i want you to hit me as hard as you can... The wachowskis have always marched to the
beat of their own creative drum and shifted the landscape of Hollywood in 1999 with their
sophomore directing effort The Matrix. After that prescient sci-fi saga (still a trilogy back then)
and a brief detour writing and producing the adaptation of Alan Moore's acclaimed
graphic novel V for Vendetta, what avenue would these superb sibling filmmakers possibly take?
For the Wachowskis that road would be traveled by a cult classic anime called Speed Racer.
At that point in their illustrious careers, pretty much anything from the Matrix makers seemed like
a safe bet, especially a more audience accessible cartoon adaptation. The directors would continue
pushing the boundaries of digital technology with dizzying races and eyeball bursting colors
but the costly effort failed to resonate with critics or moviegoers and crashed and burned at
the box office. Start your engines and find out what the [ __ ] happened to this movie!
Originally conceived in the 1960s as a manga called Mach Go Go Go before becoming
an animated series, creator Tatsuo Yashida's Speed Racer follows the titular teenage driver
and his high-tech race car. It was one of the first Japanese cartoons to take off in the
US -- American kids in the 1970s and later were likely introduced to these energetic adventures
through a syndicated English language version, possibly in a block with other imports like
Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers. Reruns of Speed Racer would continue to air over the
decades on channels like Cartoon Network. Before the Wachowskis' involvement a big screen Hollywood
adaptation of Speed Racer had been in the works since the early 1990s when Warner Bros. acquired
the rights with plans to make a live-action movie from power producer Joel Silver. By the mid 90s
names like Nicolas Cage and Henry Rollins were considered for the part of mysterious masked man
Racer X and Johnny Depp was officially cast in the lead role in 1995 with music video director
Julien Temple at the helm. Thanks for watching Joblo videos, if you enjoy our shows please like
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That version eventually stalled and the talent scattered. The studio then approached indie auteur
Gus Van Sant and then Alfonso Cuaron to take over directing duties, while a pit crew of writers
including JJ Abrams cycled through various drafts of the script, but the project just couldn't get
to the starting line. The gears finally started turning in 2000 when Richard Donner and Lauren
Schuler Donner were recruited by Warner Bros. to produce the adaptation with music video director
Hype Williams behind the camera. Despite over a million dollars spent on more script drafts,
by October of 2001 Williams had left the project. After three more years spinning its
wheels in development hell, Vince Vaughn actively sought to revive the project and was cast in the
role of Racer X. When the movie sputtered yet again, Vaughn left to pursue other material.
In late 2006 the pistons finally started pumping when Joel Silver hired the Wachowskis to direct
Speed Racer with the intention of delivering a big broad family-friendly crowd pleaser. The directing
duo wisely recruited their Oscar-winning visual effects guru John Gaeta to oversee the monumental
challenge of making a movie entirely through groundbreaking technology. Production would
commence in Europe in the summer of 2007 with a planned release in summertime of 2008. In terms
of casting, the lead role of Speed was a race between Joseph Gordon Levitt, Shia Labeouf,
Zac Efron and Emile Hirsch, a self-professed speed racer superfan who ultimately won the part. John
Goodman and Susan Sarandon would play Speed's parents. For Speed's girlfriend Trixie, Rose
Mcgowan, Kate Mara and Elisha Cuthbert were all considered before Christina Ricci got the role.
V for Vendetta's propagandist Roger Allam would play the movie's corrupt corporate villain
with Korean superstar Rain assisting the heroes against the terrible tycoon. The Wachowskis wanted
their matrix hero Keanu Reeves to play Racer X but when that didn't work out, Lost actor Matthew
Fox drove away with the part. One other cool casting tidbit: Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr,
the voice over actors who dubbed Speed and Trixie in the original cartoon,
play race announcers in the film. Principal photography on Speed Racer officially commenced
in Germany in June 2007 with an estimated budget of 120 million dollars -- twice
that of the original Matrix but less than its sequels, which each cost around $150 million.
Filming on high definition video for the first time in the Wachowskis' career, Speed Racer was
shot entirely against green screen. The movie was the first to use the prototype Sony f23 digital
film camera and Codex digital data recorders for uncompressed playback on the set. The Wachowskis'
inspiration was to capture the essence of Speed Racer while taking it to a whole new level.
One key focus in this regard was the dynamics of the races themselves. Visual effects supervisor
Dan Glass described it as "stunt racing," a mix of skateboarding, extreme sports and Formula One
combined into a multinational hyper event with wicked jumps, spirals and twists. The acrobatic
vehicular combat was affectionately referred to as "car fu." Before shooting, three months were spent
using pre-visualization technology to design the immersive and visceral new form of extreme racing,
with each specific race being more unique and exciting than the last. John Gaeta said they
wanted the whole movie to feel like something you might see in an HD sports broadcast
except lit extremely well. Digital effect supervisor Mohen Leo described it as a "hybrid
of old and cutting edge techniques to create an aesthetic homage to the style of 60s animation."
