Friday, December 7th, 2007
Round 2: Speed Racer Trailer and The Golden Compass
In this week’s FightCast, we fight about the newly debuted Speed Racer trailer and The Golden Compass, two of the biggest topics of discussion heading into this weekend. The very first trailer for the Wachowski Brother’s adaptation of the Japanese cartoon Speed Racer arrived yesterday, and is getting quite a polarized response. Alex loved it, while Peter thinks it’s going to suck. The Golden Compass is a fantasy adventure film based on Philip Pullman’s novels that stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, and Dakota Blue Richards, and is directed by Chris Weitz. Peter enjoyed it a lot but had some problems, and Alex has a similar opinion.
Show Links
FirstShowing.net’s Speed Racer Trailer
/Film’s Speed Recer Feedback
Speed Racer Looks Like a Video Game
The Best Car Chase Movies
Movies Mentioned: Dick Tracy, The Flintstones, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, V For Vendetta, Death Proof, Bad Boys 2, Terminator 2, Labyrinth, Neverending Story, The Dark is Rising, Harry Potter series
2 Comments
December 8th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Hello Peter and Alex, good luck for your Film Fight Cast.
I didn’t like Speed Racer trailer too, from a manga / anime seems that Wachowskis are going to make a videogame full of colours but without contents, interest and originality.
Also two good actors as Emile Hirsch and Matthew Fox seem to be embarrassed in acting.
Anyway it is only the first trailer…
Best regards,
Have a nice weekend,
Marco Michele
April 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
On the Presentational Style:
The visuals are deliberately stylised.
Does it look cartoonish? It’s supposed to.
Does it look like the actors are against flat background? It’s supposed to.
Are the character acting as though they were on a 1960s kids’ show? They’re supposed to.
The reason people didn’t complain about this hyper-stylisation on movies like Sin City or 300 was because they were “dark”. That’s all.
But “dark” doesn’t mean “good”. Just look at movies like Toy Story, or Ice Age, or Finding Nemo.
A film doesn’t need to be “dark” and “gritty” (i.e. “low key lighting” and “shaky cam” :-D) to be good.
And let’s not forget that the effects still aren’t finished. The Brothers will be working on this pretty much until opening day.
On the Story:
Early reports suggest that the character development is solid, and that the film creates genuinely empathetic characters.
Let’s clear the air here - the only reason people are doubting Speed Racer is because of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, as they were the last project directed by the Wachowskis.
Now, whatever your opinion of the sequels (I thought they were misunderstood masterpieces, but whatever…), you can’t doubt that every time they’ve done an ORIGINAL film (i.e. Bound, The Matrix), they’ve always delivered. And let’s not forget that they didn’t just produce V for Vendetta - they WROTE it, too.
So we know that the Wachowskis can write and direct top class original movies, and can write top class adaptations.
We also know that the Wachowskis are visionary directors (and I don’t use that term lightly), in that they always seem bored with where film is, and they’re constantly trying to push the medium to new levels. Even at the risk of failure (e.g. Reloaded and Revolutions). But this doesn’t deter them from continuing to try and break the cinematic mold.
For that alone, they deserve to be applauded.
And it’s because of that that I think Speed Racer could end up being the runaway success of the Summer.
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