Speed Racer (2008) and why it matters.

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Speed Racer 2008 was a movie I went into high as fuck after moving to a new state. Nothing was normal at the time, and in a way it still isnt. I still haven't started a job and my partner is supporting us while I find one. But my point is this, this movie game to me at the exact right time. I expected a fast paced action packed oddity that was "just okay."

Boy was I wrong.



Speed Racer takes the normal status quo for film (especially for '08), cranks it up to one billion, then starts from scratch. When I tell you that The Wachowskis literally invented a new style of editing for this movie I say with absolutely zero exaggeration. While traditional editing is still in the film of course, Speed Racer likes to use these chroma keyed pans of different characters to maintain a shot without cutting while still providing new, useful, and most importantly interesting visuals that keep the plot moving at a steady pace. Its extremely difficult to gather my technical thoughts on this movie as in all honesty I just have so many of them XD 

After my first watch of the movie at a friends place I just could not stop thinking about it. The characters, the incredible music Michael Giacchino made that I would later learn frequently referenced the original anime, and just that extremely oversaturated color palette, I loved it! So I watched it again, and again, and again and again and again until I hit TWELVE watches!!

The more I watched the more It absolutely broke my heart that this film failed. And for what? CGI and comedic relief, allow me to explain;
Two all too common points of criticism the film gets is excessive use of CGI/Greenscreen and the mere existence of Spritle and Chim Chim, who serve the movie as comedic relief and so they can pog at things the audience needs to pay attention too. Lets tackle the ladder first, as I think their inclusion (or rather the audiences criticism of it) is extremely hypocritical.

Spritle and Chim Chim are deadass essential to the plot of both the original anime and the film! They are also genuinely funny with the exception of the shit joke jumpscare and their last joke of the movie which is very awkward and breaks the pace. Other then that, Spritle and Chim Chim are the "little brother" character, sure, but its deeper then that. Something this movie is great at is parallels, and the intrinsic interesting that comes with the ones that involve Rex, Speed, and Spritle are essential to showing Speed as a character. Hell, essential for theming the entire fucking movie!! I say this with my whole chest (which is small cause I only started HRT a year and a half ago but still!!!), if you think these two can be removed from the movie with zero consequence to the integrity of the movie overall,  you dont understand the movie.

Moving on to CGI, its not that bad. No im not kidding. There are a handful of shots that look like hot ass, but for 2008 the CGI artists (AND THATS WHAT THEY ARE, ARTISTS!!) made ample use of reflections to mask the lower quality textures and modeling that they used to be restricted to at the time. It was never about realism, and never will be. In Speed Racer, everything is usually in focus to mimic how animation looks, the cars dont act real because they arent, because Speed Racer sells itself to the audience on being a "live action animation", that was always the goal.

So if you actually think "CGI bad" is an argument against this movie

Art absolutely NEEDS to be weird, exploratory, and unique. I think we often find that with hindsight the most polarizing work becomes some of the most well received.So yeah, if that interests you give it a watch!! The film is moving, an editing masterpiece, and one of the most satisfying and interesting watches you will have. Give it a chance, it fucking rules!! (PS. Im literally Trixie)



Anyways, Im still catching up on the anime, and sometime ill release a much more spoilery review 
sorta thing maybe. Until next time, Go Speed Racer Go!

Thanks for reading my first blog <3