10

May

One-Sentence Review of “Speed Racer”

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I theatre-hopped to see it and still feel like I should ask for my money back.

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Jonathan said on May 10th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

That is arguably the most scathing movie review that I have ever read. Nicely put.

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John Seavey said on May 10th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

*shrug* I figured nobody would even see it for free. All those bright colors remind me kind of how animals advertise that they’re poisonous. 🙂

Although you did remind me of my reaction to seeing ‘Matrix Reloaded’. “Not only do I want my money back, but I want to tie the Wachowski Brothers to a chair for three hours so that I can waste their time talking about my crappy half-baked movie ideas!”

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N/A said on May 10th, 2008 at 6:26 pm

I have a quick question that in no way relates to this post…

You seem so enthusiastic about the Legion of Superheroes that you’ve piqued my interest. Where would be the best place to start reading, considering I know almost nothing about them or dc in general?

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MGK said on May 10th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

The two easiest start points, ignoring the current “threeboot” edition, are probably around Legion of Superheroes v2 #280 (when Paul Levitz’s second run on the title really kicked into high gear – within half a dozen issues Keith Giffen shows up and things really get drastically awesome) and Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0 / Legionnaires #0, which kick off the “first reboot” era of the Legion, an era that had a very solid four or five years before descending into tedium for a couple of years before Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning showed up to give it the kick in the ass it desperately needed.

From a personal perspective, my first Legion comics as a young’un was v2 Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1, which, upon a mature re-reading, really holds up: it’s a great Legion story, to begin with, but on top of that it’s a fantastic introductory story for both the setting and tone of the Legion, and furthermore it has impact – it brings back one of the classic Legion villains and introduces a new Legionnaire to the team.

It’s almost a “how-to” guide for “I want to attract new readers to my comic.” A bit old-school in tone compared to now, of course, but hardly so much so that it’s not still eminently readable even today.

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MGK said on May 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

Oh, and of course ninety-nine percent of what I just mentioned isn’t available in trade at all, so it’s singles or *cough cough* illegal downloading *cough*.

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N/A said on May 10th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Wow, that was super-fast. Thank you, sir! To be honest, your last post where you mentioned Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad intrigued me. I’m a sucker for romance.

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Justin Corwin said on May 10th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

it is absolutely ridiculous that there isn’t some way to buy back issues of comics in an economical fashion. When idiots can put whatever screed they like into pdf and lulu print it to any sucker who paypals 20 bucks in, but DC won’t take free money from people introduced to old material, there is a serious conceptual error involved.

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Sage said on May 10th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

What was your opinion on Iron Man?
As well as all this upcoming Avenger nonsense.

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bunnyofdoom said on May 10th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

Good Sir MGK, I remember way back in the day when my friend worked at a movie theatre. He managed to get us free tickets to Stealth. I ended up walking out of that theatre $10 richer, because even the staff agreed it was a shitty movie.

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Jim Smith said on May 10th, 2008 at 11:49 pm

The weird thing to me about Speed Racer is that, judging from the trailers, it looks eerily like the Speed Racer cartoon in every detail, and I tend to assume it must be an incredibly faithful adaptation. On the other hand, I never liked the Speed Racer cartoon to begin with, so it looked like a faithful adaptation of something that already sucked.

Now every time someone criticizes this movie, I’m going to wonder if their underlying issue is “BAWWWW this movie raped my childhood” or “making a movie about Speed-frigging-Racer is a stupid idea.”

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MGK said on May 11th, 2008 at 12:23 am

bunnyofdoom: BUT STEALTH HAD A ROBOT PLANE

Jim: For me, it’s totally the latter. There’s a reason I theatre-hopped; it was morbid curiosity to see as if it was as bad as I thought it would be. Oh my yes was it that bad.

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Alexandra said on May 11th, 2008 at 1:02 am

I went and saw Iron Man the day it came out here in Oz at 3pm – just me, a couple of unemployed layabout yoof and a dozen kids all in school uniform who had clearly wagged school to see it on the opening day.

