From the get-go he has one thing and one thing only on his mind: racing.
We open on the adult Speed ( Emile Hirsch) anxiously tapping his foot pre-race, only to quickly flash back to his younger self (played by Nicholas Elia) in class. Using an intellectual property to make an anti-corporate statement (albeit a contradictory one, being on the Time Warner bankroll), the film is not so much an attempt at elevated juvenilia as it is about juvenilia. Read why Edge of Tomorrow is the greatest blockbuster of the 21st centuryīut with neither tenuous War on Terror allusions nor brand management on its mind, Speed Racer stood in opposition to this burgeoning blockbuster Tradition of Quality. The former’s idea of formalism is occasional high-resolution aerial shots and pseudo-philosophical monologuing, while in the latter’s case, Robert Downey Jr’s constant quipping and some inert CG robot battles account for buoyant pop filmmaking. While most like to propagate a Christopher Nolan/Marvel binary amongst these kinds of films, in reality they’re cut from the same prosaic PG-13 cloth. Sadly, Speed Racer was faulted for its formal and narrative ambitions in the same summer that saw the commercial and critical dominance of two comic-book films – The Dark Knight and Iron Man – which set the regrettable templates of the self-serious and the “cinematic universe” blockbusters respectively. AO Scott wrote in his New York Times pan that Speed Racer, “is about a boy driving a car, surely a subject that cries out for linearity, simplicity, velocity.” The critics weren’t much kinder: Slant Magazine’s Nick Schager called it, “hyper-digitised Skittles soup” Alonso Duralde of MSNBC invited viewers to, “imagine someone pouring hot, melted Starburst candies into your corneas” and Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers put it that the Wachowskis, “projectile-vomit their cotton-candy dreams all over the big screen.” Another common criticism shared by both detractors and many of the film’s fans was its 135-minute runtime certainly lengthy for what is generally considered a kid’s movie. The Wachowskis’ pricy paean to juvenilia is a glorious multi-coloured folly which stands in stark contrast to its blockbuster brethren.Ī “blockbuster” only in the theatrical sense, Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Speed Racer was largely shunned by audiences upon its release in May 2008. Why Speed Racer is the greatest blockbuster of the 21st century
0 kommentar(er)
