatting with Tommy Joe Martins about his short film Underfunded, catching up with Frankie Muniz about his careers in Hollywood and NASCAR (has there ever been a more perfect subject for this column?) and looking back at Cars upon its 20th anniversary re-release, which will happen in a few weeks.
But as those fires are stoked, I realized my milestone of 59/120 actual movie sponsors was probably enough to do a little ranking. I’ll hit the worst next week, but for now, I wanted to spotlight some of the best films to ever make it to NASCAR.
One of the big blind spots is Monsters, Inc., which is right up there with Scarface, Casablanca, Schindler’s List and, until recently, Silence of the Lambs as one of those movies that garners a “what?!?!” reaction when I tell people I still haven’t seen it. So I’m sure that might make the list once I watch it.
Obviously, this list is subjective, and it could change based on the day I think about it.
Honorable Mentions
- Toy Story 3
- Spider-Man 3 (yes, it’s a good movie and I will not tolerate slander)
- Goldeneye
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
10. Fast Five
Arguably the best The Fast and the Furious movie in the franchise, though also divisive because it sent the series in a direction less focused on street racing and more focused on heists and stuff, Fast Five was the first of the new decade.
Robby Gordon‘s No. 7 Speed Energy landed the film’s branding at Martinsville in early April of 2011, and that car carried it for a six-race span until mid-May: the car’s traditional block number evolved into a more spiked No. 7 for the other five races, and Scott Wimmer took the wheel at Dover (completing a weird full-circle moment, since he ran the Stacker 2 No. 23 there in 2003 with 2 Fast 2 Furious associate backing).
Fast Five has some of the most memorable stuff in the franchise (see “you better hide that big-ass forehead” followed by Ludacris’ spit-take and the incredible scene where Dom and Brian drag a huge bank vault behind their Dodge Chargers) and is one of the most fun action movies of the 2010s. In the film series, it’s rivaled only by Furious 7.
9. Captain America: Civil War
While Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were the crowning moments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what all the movies had been building to, Captain America: Civil War came out in 2016 and became the first big team-up event.
This was at the end of a spring that also featured Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a decidedly terrible film that did have one thing in common — everyone was taking sides for each movie. Were you team Batman or team Superman? Were you team Cap or team Iron Man?
Kyle Busch, Skittles Marvel Toyota Camry
©2016, Logan Whitton/NKP
While I do think Skittles could’ve done far more for the movie (i.e. two cars, one for Cap and one for Tony Stark in the vein of Batman and Superman), I appreciated that the branding at least made it onto Kyle Busch‘s car for Talladega Superspeedway. Rowdy nearly won in the car, finishing second.
8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Now we get to some real controversy, that the hill I’ll die on is that Crystal Skull is a good movie and that Temple of Doom is the worst Indiana Jones film. For the record, Temple is not bad. It’s just the worst of the five because he does none of the cool archeological-detective stuff that I love about those movies.
While Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade are damn near perfect and two of my favorite adventure films of all time and nothing touches them, Crystal Skull falls in the middle for me. It’s a lot of fun and has a lot of the charm that makes the series great. I always chuckle at the “but aliens are too far-fetched for Indiana Jones” argument because in the first three movies, we deal with the wrath of God melting people’s faces from the Ark of the Covenant, magic stones and a sacrificial cult, and the Holy Grail rapidly aging someone in real time. None of these movies are real! Have fun with them!
What’s important here, too, is that Harrison Ford still clearly cares so much about the character. And that Cate Blanchett is phenomenal as the villain (as she always is).
Oh, and as I’ve said several million times in this column, Kyle Busch’s car for the movie is the best movie scheme that’s ever run. Period.
Kyle Busch car
©2008, autostock, USA
Brian Czobat
7. Cars
Duh. Great movie for everyone who loves racing. Next.
6. Batman Begins
While The Dark Knight is sometimes hailed as Christopher Nolan’s opus (though I think The Odyssey gives that a run for its money now) and definitely the shining example of his Batman trilogy, sometimes I give the edge to Begins. It’s the main movie of the three that, if it’s on TV — anywhere in the movie — and I come across it, I’ll stick with it the rest of the way. It’s that good.
