Speed Racer (2008)

I'll probably see it with my mom sometime. It was odd to find she had watched lots of Speed Racer and Kimba as a kid, and I grew up with Pokemon; hence a strange realization of "my mom watched anime before me??"

I'm so glad, I found this on Blu-ray for $6. One of my all time favorite movies for sure. No movie will ever look quite as insanely colorful as this one.

@LD

Tried? We had a debate. Oh wait, no, you're right. You can't call it a debate if it consists of someone laying out argument and the other side is just closing the ears while going "Lalalala, I can't hear you." I'm not even going to bother, because I don't see any reason why this time it should be different.

Also, wrong question. You should ask: "Why is Speed Racer a bad movie?"

Speed Racer is a movie that is both visually and narratively incoherent, wrapped in disproportionately low production value resulted from severe mis-prioritization. Nothing is done right; writing, acting, editing, even the CGI which the movie marketed itself heavily with. The most common apology employed in favor of the movie is that it was a faithful adaptation to the anime.

And?

Why not call Speed Racer Go Mifune (which, unlike Speed Racer, is actually a plausible name in the culture)? Why not have the characters speak Japanese? Why not have this 1000 minutes + long? Why not? Because it's an adaptation of one media to other, different format, different strengths, and most importantly, different audiences and standards. You don't sacrifice the quality of a film adaptation in order to recreate the feeling of the original material: that's kind of Film 101.Also, yes, it was (questionably) faithful to the anime. So what? What is that worth? Is the anime some kind of perfect masterpiece that being faithful to it itself is making a movie good? Then why not just remake the anime, or make an animated movie?

Standard budget for anime is $100,000 per episode, so the entire anime would be somewhere aroudn $5 million. This movie had a budget of $120 million, which is twice the budget of The Matrix and more than Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Despite that it had a slightly better production value than ''The Adventure of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, made with a budget of $50 million. In the history of filmmaking, the Wachowskis must be the first (and hopefully the last) directors who actually spent money to make things look cheap and fake. And the movie made...$93 million. Considering that with movies of that much production value typically has a break-even-point of twice the budget, which is $240 million. So that's a massive bomb.

If you want live-action cartoon/anime, even by 2008 we had Spiderman movies, Transformers, Iron Man, and Kill Bill. Hell, vehicle chases in The Bourne Ultimatum (also came out in 2008) were better than the races in Speed Racer, and that's not even a race movie.

Yes, it was unique. Except, that means nothing. Just because it's unique, it means that it's good. If I make a movie about drinking a whole bunch of paint cans and coloring a highway road with vibrant diarrhea while spouting cliched and one-dimensional dialogues from 50s, it would definitely be unique. It would still be a visually unpleasant mess.

Lastly, it was 2008. Anime and cartoons already had much better production value and general quality, with good writing and subtlety. Yet in the Wachowskis' mind, the quality of anime apparently never improved since 60s, and what they picked out and recreated into film adaptation resulted in a horrible and cheap movie. That's why the movie was a massive failure both critically and commercially, damaged or outright killed the film careers of those involved (except with the Wachowskis, which they did later with Jupiter Ascending).

The Shawshank Redemption was Vindicated by History in the form of it being the highest rated film of all time in IMDB and Groundhog Day was added to National Film Registry. Well, where's the evidence for this "vindication" for Speed Racer? Who're these "many critics"?

The only critic I can think of off the top of my head who champions Speed Racer as underrated is Film Crit Hulk.

Actually, comparing Hulk's assessment of the Wachowskis to Nathan Rabin's reveals a lot about why they as filmmakers are so polarizing.

Rabin: (From his Jupiter Ascending review.)

edited 12th Nov '16 11:25:22 AM by Tuckerscreator

Okay, Jesus, I'm trying to read his comments, but why is he writing in all CAP?

His shtick is that he's film critic HULK. You know, supposed to be angry and inarticulate, but not really.

It's his gimmick. It boils down to "if you're committed to reading this, then actually read it so the comments aren't full of folks who skimmed the first paragraph and that's it." Kinda annoying but I'm used to it and his articles are otherwise worth the read.

edited 7th May '16 7:52:27 PM by Tuckerscreator

Oh. That's an interesting shtick. It's...a bit hard for me to read, though. It's gonna take some getting used to. XP

I don't follow him very closely, but I haven't regretted reading any of the articles I DID read by him, even if I disagreed with what he was saying.

I think he articulated my problems with the first Amazing Spider Man film much better than I could.

The All Caps would be a lot more bearable if he spent most of the reviews in Banner Mode,calmly reviewing the movie like this AND THEN WHEN HE GETS ANGRY ABOUT A FLAW OR THE CRITICS OR ABOUT AUDIENCES NOT UNDERSTANDING THE MOVIE'S POINT HE HULKS OUT AND HULK SMASH.

I think he's mentioned a few times on his Twitter that his policy is to "never hate a movie", though a few of them have tested his patience. So it's rare he actually blows up about something.

Ironically, he was actually part of The LEGO Movie DVD commentary with the directors and he doesn't shout the entire time; he speaks normally.

edited 7th May '16 8:12:25 PM by Tuckerscreator

That's actually really admirable. It's something that I can never strive for. XP

Finally, something everyone can agree on.

the "never hate a movie" thing is apparently something he got out of a conversation with Quentin Tarantino, who lives by that same creed.

Makes sense; Tarantino seems to have watched thousands of movies to figure out what pieces work.

Speaking of which, according to a 2015 interview with Nerdist, Quention Tarantino said that he disliked Speed Racer.

In fact, although he doesn't outright hate movies, he does make Worst Movies list every year.

edited 7th May '16 8:24:09 PM by dRoy

And he says Richard Donner wanted to adapt it too.

Speed Racer written by J.J. Abrams...that would have been quite a product.

Lens flare would have sucked, though.

TFA doesn't have lens flare.

... it's a bit weird to choose Hulk as a reviewing avatar then. Even the Hulk incarnations who aren't savage and angry, like the Professor or Mr. Fixit, are still bitterly cynical or bastard smartasses.

I'm not saying I dislike his reviews, because the few I've read were smart and well argumented, but it's weird to see an ALL CAPS TONE we're supposed to hear in Hulk's voice if we aren't intended to feel anger or frustration behind those words.

Hence, the Joking Mode bluelinking.

Also, it techinically DID have lens flare.◊ It's just that it was far more sensible and less distracting.

edited 7th May '16 8:32:17 PM by dRoy

Fine, do you want me to dislike the film then?

Nope. I couldn't give two bits about what you like or not, because it's totally worthless. The same applies to what I like or not.

The point of my posts here isn't to change anyone's opinion. The only aim was to refute the status of this film's (non-existent) vindication.

Do whatever you want with your life, but it's in bad form to only expect praising feedback on something when starting a thread on it, even if one opens it by stating the work is supposed to be underrated.

I want to clarify something.

I have nothing against PEOPLE who like the movie. This is not the first time I've went on a tangent on criticizing the movie. While I have criticized the movie and the points that were brought up in defense of the movie, never have I ever insulted the fans of the movie, even though I myself have been personally insulted by the fans of this movie three times, subtly or unsubtly.