08-24-2018, 04:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-16-2018, 04:10 PM by TM2YC. Edited 7 times in total.)
Speed Racer (2008)
Just over 10-years after this Wachowski mega-bomb was released (the first of a decade long run of commercial and critical failures) and I'm watching it for the first time, thanks to picking up the 3-disc US blu-ray for nowt on ebay. Visually it looks like no other movie before or since but a mixture of 'Mario Kart 64', 'Days of Thunder, 'Total Wipeout', Pixar's 'Cars' and 'The Hunger Games' is the only way I could describe it. I notice this came out the exact same time as Marvel's 'Iron Man' (which of course started a decade long run of commercial and critical successes). Unlike the visually grounded 'Iron Man', 'Speed Racer' belongs to that dated filmmaking notion that to make a comicbook movie, you have to make it look like a comic book (e.g. Ang Lee's 'Hulk'). I was unsure how much was supposed to look artificial and fake and how much was just poor handling of early greenscreen CGI.
Luckily, even if the hyper-saturated, frenetic, kaleidoscope visuals are a turn off, the characters are likeable and relatable, the plot is straight forward (maybe too many race-movie cliches) and it has real heart. Who doesn't love a David vs Goliath story. Some of those VisFX didn't work for me but some looked spectacular and you have to at least admire the Wachowski's commitment to creating something unique.
Some odd editing drags the movie down: Inter-cutting a scene of Roger Allman delivering a venomous spittle-spraying badguy rant, with a scene of a kid and chimpanzee stealing sweets?!? Again in the finale with the crowd-pleasing score in full-flow and the post-victory euphoria actually working 100% on the viewer, the goodbuy leans in to kiss the girl... and they freeze frame so the same kid and chimp can walk on screen and interrupt?!? Such bizarre editing choices, I could barely believe my eyes. Why are you sabotaging your own movie?
This could so easily be fanedited into a better movie just by taking away the ill-advised focus on the kid and the chimp, to the expense of everything else in the film. I notice wayne.workman2012 did once attempt it (https://forums.fanedit.org/showthread.php?tid=10325) but he's gone AWOL. The brother could be minimised because the actor is bland as f**k. The weirdly violent gangster subplot was a miss-step and doesn't go anywhere (tweaks to violence and swearing generally would be a good move for a kids movie). Somebody should give this a go, if nobody does, maybe I will one day.
I'm sure me developing a headache while watching was purely coincidental
.
Just over 10-years after this Wachowski mega-bomb was released (the first of a decade long run of commercial and critical failures) and I'm watching it for the first time, thanks to picking up the 3-disc US blu-ray for nowt on ebay. Visually it looks like no other movie before or since but a mixture of 'Mario Kart 64', 'Days of Thunder, 'Total Wipeout', Pixar's 'Cars' and 'The Hunger Games' is the only way I could describe it. I notice this came out the exact same time as Marvel's 'Iron Man' (which of course started a decade long run of commercial and critical successes). Unlike the visually grounded 'Iron Man', 'Speed Racer' belongs to that dated filmmaking notion that to make a comicbook movie, you have to make it look like a comic book (e.g. Ang Lee's 'Hulk'). I was unsure how much was supposed to look artificial and fake and how much was just poor handling of early greenscreen CGI.
Luckily, even if the hyper-saturated, frenetic, kaleidoscope visuals are a turn off, the characters are likeable and relatable, the plot is straight forward (maybe too many race-movie cliches) and it has real heart. Who doesn't love a David vs Goliath story. Some of those VisFX didn't work for me but some looked spectacular and you have to at least admire the Wachowski's commitment to creating something unique.
Some odd editing drags the movie down: Inter-cutting a scene of Roger Allman delivering a venomous spittle-spraying badguy rant, with a scene of a kid and chimpanzee stealing sweets?!? Again in the finale with the crowd-pleasing score in full-flow and the post-victory euphoria actually working 100% on the viewer, the goodbuy leans in to kiss the girl... and they freeze frame so the same kid and chimp can walk on screen and interrupt?!? Such bizarre editing choices, I could barely believe my eyes. Why are you sabotaging your own movie?
This could so easily be fanedited into a better movie just by taking away the ill-advised focus on the kid and the chimp, to the expense of everything else in the film. I notice wayne.workman2012 did once attempt it (https://forums.fanedit.org/showthread.php?tid=10325) but he's gone AWOL. The brother could be minimised because the actor is bland as f**k. The weirdly violent gangster subplot was a miss-step and doesn't go anywhere (tweaks to violence and swearing generally would be a good move for a kids movie). Somebody should give this a go, if nobody does, maybe I will one day.
I'm sure me developing a headache while watching was purely coincidental
.
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