Speed Racer...the movie? You're damn right

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:53 pm

http://speedracerthemovie.warnerbros.com/cmp/main.html

And I thought I was excited about Star Trek. This is gonna be the best summer ever

doodude · Post by **doodude** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:58 pm

Neon wrote:http://speedracerthemovie.warnerbros.com/cmp/main.html

And I thought I was excited about Star Trek. This is gonna be the best summer ever

I have never seen the reason for the attraction to Speed Racer.

But Space Ghost!? Now dat would be a movie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVsT6KoTJOI

Go Space Ghost, Go Space Ghost, Go Space Ghost Gooooooooooooo!

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:05 pm

Check out the episodes 'the Car Hater' and 'the Mammoth Car' if you can.

"That gets rid of some cars"

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:09 pm

I loved Speed Racer back in 7th grade. I saw a preview for the movie and it had a very distinctive look. Problem was they didn't seem to mix things up much visually. Pretty homogeneous.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 10:13 pm

Yeah, there's a game coming out for it based on the movie too. Wonder how it'll be considering the previous games have been absolutely horrid (although I'm a closet fan for the PS version).

And I don't see the bio for Chim Chim...

Post by **Shatterhand** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:35 am

The arcade game for Speed Racer wasn't half bad.

But it's the Wachowski Brothers who are behind this moive. the original "The Matrix" is in my top 10, but they only made mistakes after that. V for Vendetta could had been pretty good if the script was better written, and I am pretty sure the sequels to Matrix make sense to someone on the Earth, but most people would surely benefit if they had acutally tried to write something cohese.

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:44 am

It looked cool on a movie review show during an interview with Christina Ricci. Looks aren't everything, my heart's butt's jury's out on this one.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 7:14 am

It's either the makeup or that haircut/wig but Christina Ricci looks a bit old now.

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 7:39 am

Compared to when she first lost too much weight? Nuh-uh.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 6:50 pm

looks interesting, however, i'm tempted to not see it considering it is made by the wachowskis (or should i say wack-chowskis)

i am a clever mofo, no arguments.

i probably will though, speed racer rocks.

Sinfreealex · Post by **Sinfreealex** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:13 pm

I've been to the movies several times since the trailer started airing and I'm starting to get interested. At first my "cartoon converted to live action sucks" alarm kept going off, but after several viewings I'm ready to go see this when it comes out. Hopefully there are nice long sequences of the trippy racing shots they keep showing in the trailer and little of that damn kid and monkey.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:36 pm

This 'looks' awful - more dirty over-the-top, over-used CG. It's like a computer generated roger rabbit which at a glance, retains none of the charm of the original Speed Racer or Anime itself for that matter.

Hollywood should leave something as purely Japanese as Anime well alone, even if it is the Wachowski's, cos they always fuck it up.

Whereas the Japanese remove frames to give Anime the most high-impact and distinctive motion in animation today, westerners stick in so many frames until its so fluid it's just crap. This might sound completely backward to the casual observer, but study Anime and you'll find its fact. I studied traditional Animation in the London College of Printing and I find most western Animation distastefully overdone, and that includes CG artists.

The Speed Racer movie looks like a technicolour yawn.

SFKhoa · Post by **SFKhoa** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:56 pm

Because animation costs money, UH-HUH.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:51 am

I thought the original trailer was great.

Then they introduced the submachine guns.

StoofooEsq · Post by **StoofooEsq** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 5:59 am

After this project was announced, I was betting a fight sequence with Kung-Fu or similar martial arts would be cornholed into the movie at some point.

The first trailer proved me right.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:19 am

Skykid wrote: The Speed Racer movie looks like a technicolour yawn.

It is being aimed at kids though, The people who used to watch this waaaaay back are likely to have kids of there own now. If i had to pick this or the spiderwick chronicles for me and matt Jr to go see. I would go see speed racer for sure.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:48 am

If I had one, I wouldn't take my kid to see this. I'd sit him down with the actual Speed Racer cartoon and tell him to watch that instead.

it290 · Post by **it290** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:47 pm

When I saw the trailer my first thought was that it didn't look like Speed Racher, but rather F-Zero:The Movie. Honestly I don't really know how they can avoid fucking it up, because the cartoon really just isn't movie material.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:05 pm

This isn't high art folks. It's a live-action adaptation of a campy, poorly-translated cartoon.

