Speed Racer

  Blender Dumbass
January 16, 2024

👁 24

This had to be done finally! One of the biggest inspirations for Moria's Race, one of my favorite childhood movies, one of the best action films ever and perhaps one of the most colorful films: Speed Racer by the Wachowskis.

A lot of people will not understand this movie. They will turn it off early and not watch it because of how absolutely absurd the movie looks. Imagine making something like Spy Kids but not because you don't have money, but because it is what you want to do. Intentionally making the visual effects kind of crap as a stylistic decision. You should have balls for it. And the Wachowskis had the balls back when they made this movie. Sorry, bad joke.

You know Lana and Lilly. The Matrix films are some of the coolest looking movies ever made. They know exactly what they are doing. And perhaps Speed Racer is the coolest thing they ever did. Imagine making action so stylized and colorful that it becomes an overdose of epilepsy inducing madness, so strong, that you cry! By the way, I'm not joking, this movie has to have a seizure warning. It opens with a kaleidoscope. And it doesn't stop looking absolutely insane till the very end.

Of course this level of insanity feels fake. You can't expect anything this crazy to make any sense in the real world. And that is what most people criticize about this movie. The movie is very unrealistic. Sometimes you would not get a proper depth of field, because they want everything in focus. And it does look fake. But that is kind of the point. Sometimes you will see over the top saturation. And it does look fake. But that is kind of the point. None of the driving the movie makes any sense physics-wise, but that is kind of the point. If you let it play till the end, you will understand what I mean. At some point the stupidity of the movie wares off and you start having a very good time.

The film has a rather large cast of characters, most notably John Goodman as Pops. I paid homage to this character in my film Moria's Race where the father of the racer is referred to as "Paps" ( almost the same as Pops ) and he is kind of fat like John Goodman. But almost every character in Moria's Race is a homage to some real or fake movie person. Can you spot all of them? Pops in Speed Racer is very much like Mario. He is fat, has mustaches and wears a hilarious red top. The original version of this character was in a Japanese TV show from the 60s. So it seems like it could be that Nintendo took the same inspiration as myself for their Mario character.

Speed Racer ( yes it is the name of the main character ) is played by Emile Hirsch who you might have recognized from Tarantino's Once Upon The Time In Hollywood. And his girlfriend is played by Christina Ricci.

But the greatest performance of all in this movie was crafted by Paulie Litt. He and his Chimpanzee friend ( played by various chimps ) is comedy gold! Why am I not seeing more of him out there?

The story of the film, as you could probably already tell, is about racing cars. But it is also about resistance against mega-corporations. It is about monopolies and how they are made and why they are bad. It's about mafia and how it is related to monopolies. It is a very thoroughly political picture that will make you think a lot. Even though at it's core it is a fun movie about cars go vroom, bam, and kaboom!

The music for the movie is done by an absolute legend Michael Giacchino. Just look him up on Wikipedia. This guy rivals John Williams.

Happy Hacking!!!

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