Saw a trailer, which convinced me I’m not going to be seeing the movie.
But, to the extent that I’m bothering to figure out why it was even made, what is the suspend-your-disbelief back-story for the integration of live actors and completely-unrealistic-looking technicolor-CGI backdrops? Does the story/universe make sense on its own (admittedly far-fetched) terms?
Is the premise that hundreds of years in the future people will still be people, but that cars and highways will have evolved in such a way that they are all glowing psychedelic high-tech (but still physically-real) objects in the real, meat-space world?
How is it “explained” that cars and people can undergo the violent physical lurching and falling and crashing? Are humans posited to have evolved more durable g-force resistance? Is car technology and passenger-shielding just that much more high tech?
Is it some sort of virtual reality premise?
Or just a pure psychedelic fantasia meant to be taken as an impossible dream?
Oy, I hope you don’t have kids. Look, it’s a live-action cartoon, what more do you need to know? What must you think of Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the multiple thousands of other movies that have suspend-your-disbelief elements!
If you insist, I took it to be an alternate reality, not our world in the future or any of the other things you mentioned.
And yes, the story/universe does make sense on its own terms.
Why was it made? Why not?
It was made because the Brothers were Speed Racer fans, and they wanted to make a bigger, better live-action version. They succeeded. I have never watched and would never watch the cartoon, but the movie was An Experience I’m glad I got to take.
They don’t go to any great lengths to explain much - and the previous poster is right, it’s more of an alternate present/near future than anything else.
One thing they do show, however, is what happens if you crash. When your car is crashing, instead of an airbag, you get encased in a gel globe that then bounces free of the crash. Kind of like Zorbing away from the accident.
But because I don’t plan to see it – I don’t care!
And . . . I get the suspension of disbelief thing. Matrix didn’t bother me. Crouching Tiger didn’t. Roger Rabbit didn’t. Nightmare on Elm Street didn’t. Not saying I liked them, but I understood the respective conceit in each instance.
My gripe . . . scratch that, I don’t really even have a gripe, nor am I over-literally saying “that couldn’t happen!” Just wondered if it made even a cursory attempt to lay the groundwork for why things are different in their reality than in ours (which all of the above examples did). If Speed Racer had begun – “Once upon a time, in a world when people somehow found themselves integrated into a video game, you know, kind of like in Tron,” I’d say: okay, cool, I get it. I don’t want a comprehensive rundown of the (impossible) physics/electronics it would take to get there (side note: to the extent I read SF in the past, I kind of gave up on so-called “hard SF” precisely because of the labored, clunky expositions of various improbable ‘scientific’ rationales for or mechanisms of FTL travel, etc. – far better to say “So, there’s this elf-human hybrid, and he flies through a wormhole, and then has the most interesting adventures . . .”).
He’s not saying he’s refusing to suspend disbelief, he’s merely asking if they attempt to flesh out why that world exists as it does. He’s curious about the differences between their universe and ours.
As witness my reference to Tron, it’s much more like: “Did they give me an incredibly flimsy, off the cuff, non-likely, but self-consistent rationale for willingly suspending my disbelief? They did? Cool. (The movie still blows, but cool.).”
The movie is a technology demo with reasonable acting from good actors. There is your premise.
Aside from that, it makes sense in about the same way a spy movie makes sense, in that it’s logically self-consistent but it never explains how so many successful businessmen could survive being suicidally greedy and surrounding themselves with such stupid, stupid henchmen.
Was it José Canziani (Buenos Aires '42) or Chico Landi (Santa Fe '42)? Landi didn’t die until 1989 and was only 81 then (and Grand Prix drivers who survive til retirement tend to not look their age) and I can’t find if Canziani ever died, though he’d be nearly 97.
Oh, it was in “Speed Racer?” Then it doesn’t matter because IT’S JUST A CARTOON. Never mind “internal consistency;” the original series just plain made no sense and when Bob Mondello(?) complained that the movie was chaotic to the point of overload, had stilted dialog, and that he couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys or even figure out who had just crashed, all I could think was that the filmmakers had duplicated the “Speed Racer” experience.
A couple of times in the movie, there’s a brief scene showing characters waking up in the morning, and the world looks totally normal for a couple of minutes.
Then they take acid. It’s like the first thing everybody does.
He didn’t see the same movie I saw or he’s a retarded monkey on amphetamines. Compared to the cartoon series, the movie was a shining jewel in more ways than one. It didn’t have any of the classic bad voice acting, the plots all moved along nicely and resolved, and the number of important characters was kept very manageable.
To cite critics who obviously aren’t equipped for a movie like this isn’t the best way to “prove” that a movie is bad.
I vote for retarded monkey on amphetamines. I’ve never watched the cartoon even for a second. I’ve only seen stills from it, but while watching the movie I never had any of these problems, except when it served the plot. For instance, not being able to tell the good guys from the bad guys…oftentimes, THAT’S THE POINT! You’re finding out along with Speed who he can trust and who he can’t, and sometimes he’s taken in just like you are. Honestly, that particular criticism (he couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys) is inane if he’s criticizing the movie as a whole based on it.
It’s “chaotic to the point of overload”? If the old fart can’t handle it, he should stick with nice quiet movies lest his brain explode. “Stilted dialog” is him not accepting that world or their way of speaking (does he accept Atonement or Juno and their way of speaking, I wonder?). And not being able to “even figure out who had just crashed” just makes me roll my eyes. In a hard fast race, sometimes NO ONE knows who just crashed, but it becomes clear soon enough. Or else he wasn’t paying attention, because other times it was very clear who had just crashed (witnessed by the groans or cheers of the people in the theater who happened to be paying attention).
Really, even I didn’t like the film as much as some people, because while it was enjoyable I thought it lacked that certain “magic” that, say, The Matrix had but that the sequels didn’t (to me), but it’s an amazing ride and as I’ve said over and over again, An Experience, that transcends plot and characters, which gives it a leg up over any other cartoon-to-film movie that’s ever been made. However, reading some of these inane criticisms is making me like the movie, as a movie, even more than I did. I really need to see it again, preferably in IMAX or digital.
Man, I want some of what they’re having! Back in my Youth I used to take acid all the time, LOVED it, but I never had any a fraction as good as what they must have access to.
Oh to see this movie on acid…damn, what a wonderful thing that would be. Too bad I’m now a straight old fart with no connections. Sigh.
Didn’t say the movie was bad. Just said that is sounded much like the series. Also didn’t say the critic was not poorly equipped to judge it. We all learned long ago that most film critics know nothing about what makes a good movie and while a top rating may have meaning, two or three stars usually mean “boring,” one star shows promise, and zero stars means it’s a “must see.” But you can’t always trust those. Ebert was totally clueless even before the stroke and he gave it 1.5 stars so that means it’s not as good as it could be but it might be awesome on an Imax screen.
Look, either you watched the Speed Racer series as a kid, or you didn’t. If you didn’t, no amount of explaining is going to help. Even if you sat down and watched it now as an adult I don’t think it will help. I’ve got to think that the Brothers knew that their audience was going to be vanishingly small and didn’t really give a damn.