Meticulous storyboarding was used to create mini-movie animatics through the pre-vis phase,
allowing the filmmakers to plan exactly what kind of races they wanted. Over 100 digital stunt car
models were created, each with its own particular personality and characteristics. Of course the
most iconic vehicle is Speed's classic Mach 5, for which a real-life prop replica was built on set.
Racer X's equally memorable shooting car also had a physical model built to size and scale.
The vehicles were mounted on gimbals to shift and shake and simulate all sorts of movement.
According to actor Scott Porter, who plays Speed's brother Rex Racer, video
game designers modeled whole race tracks based on the Wachowskis' concepts and engineers linked a
prop steering wheel and the gimbal to create the appropriate response from the effects department,
who would steer through a digital version of the track. As Emile Hirsch noted, "there's not a whole
lot of acting needed in the gimbal, you're really getting thrown around." The actors were also able
to use a rig that incorporated a full driving simulator that would respond to their input,
basically allowing them to drive and react more realistically. One of the biggest challenges on
Speed Racer was taking live-action car racing to daring new cinematic heights while still honoring
the spirit of 1960's Japanese animation. According to Gaeta, "we wanted to be faithful to the spirit
and the nuance and the sensibilities of Speed Racer and that type of animation
and so it began this fascinating exploration of the cinematic language of anime."
In order to create the distinct retro-futuristic visuals the Wachowskis employed an advanced
layering technique to allow sharp focus for both foreground and background. This unorthodox
compositing method would simulate the flat two-dimensional appearance of real-life anime,
a radical shift from traditional movies' use of focal depth of field to lead the viewer's eye.
Once again the Wachowskis were defying expectations and breaking standard filmmaking
rules. A groundbreaking process called Quicktime Virtual Reality Sphere was employed by placing a
still photography camera above a live environment and filming images in a 360 degree wrap-around
view at extremely high definition to create a literal sphere of images. These environment
bubbles were then enhanced and projected on green screen to create a fully immersive environment
for the actors to perform against. This process allowed them to fabricate what would otherwise be
expensive location shooting, effectively letting the cast visit locations that were logistically
challenging or impossible in reality. According to Gaeta, they could essentially go anywhere
with a small production unit to capture and replicate architecturally spectacular places
like Grossglockner, an insanely winding road through the Alps laden with hairpin turns.
The location manager shot similar bubbles in Morocco, Greece, Italy and Austria to digitally
capture sets to all be used on a green screen soundstage in Germany. Using these digitized
background bubbles also gave the filmmakers the flexibility to composite and edit on the set
in real time. Various scenes and images from their vast digital library could be combined
however they needed to achieve the desired result in what Gaeta described as "sample cinema."
Principal photography on Speed Racer officially wrapped on August 25th 2007. In the lead up to the
film's May 2008 release Warner Bros. partnered with several multinational corporations for an
exorbitantly expensive marketing and merchandising blitz that involved everyone from Mcdonald's
to Target to NASCAR. Roughly 5 000 tie-in products were licensed, including video games,
Lego sets and race tracks. It certainly seemed like Speed Racer was going to be everywhere.
And then on May 9th 2008 Speed Racer drove onto screens... and was run off the road
by what would be the genesis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iron Man dominated the
box office on its second weekend in theaters and the Wachowskis' pioneering FX driven spectacle
opened with only $18.5 million, pulling into third place behind the now forgotten Cameron Diaz/Ashton
Kutcher romcom What Happens in Vegas. Critically speaking Speed Racer didn't fare much better,
with reviews claiming it was overloaded with headache-inducing special effects
and that it focused on visual thrills at the expense of a coherent storyline.
Audiences also didn't seem prepared for the Wachowskis' dazzling candy-colored thrill ride,
or at least not two hours and 15 minutes worth of it. The 120 million dollar movie
ended its theatrical run with just 44 million dollars domestic and $93 million worldwide.
Needless to say the original optimistic plans for a sequel were tossed into the car crusher.
As for the Wachowskis, the financial failure of Speed Racer was merely a speed bump, at least from
a creative perspective. They followed it with even more ambitious and expensive endeavors:
the time-spanning epic Cloud Atlas and their original space opera Jupiter Ascending. Alas, much
like Speed Racer both movies polarized critics and audiences and neither would earn back its budget
at the box office. Ultimately Lana Wachowski would return solo to the franchise that first sent her
career into the stratosphere, revisiting the story of Neo and Trinity with The Matrix Resurrections.
Still after more than a decade Speed Racer has its share of defenders who embrace its wild disregard
of physics and extol the trailblazing visuals and live-action anime style. The movie may not have
resonated quite like the Wachowskis R-rated sci-fi dystopian masterpiece but it can't be denied that
Speed Racer helped advance filmmaking technology and presented something different to audiences.
Let us know your thoughts, leave a comment in the comments and thanks for watching