I thought Iron Man was all types of fun, but before they got to that we had the trailer for Speed Racer visited upon us like a stream of fluoro vomit.

I only have the vaguest memory of the cartoons. There was no chance in hell that my fellow movie-goers had ever seen them. After the trailer finished, in the ensuing silence, a cracked adolescent voice rang out around a mouthful of popcorn: “What the FUCK?”.

Which review is fourteen words fewer than yours, admittedly, but then, we only had to sit through the trailer. Fortunately.

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Positronic said on May 11th, 2008 at 9:08 am

I really, really enjoyed it. Am I a bad person? 🙁

(of course, my enjoyment kicked in when I started thinking of it as “F-Zero X: The Movie” instead of “Speed Racer”. A pity for all those talking heads between the car racing goodness. And why does the movie star Captain Falcon’s baby brother?)

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Alan said on May 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am

I disagree, I saw Speed Racer and felt like it was money well spent.

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bentarc said on May 11th, 2008 at 11:13 am

Honestly if that cast was doing Hamlet I would probably give it a try, even though I knew the movie was going to be awful beyond all reason.

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Sig said on May 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

John Goodman as Polonius, Ricci as Ophelia, Fox as Laertes (or Horatio)? That I might actually see. And are we sure the Wachowskis didn’t film this as a racecar-enchanced ADHD/HDTV version of Hamlet?

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dom said on May 11th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

Although I agree that the movie looks about as exciting as an abortion, the show ROCKED! Also, Positronic, I totally see how that looks like F-Zero with the neon twisting tracks and whatnot. Were’nt they normal oval racetracks on the show?

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Sage said on May 11th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

Speed Racer was like if someone filmed my soul: I have never been so happy watching a movie, and I had a giant grin on the whole time. Of course, I’m also watching it from a filmmaker’s perspective, and they did a lot of stuff that has NOT been done in film before, and original techniques (techniques, not ideas) usually only happens in 1 or 2 movies per year, if that.

I never saw the cartoon.

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bunnyofdoom said on May 11th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

While it did have a robot plane, it was still was shite. A robot plane that went rogue for no reason, but then went good again, once again for no reason.

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malakim2099 said on May 11th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

It looks like one of those movies that you buy when it’s out on DVD/Bluray to justify the five grand you tossed out on the home theater system.

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Daysaver said on May 11th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

John Goodman beat up a ninja. He beat up a ninja and then he talked trash on said ninja.

I straight up loved Speed Racer. It was so pretty!

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Rob Brown said on May 12th, 2008 at 1:18 am

bunnyofdoom: Beside the point, I know, but–2005 is “way back in the day”?

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Zifnab said on May 12th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Lies, heresy, blasphomey, and more of the same!
That movie was everything I could have asked for and more. Over-the-top cheesy and ridiculous but with something resembling a plot and characters that genuinely filled the rolls they were cast in.

Given that Speed Racer wasn’t exactly the best anime out back in the 80s, the studio got full mileage out of its vehicle (pun retroactively intended) and

Even if you had no idea what Speed Racer was, it was a good kids movie and not an entirely bad young adults movie. Just my opinion, though.

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NewtypeS3 said on May 13th, 2008 at 7:18 pm

@ Zifnab:

“…back in the 1980s?” Speed Racer premiered in America when my mother was three: the jolly ol’ year of 1967.

And even then, it takes more than flashy lights or John Goodman beating up Ninjas (ok, that latter sounds kinda cool) to make me want to see a Wachowski-ized version of a cartoon where the only thing worth remembering was the car and the monkey who ate candy.

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q said on May 14th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

Man, that monkey would eat SO MUCH candy.

heehee. He’d always get a stomachache.

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patrick said on May 15th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

The Wachowski bros certainly put a lot of effort into making Speed Racer… the movie overall looked and felt like a cross between anime, a kaleidoscope, that Flintstones movie, a video game and the Dukes of Hazard

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