(Insert stupid Blog name here) - Go Speed, Go!

RSS Bot · July 2, 2007

In case you didn't know, the Wachowski brothers (of the Matrix films) are making a live-action version of Speed Racer.

So... okay then.

This project has kicked around Hollywood for years (once rumored to have Tom Cruise attached to it as Speed, to give you an idea of how long ago this was), and although I've been a Speed Racer fan since I was a little kid, neither of the two series' revivals were any good (although the Japanese one wasn't nearly as bad as the American one), so I've always thought that, as with most animation to live-action adaptations, they just shouldn't bother with it.

And really, after the Matrix 2 and 3... well...

Ick.

But, they have done one thing right so far. The Mach 5.

Let's face it - this is the star of the movie. Not Speed. Not Trixie. Not Spritle. Not even Chim-Chim. And they got it right.

They made a few minor design tweaks to it, but it looks awesome. It pays tribute to the cartoon version, and yet still looks believable as a real car. Nice.

I want to drive it.

Now, whether the rest of the movie works or not... that's the big question. The cast is mostly people I don't know, except for John Goodman as Pops (hey... it can't be any worse than what he did in The Flintstones... can it?) and Susan Sarandon as Mom (who doesn't look half-bad for a woman of 87). Mercifully, Chim-Chim will be played by actual chimpanzees - not CG ones.

The car stunts, on the other hand, will be mostly CG. Given the original cartoon show, really, this is the only way they could be done. I just hope they get it right. They don't have to be necessarily realistic, but they have to establish believable physics for the world the story takes place in, and then stick with it. The most important thing will be in making the cars feel heavy. That's one thing that is very difficult to do in CG.

I've been watching the original series on DVD this past week. I haven't seen most of the episodes in about 20 years (when Now Comics released a bunch of them on VHS), and some since I was a kid. Surprisingly, the series holds up very well. Of course, most of the animation is terrible, the dialog corny, and some of the plots are marginal. But there's a surprising maturity in some of the subjects (no doubt stemming from its manga origins), including people getting killed during races, plots to overthrow governments, criminals carrying out murderous revenge, and so on. Pretty heavy stuff for cartoons, that would have been banned from Saturday morning TV a few years ago.

The DVDs production values are - at best - adequate. The prints are about as good as you could expect a cheaply-produced series from 40 years ago to look. The packages (which range from a tin "steering wheel" box to one where the Mach 5's headlights light up and play the theme song) are clever, but more effort should have been put into the DVDs. There are practically no bonus features. They reference the original Japanese series, but don't include the original language audio track. They mention the original Japanese theme song, and print the english translation, but you don't get to hear it. They mention the VW commercial from a few years ago, but it's not included. There are no commentaries, either. They altered the opening and end titles, for no apparent reason. It just doesn't get the same treatment that the vast majority of other anime releases get, and this is one of the best-remembered, ground-breaking series of its time.

What really is surprising me though, is how cool the cars still are. The designs stem from race cars, concept cars and custom cars of the 60's. There are some generic designs in there, but this show was obviously created by people with a real love for cool cars, and they took some great pains to make memorable designs. And the sound effects are still awesome, too. Some engine sounds, like the Mach 5's "neeeyyooooowwwrrr" as it races by, or the Mammoth Car, the X3 ("Melange still races!"), Racer X's car and the Car Acrobatic team, I can still vividly recall from being a kid.

So the movie has a lot to live up to. Therefore, here are the top ten things (in no particular order) the Speed Racer movie must have in it, to be a success:

Drum solo fight scenes. Almost every episode had a fight scene between Speed and the bad guys, while a drum solo was playing.
Dramatic music freeze-frame. Near the beginning of most episodes (usually during the flashback portion of a two-parter) they'd freeze frame on a piece of action, while dramatic music played. This is a must!
"Oooooohhh!" Speed has to yell this at least once in the movie, while the Mach 5 is spinning out. Or falling into a chasm.
Sound effects from the series. How can you have Speed Racer without those engine sounds, or the "chyukchyukchyukchyuk" of the jacks as the Mach 5 jumps over something?
Cool cars. They got the Mach 5 right, but the other cars in the race(s) can't just be generic cars. They have to be designed. Speed can't be racing against Corvettes or something recognizable. They must be custom.
A villain car. There has to be a main car for Speed to beat in the "big race". Nothing, I repeat nothing would be cooler than to have the Car Acrobatic team in the film.
The saws. Yes - somewhere in the film, as ridiculous as they are, the Mach 5 must sprout its giant rotary saw blades, and mow down a forest. Or a wheat field. Or a herd of deer. Or a Cub Scout troop. Or just slam into a tree at 180 MPH, and have the things just break off, and Speed say, "What was Pops thinking?!"
Stilted dialog - like the cheesy overdubbing in the original series. At least for one of the characters. Like Inspector Detector (who is, thankfully, in the film). It's a tradition.
Spritle and Chim-Chim must get into the trunk of the Mach 5. And get a concussion from being bounced around. Seriously. We've been waiting for that for almost 40 years.
An awesome video game tie-in. C'mon... this is the chance to finally give us the game we've always wanted. Besides, now they actually make game controllers with enough buttons to drive the Mach 5.