Speed Racer

          Disclaimer: I did not enjoy watching Speed Racer. This is the only film that we’ve watched in this class that I did not enjoy in some way.  I found it to be overly long with poor editing, acting, and production design.  Also, I’ve never wanted to hurt a child character more than Spritle Racer and that stupid monkey.

Don't look so surprised, you knew it was coming.

          Every single joke they made (and it was clear that the filmmakers found these characters to be the hilarious comedy relief of the film) fell flat on its face.  True, these jokes weren’t aimed at a 24 year old man who is probably dead inside, but I had a hard time believing that even a kid would find the humor funny.  Another disclaimer: I never watched the show as a kid.  I have no idea if the characterization, production design, plot, and even editing are all a reference to the original show’s animation style and design.  So there are my biases and flaws, completely exposed, as I feel like I can’t analyze the film honestly without those being on the table.

          That being said, there were some interesting attempts in the film to criticize not only our current society, but film making as well.  The film’s plot revolves around Speed Racer discovering the truth about the Grand Prix race: it’s been fixed for the last 50 years.  At this point, the film becomes overtly anti-capitalist, or at the very least, semi-Marxist, in that it promoted the importance of equal opportunity and the corrupting evil of capitalism and industry.  It is not truly Marxist, however, in that the film still promotes the value and importance of self-interest, self-promotion, and individual accomplishments and talents, things that Marxism does not value quite as highly.  Indeed, the film rejects capitalist and Marxist principals and aligns itself more with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and some of the principals of Objectivism, which seek to raise up and reward those who are truly exceptional, such as Speed Racer.  Howard Roarke (protagonist of The Fountainhead), just like Speed Racer, is exceptional in his field of Architecture, and his refusal to conform to the majority eventually puts him ahead of the competition, just like Speed Racer’s refusal to accept bribes from Mr. Royalton and his insistence on racing honestly.

So basically this, but with cars and rainbow-colored racetracks.

          In another way, the poor CGI backgrounds and settings are a way of telegraphing to its audience that the film is not realistic in any way.  The world presented on the screen is not meant to be a realistic depiction of the real world, but an obviously artificial one.  Based on their previous films, the Wachowski siblings have shown that they can make realistic looking worlds using computer imagery, so the choice to make the world of Speed Racer look plastic, inauthentic, and cartoony was probably an intentional one.  This may have simply been an homage to the original Japanese anime, or a commentary on the artificiality of cinema. By intentionally creating a cinematic world that is fake looking and unrealistic, the audience is not sucked into the world that is on the screen, and by being removed from the story, the audience can better focus on the parable and messages being displayed without getting too immersed in the fiction. 

          Even though I hated the film, it was still an interesting exercise to analyze a film I despise for deeper meaning and thought.  Even bad movies have something of value that can be gleamed from it.  At the very least, the film remains committed and consistent to some of its more off-putting choices, such as the weird editing and cartoony, fake CGI backgrounds, and these weird choices do give the film a unique look and feel. So hats off to the Wachowskis for making an Objectivist fable that criticizes our current society as well as the artificiality of Hollywood filmmaking, even if their final effort made me want to vomit all the colors of the rainbow.

You know, to match the color palate of the film