We get a couple really good villains with the excellent Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy as Ra’s al Ghul and Scarecrow, respectively, and we see Bruce Wayne’s backstory as well. It gave us an entire race named after it and a couple paint schemes to boot.
I’ll have to revisit the trilogy at some point soon — perhaps I’ll do a “Nolan November” revisit of all his movies — and see how it ranks in his filmography. But he’s just so good that it might still be mid-pack.
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
This is the movie I’m including on here despite not seeing it in probably 20 years, just because of how much of a staple it is and how truly great it is. It’s one of the most memorable adventure movies ever made, it’s a well-done period piece, it’s got such cool stuff and it’s a ton of fun. Johnny Depp rocks as Jack Sparrow, rounded out by a great supporting cast of Orlando Bloom (then also in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) and Kiera Knightley (who was in Love Actually the same year and, to be even more versatile, starred in the polar-opposite Pride & Prejudice and Domino in 2005).
Stacy Compton ran a pretty under-appreciated car for the movie at Daytona in 2003.
4. The Incredibles
Bobby Hamilton Jr. and Terry Labonte each had schemes for The Incredibles, but Hamilton’s was far better (and took me far longer to discover). But The Incredibles is arguably one of the best animated films ever made and, at that, one of the best superhero flicks of all time.
I first saw it when it came out and some of the stuff in there was so ridiculously funny that it’d also probably rank up there with my favorite action comedies.
3. Straight Outta Compton
Besides The Passion of the Christ, Straight Outta Compton is perhaps one of the unlikeliest schemes to make it onto a NASCAR paint scheme, but one of the best movies to do so.
Tomy Drissi owns an ad company in Hollywood, and that’s why so many movies have been featured on his stock cars, IMSA machines and Trans-Am entries. Straight Outta Compton, of course, documented the rise of rap group N.W.A. with some of the best performances put to screen that year (including Ice Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr., as his dad). Jason Mitchell (Eazy-E), Corey Hawkins (Dr. Dre) and Aldis Hodge (MC Ren) are also fantastic, and it was directed by Friday‘s F. Gary Gray. It’s a crime it wasn’t nominated for more Oscars.
Tomy Drissi
©2015, Brett Moist
NKP
Clean scheme and one I was able to make in NASCAR ’15‘s paint booth. I only wish his 2018 livery for The Predator in full alien-heat-seeking-vision had made it to the stock car side.
2. Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith
Look, man, George Lucas sure can’t write dialogue to save his life, but Revenge of the Sith still rocks.
It had some great schemes, with Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and the Robert Yates Racing duo of Elliott Sadler and Dale Jarrett, along with a sick photo op for Gordon before Talladega that year, but the movie delivered in spades.
Say what you will about the prequels, though that’s undergone some revisionism lately because of how bad parts of the sequel trilogy were, but those movies were our childhood for those of us that watched them growing up. Kit Fisto was one of my favorite characters. I had all the LEGO sets. I had all the action figures. And I held this opinion then and I still do now: Episode III is the best in the franchise (besides Empire) and Anakin’s turn to the dark side is still so well-executed. And the finale on Mustafar absolutely rips. End of story. Great movie.
1. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
It’s kind of a shame the best Spider-Man film had the worst paint scheme of the trilogy. Sam Raimi, the architect of the Evil Dead franchise and the iconic Ash Williams character in the 1980s, was given the reins of the first real superhero film series.
Spider-Man 2 is where Raimi and the cast had already found their footing, and also introduces one of the all-time great superhero villain performances with Alfred Molina as Otto Octavius, who becomes Doctor Octopus thanks to a failed experiment. It also includes dashes of Raimi’s horror background, especially in the — frankly terrifying — scene where surgeons attempt to remove Doc Ock’s arms, only for the sentient tentacles to kill all of them and help him escape.
Terry Labonte had a pretty underwhelming scheme (especially compared to Robby Gordon’s bright, fun, creative car a couple years prior) for the summer Daytona race in 2004.
Bruce Campbell (Ash) even makes an appearance as a doorman at Mary Jane’s play in this one, the second of his three cameos in the trilogy.
I’ll be out covering Richmond this weekend, but tune in next week for the worst of the worst in movies to make it to NASCAR.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.