Speed Racer

I just watched Speed Racer for my third time. I cannot stress how genuinely amazing this movie is. While people laugh at this assessment, I need to stress that this movie is a art-house blockbuster. It is about the sheer love of speed and color. It might be the fastest movie you will ever see, and certainly the most colorful.


The experience of this movie is like having the opportunity to see Star Wars for your first time. Do you remember how fast things felt when Luke flew his X-Wing through the trench of the Death Star? Do you remember how fascinated you were by Luke realizing he had the Force and how it would guide him?

These feelings are now lost on us. What blockbuster movie since Star Wars have had the ability to transform us into the children we were when we first met Luke, to believe in magic, and to so successfully connect us to our hero?


As an arbitrary measure, let's just look at the 20 biggest movies of all time...

1 Titanic
2 The Dark Knight
3 Star Wars
4 Shrek 2
5 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
6 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
7 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
8 Spider-Man
9 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
10 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11 Spider-Man 2
12 The Passion of the Christ
13 Jurassic Park
14 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
15 Finding Nemo
16 Spider-Man 3
17 Forrest Gump
18 The Lion King
19 Shrek the Third
20 Transformers

Let's now eliminate the movies that I think we can fairly call horrible:

1 Titanic
2 The Dark Knight
3 Star Wars
5 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
8 Spider-Man
9 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
10 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11 Spider-Man 2
13 Jurassic Park
14 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
15 Finding Nemo
17 Forrest Gump
18 The Lion King

What movies on this list would you really call exceptional? My list...

2 The Dark Knight (2008)
3 Star Wars (1977)
5 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
10 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
13 Jurassic Park (1993)

To make this a little more challenging, I'd like to add a few more to this list: Die Hard (1988), The Matrix (1999), Blade Runner (1982), 2001: A Space Oddyssey (1968) and Toy Story (1995).


I want to ask the question Which of these movies did you feel like you've NEVER seen a movie like this before? Not which are just great, which of these movies were visually stunning and challenged your ideas of what a movie should look like?

I would argue Star Wars, Return of the King, The Matrix, Blade Runner, and 2001 would fit into this category. Star Wars was a fairy tale set in space, Return of the King a sprawling epic set in Middle Earth, The Matrix revealing life was only 0's and 1s, Blade Runner painting a gritty Orwellian vision of the future and 2001 turning technology into poetry. Am I missing anything here? This is all arbitrary, so please, let me know.

Speed Racer belongs among these giants. The critics most often hit the movie on its anti-corporate plot, revealing the irony of making a movie about an independent motor company racing against the corrupt majors. Being a major studio movie, they claimed, isn't this hypocritical? This type of movie criticism is fair, I suppose, but to me says more about the reviewer than the film. A major studio can't make a movie that is anti-corporate? Who says? This movie could not have been made without major studio financing and technology, so for that reason these artists shouldn't make it? Answer me that. Anthony Lane of the New Yorker called Speed Racer "insidious" - I would argue any movie that is not transgressive is potentially "insidious." A hamburger is potentially "insidious" - does that mean it can't be delicious? My impression of Speed Racer's reviews was that sober older movie critics came to a psychedelic kids movie and were turned off by the effort to believe in a movie like this (also there is a possibility that one must know what "ghosting" is, something that anyone who has ever played Mario Kart or F-Zero knows). But everyone I know who has given that up, that shield we put up, has lost themselves in this world, and isn't that what a movie is supposed to do?


I beg you all to give Speed Racer a chance. If anything, it will not look like anything you've ever seen before.

This review may continue into other posts, as I have a lot to say about this movie. Let me know if your thoughts, on this review, on Speed Racer, on anything!