Speed Racer Is One Of The Best Movies EVER Made.

Stone here. Rev your ’you’re crazy’ posting engines all you want, but hear me out. Speed Racer, the live action movie that tanked in the summer of 2008, is quite possibly one of the best movies ever made. It is a crying shame it came up against the unstoppable Iron Man. It also didn’t help that it arrived with virtually no advertising.

But Stone, if a movie bombs than it must be bad!

No it does not. In fact it is usually quite the opposite. Look at Donnie Darko. Look at Austin Powers. Or even one of my favorites The Fountain. And who in here actually saw Memento in the theaters? All of those are just a few examples of movies that go beyond what you expect to deliver a smashing good time.

I do not know what people were expecting with Speed Racer. I LOVE the original cartoon. In fact when I go to Angry Joe meetings I carry my art and ideas in Speed Racer folders. I have Speed Racer cars, lunchboxes, action figures and more. All PRE movie release. I got the awesome Resaurus series of figures. Best stuff they ever made. The point is, do people realize it was based of a bizarre cartoon? The whole point of the series was to stop people from taking over and ruining the family business of building and racing cars while racing in absurd races. It was campy and fun every episode. So how do you translate something that old and odd into a bad ass movie?

You do what those brothers did and release Speed Racer. The movie was perfectly cast. Look at the source material and the movie versions and you see what I am saying. And the actors took these roles and made them their own. Sure, not all the dialogue was motivational, but it was an homage to the campiness of the series.
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The movie had great, great music. I am huge on movie scores. I play them all the time in the house while I am working creatively. I learned a long time ago that the best movie scores are the ones you do not notice during the film but remember afterwards. Music is made to set the mood, not be overpowering. The Speed Racer score accents everything so beautifully and plays with the emotional lows and highs.

It was visually beautiful. I do not care what anyone says, this is the best live action adaption of an anime or cartoon to date. The world of Speed Racer is bright and colorful and full of so much to see that you often catch things you didn’t notice on previous viewings. Especially in the race scenes. It is a very visual movie. They took a lot of risks with this movie and that’s what Hollywood needs. As I am learning about writing scripts and the standards of Hollywood, there was a time when no one would look twice at your script if it went over 90 pages. But then Peter Jackson came along and stuck to his guns and made Lord Of The Rings. This single handedly ushered in the era of longer movies. Speed Racer could have done something like that for ‘experimental’ movies. We could be seeing  lot more visually stunning movies if Speed Racer were a success. Does this mean that visual stunning movies just won’t catch on? I hope not. Hollywood needs more than 3D technology to keep drawing people to the big screen as opposed to the home screen. There is just an unmatched experience about seeing something so visual on such a large screen that you kinda miss out on at home. Unless you are hella rich with the 78 inch hd projector or something.

I am tired of hearing people complain about there being no racing for a movie called Speed Racer. I don’t know what movie they were seeing but there are bad ass racing scenes every other scene in Speed Racer. You can’t make a movie about one single race that lasts 2 hours. And no one complained about The Fast and The Furious’ lack of street racing. There is far less car action in that movie than in Speed Racer. Speed Racer’s car action sets just can’t be touched.

Come on yall. They even recreated this scene from the opening of the cartoon in the movie!! It’s when they win the Casa Cristo race. Now that is fan service at it’s best.

But most importantly, the movie is fun. Isn’t that why we all go to the movies anyways? To have fun and be taken to new worlds and places? Speed Racer delivers big time on this. Not every movie has to be Oscar worthy, or serious, or dramatic. Movies are made to let us be entertained. A lot of people forget this, especially critics. There is no right or wrong way to make a movie. They do not offer movie critic degrees in college. A critic is one mans opinion on art. Everyone has a different look at it. When it came to Speed Racer, ‘official’ movie critics panned it but ‘film lover’ movie critics loved it. The problem with ‘film lover’ critics is that they don’t have national shows or syndicated columns. They have web sites that are not as well known. And it all comes down to who gets heard more. Angry Joe and the rest of us can tell you Barbie Horse Riders is the worst game ever, but if Gamespot tells you it’s the best, who do you think the majority of the people will listen to?

I wish I could be seeing the sequels they had planned for Speed Racer. I was hoping that this movie would find it’s following on DVD the way Austin Powers did. I won’t give up hope that people will one day see the brilliance that went into the making of this film.

And Racer X is the man! True Dat.

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