Mumbling Kitsune: Go Speed Racer

Hi Nadia, I'm glad you are back!!!

I love Speed Racer...it breaks my heart however, that the Wachowski Brother's raped it for a check. They are clearly not fans of the original series despite being anime fans. Astro Boy should have been the film that they made...it would have fit the Spy Kids atmosphere that they were looking to create.

The greatest anime ever was the one which inspired Star Wars, that would be Space Cruiser Yamato aka Star Blazers. The original movie was a hit in Japan 3 years before Star Wars was released in America, and even before the movie itself was even shot. George Lucas was seen in Japan at that time viewing various anime and it is assumed that much of the look of Star Wars as well as some story elements came from Yamato...a contention forwarded by Glen Larson, creator of Battlestar Galactica amid a lawsuit Lucas filed against him for trademark infringement.

Larson enlisted the aid of Yamato's creator to prove that both he and Lucas stole ideas from Yamato which pre-dated both Star Wars and Battlestar. Lucas later lost his lawsuit!!!

Like Yamato, Gundam is also a great work, featuring a Roman-esque space empire where a Prince worships the ancient German ruler Hitler, and where his family ascend in the rankings of Royal leadership via assassination within the family itself.

it was ok. Kind of like a psychedelic nightmare.

This was a movie perfect for a person with ADHD. I saw it in Imax movie theater and I thought my head was going to explode! At the end of the movie, was I the only one thought that they were watching the end of 2001: Space Odyssey? When the man Character enters the back hole or the obliesk?

I lost a great deal of respect for Anime via association with its fans, having worked in a book/dvd store. I'm not sure if the parents of Animaniacs never got around to teaching them how to clean up after themselves, use indoor voices, or respect people's personal space or what have you, but as such I can only see this fascination with Anime as partly responsible for our children growing up slovenly, lazy and stupid.

Please don't feel the need to make more into live action films that will draw respectable kids into this fad. Please... Oh, and I'm sure the movie did what it needed to do: get kids' asses into the seats.

The big problem with Speed Racer is that its alienating the fans of the 60s series, such as myself, and making the film too long for kids to sit through. I was planning to take my son, who is 5 and loves cars, to see it, but for almost 3 hours, including commercials and trailers, I'll pass and wait for it on DVD so he can just fast foward to the racing stuff. Someone also mentioned Astro Boy, which will be a film BUT be a CGI movie similar to Pixar. But really, with Speed Racer and Dragonball in the works, do we really need to see Hollywood basterize classic Anime and Manga material? If they want to produce CGI film fine, as long as they work closely with the original Japanese creators. As for trying to make live action Anime, give up. You simply can't capture the spirit of an Anime or Manga unless the Japanese do it.

Metalwater: Thanks! Always happy to be writing!

Rudewordsmith: When you say "Animaniacs,"I think of the Warner Bros cartoon. Every generation has that percentage of kids who don't understand the concept of an indoor voice, personal space, etc. To be honest, I grew up in the '80s and some of my friends were insufferable brats.

I had an Irish mother who tolerated very little of those shenanigans, so did I ever learn to behave.

I'm a little scared to see the Speed Racer movie because I'm prone to migraines and the flashing colours look like they could be a potential nightmare.

Speed Racer should have been seated in a world similar to that of what the 1938 World's Fair predicted that our near future society would resemble, sort of the 1950s meets modern Tokyo. In fact, the movie would have felt better, production design wise, if they had filmed it entirely on location in Tokyo, Japan.

Regarding the film's color scheme, the colors in the original anime were muted, not day-glow bright, and that is the way the film should have looked...with colors somewhat washed-out, ala Sky Captain...but not to that extreme.

Finally, I noticed that the Wachowskis were using a fast film setting in their final film rendering. The problem with such a look is that it creates a strobe effect which delivers a herky jerky feel to the proceedings, like crude stop motion animation. The over all effect...appears cheap and amateurish. When a race car should have a flowing movement, it instead has a stop-start motion which the eye can detect--this is especially clear when the Mach 5 and other cars leap, twist, and flip in the air. It just appears clumsy and awkward.

The vehicles have no weight to them when they hit the ground or impact each other in wrecks--the brain senses this lack of realism...when that occurs, instantly robbing the viewer of any tangible sense of danger: And if there is no danger, you can't feel fear for the characters...thus any chance for drama is lost in all realms of storytelling. That is the failure of the movie. The Wachowskis should have seen these flaws in their initial SFX R&D tests and corrected them. Instead, they plunged right into the look, destroying any possibilities of connecting with the audience from a dramatic standpoint. They lost their audience with the sheer look of the film, which should have been the primary selling point to lure audiences: something that the reaction to the first trailer should have informed them of, and hence, it is something they should have adjusted the film's CGI to address when they still had time.

As you know, when one is working in the digital realm, you can change FX renderings like colors, camera frame rates, lighting, shading, etc., at will. The whole visual design of a film can be changed with the push of a button. The Wachowskis could have made those changes without issue, but they failed to back-off their vision of Speed Racer meets Jason Pollack, meets The Wizard of Oz...and now they are paying for it.

Haven’t seen this yet, but I go to a great blog every week, it’s Chris’s Invinsible Super Blog @ http://www.the-isb.com/ . His is the only blog I have ever read. And the only one I read consitenly. Ifyou love comics check out his blog. (He’s even been in an Avengers comic) Anyway he gave a great review of Speed race and if you’re too lazy to go there I’ll copy and paste it here.
“Normally, I try to stay away from reviewing movies that don’t feature awesome subtitles or Rock ‘n’ Roll Blood Brothers, but I saw Speed Racer last night, and seriously, you guys? If you like the ISB, you need to see this movie.

[Not exactly the dynamic image the movie warrants.] I’ve been excited about it since the first trailer hit with its promise of what my pal Chad referred to as life-size Hot Wheels tracks and mid-air car battles, but when you get right down to it, there is absolutely no reason for it to be good. I mean, it’s Speed Racer: The Movie for cryin’ out loud, and despite the fact that we’ve all got a lot of fond childhood memories–and the occasional six-issue Tommy Yune mini-series–the source material works a lot better as a source for parody than as actual entertainment.

And yet, it’s great.

Apparently, it hasn’t been getting very good reviews, which I guess can only be chalked up to one of three possibilities: Either the reviewers were turned off by the visual style (which is as close as I’ve seen to being a live-action cartoon, and admittedly that’s not for everyone), they didn’t realize it was going to be so much of a kid’s movie, or they actively hate joy.

Trust me: It is awesome. And how awesome? Well, I don’t want to spoil anything, because I get the feeling that half of the fun is coming to everything fresh, but for those of you who need additional convincing, I’m going to steal a gimmick from Mike Sterling and create an area to do just that. Spoilers start beneath Speed at the starting line, and those of you who want to keep a clean slate can join us after Racer X hits the Roaring Elbow.”

Basically it is what it is, a live action cartoon based on a sub par old school anime . No offense but Speed Racer was never that compelling of storyteling to me.