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Speed Racer

Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox

Speed Racer has certainly taken his own sweet time making his way to the big screen. It has taken a decade-and-a-half to make it to the local multiplex. Way back in 1992, Warner Brothers decided to make a live action movie based on the animated cartoon, Speed Racer. To put this in perspective, the first George Bush was leaving the Oval Office a failure, crazy little Ross Perot seemed like a rational choice for President to many citizens, and William Jefferson Clinton had yet to harass a chubby intern. Johnny Carson said good-night to America for the last time. Mike Tyson and Amy Fisher were our most famous criminals. O.J. was still a good guy pitchman. The Toronto Blue Jays, Washington Redskins, and Pittsburgh Penguins were world champions. America was introduced to reality television with the Real World. Los Angeles was on fire because we all could not get along over the Rodney King case. Two years later, a young rock-n-roller named Henry Rollins, who had almost no acting experience, was offered the role of Racer X and a quirky, young actor with almost no box office muscle named Johnny Depp was picked to occupy the driver’s seat in the title role. A year later, with filming set to begin shortly, everything fell apart when Depp and director Julien Temple (Earth Girls Are Easy) left the project. The studio then turned to an up and coming director named Gus Van Sant (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, My Own Private Idaho), but Van Sant and later director Alfonso Cuarón did not like the script. So, some of the most talented scriptwriters in Hollywood took turns on it, including J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Patrick Read Johnson (Dragonheart), Marc Levin (Whiteboyz), and Jennifer Flackett (“L A Law,” “Beverly Hills, 90201”) took a crack at it. By 2000, director Hype Williams (Belly and numerous music videos) was in catbird seat. Another $1.2 million was spent on rewriting the script and a hot Vince Vaughn was signed up to star 4 years later. Vaughn loved the cartoon series as a kid so much that he became an executive producer to ensure that it would actually make it to the big screen. A couple of years later, everything looked dead. Enter the Wachowski brothers, as the new writers and directors, excuse me, the Wachowski siblings, err, or is it still brothers, major league freaks, first class geeks, and extremely talented filmmakers (The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Bound). When the Wachowskis want to make a film, you give them a blank check and just hope not too much of that money is going to a professional dominatrix. They quickly signed up Matthew Fox (“Lost”) as Racer X, Christina Ricci (Prozac Nation) as Trixie, Speed’s girlfriend, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon as the hero’s parents, and Emile Hirsch (Lords of Dogtown, Alpha Dog) as the title character. Throw in Mr. blaxploitation, Richard Roundtree, and the Britney Spears of South Korea, Rain, yes, her name is Rain, and you have a lot of money on the screen.

For those of you who think that Tokyo Pop is probably an orchestra, Nexus is French for exit, and Sailor Moon is something hookers negotiate a price for on Fleet Week in New York City, “Speed Racer” is the English adaptation of a Japanese anime series called ”Mach Go Go Go” from the late 1960s, early 1970s. Animator Tatsuo Yoshida came up with the concept for the cartoon after watching two extremely popular movies in Japan, James Bond’s Goldfinger and Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas. Speed, or Gō Mifune as he is known in Japan, took on Elvis’ look from that movie including the King’s neckerchief and black pompadour. The car Speed drove, the Mach Five, was modeled after Elvis’s, but also had many of the gadgets, contained in 007’s Aston Martin. While American audiences lost many of the creative nuances and homage to several aspects of Japanese culture, the show became a huge hit when it was re-edited for American Saturday morning audiences by syndicator Trans-Lux. Part of the show’s success was its frenetic pace and the hazard of adopting a Japanese language show for American audiences which meant they had to speed up Speed’s dialogue for our English words to match the Japanese animation. In the intellectual wasteland of early 1970s Saturday morning cartoons, “Speed Racer” stood out, because in Japan, anime was produced for adults and was massively consumed by the population. While state-side animators were dumbing down their stories for kids, Speed was bright and snappy, filled with violent action and cool racing scenes, and offered complex, sophisticated plots. Joining Speed in his adventures were his mother and father, his brother Spritle and his pet monkey Chim-Chim who were constantly getting in trouble, his girlfriend Trixie, and his mechanic, Sparky. Speed’s nemesis was a mysterious driver in the number nine car, the Shooting Star, simply known as Racer X who kept his face covered. In time, audiences found out that X was really Rex Racer, Speed’s older brother who had been estranged from the family for years. Speeds adventures would have ended there but two things happened that gave him new life. In the early 1990s, M-TV and the newly formed Cartoon Network began showing the old episodes in the late afternoon when kids were just getting home from school. Also, at that time, auto racing became huge and ESPN dusted off the character for a series of ads to promote races on the network and then Speed did a series of commercials for the Volkswagen GTI. The series was back in popular culture.

Shot entirely against green screen, with the Mach 5 often lifted off the ground with wires, the Wachowski brothers have tried to capture the frantic pace and motion of the cartoon in live action. Emile Hirsch is Speed Racer, a natural born driver who is in the family business of auto racing. Pops (John Goodman) has designed his car and Mom (Susan Sarandon) runs the business of things. Speed’s goal is to win The Crucible, a cross-country road race that claimed his big brother Rex Racer’s life. The CEO of Royalton Industries (Roger Allam) wants Speed to drive for his team. When Speed rejects the offer out of family loyalty, Royalton wants to make sure that Speed does not win another race. Our hero soon discovers that there is conspiracy among the corporate interests to fix races in order to ensure profits. Will Speed win The Crucible? What role will Racer X (Matthew Fox) play in the big race? Will these brothers reunite? Will his brother Spritle and his pet monkey Chim-Chim get locked in someone’s trunk? More importantly, can you figure out what real-life actor the monkey bit? With the family business on the line, does the plot matter? It is Speed Racer after all. Plot is always secondary to pacing and action.

If the Wachowskis want to make The Telephone Book: The Movie, studio executives should just pass a blank check across the desk and tell the brothers to fill in whatever amount they see fit. They have captured the cartoon in live action. Movies like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sin City, and 300 have shown what amazing world that green screen can create. The Wachowskis have taken it one step further. It makes you wonder what kind of world they will create if they finally get around to making their dream project of Plastic Man, the old Jack Cole, Quality Comics’ superhero. I did not think I would like this film because I never got into the cartoon as a kid, but I really liked it. Speed Racer is a visual feast. I’m concerned that it is entering the field in a jam-packed May. With Indiana Jones, Iron Man, and Prince Caspian, all wanting big opening weekends, this film could get lost. Still, I would never bet against Speed when it comes to winning the race.

Verdict: The Wachowskis Have Done It Again