It's a movie, not a film.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:11 pm

I expected something silly, but there are machine guns.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:22 pm

Neon wrote:This isn't high art folks. It's a live-action adaptation of a campy, poorly-translated cartoon.

Which runs the risk of being campy, poorly-translated from its source material, pulp garbage that isn't worth the rising ticket prices. Colour and light from a high-end graphics workstation is not a substitute for imagination, as George Lucas found out when he utterly ruined his own greatest work with the Star Wars prequels.

I'm sick of this stuff - CG should be fucking banned.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 4:49 pm

Skykid wrote:
Neon wrote:This isn't high art folks. It's a live-action adaptation of a campy, poorly-translated cartoon.
Which runs the risk of being campy, poorly-translated from its source material, pulp garbage that isn't worth the rising ticket prices. Colour and light from a high-end graphics workstation is not a substitute for imagination, as George Lucas found out when he utterly ruined his own greatest work with the Star Wars prequels.

I'm sick of this stuff - CG should be fucking banned.

but still i fail to see the point. will it suck? possibly (hello, wachowskis).

but as all arguments on any subject devolve:

"If you don't like it you don't have to use it " -- The Specials

you've stated already that you will not see it, and that it is a travesty. leave it at that and please try not to derail the thread into a tirade about the evils of computer animation.

but hey, what else is the internet for?

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:53 pm

I think someone made a gigantic error in judgement when they said "japanese only use enough animation frames to work with" when they really mean to say "Their budgets for cartoons are still pretty narrow even if it has action in it."
They also made a mistake to even dare say American animation uses too many frames, when we're basically the kings of "re-use specific walk cycle from side view over and over and over even if it's not good. oh don't forget FLASH so nobody can tell we had a budget of 5 bucks."

Animation has gone to shit, even for big name companies. go out and find the mini-animations by Studio 4°C, preferrably Kung Fu Girl In Love which has a pretty crazy ammount of animation frames (and using CG tastefully, imagine that!)

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:05 pm

Gungriffon Geona wrote:I think someone made a gigantic error in judgement when they said "japanese only use enough animation frames to work with" when they really mean to say "Their budgets for cartoons are still pretty narrow even if it has action in it."

That's absolutely correct - and its the trial and error of shortcutting that's made Anime motion so unique and so effective.

leave it at that and please try not to derail the thread into a tirade about the evils of computer animation.

Not trying to derail anything dude! I'm free to voice my opinion, that's why its called a 'forum' right? Speed racer looks like 99% CG, 1% brains - the evil's of computer generated special effects seem an appropriate topic.

you've stated already that you will not see it, and that it is a travesty.

Lol - the travesty will be when you're sitting in the theatre wishing you could have your money back.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:13 pm

Skykid wrote:
you've stated already that you will not see it, and that it is a travesty.
Lol - the travesty will be when you're sitting in the theatre wishing you could have your money back.

if i do see it in the theatre's i can comfort myself with the knowledge that i, at the very least, didn't pay to see Michael Clayton.

and i apologize for jumping on your case, dude. i was cwanky this morning apparently.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:24 pm

Is the 'the lack of frames is on purpose!' thing for real, or are you a fanboi? No offense, genuinely curious. I always thought anime looked sorta shitty due to the cut frames and assumed it was because of low budgets or something.

Not that American cartoons look any better, all the CG stuff on Cartoon Network looks like ass.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:48 pm

No worries captain! Easter blues

Neon:

Well its a question of taste I suppose. A lot of people still look at anime and think it looks really cheaply animated. And they're right in a sense too!

The Japanese didn't have big budgets to propel their live action movie industry post WW2, and a lot of the movie's they turned out suffered from looking very cheap. Instead the animation industry really got underway as an alternate form of entertainment that could branch into many areas and still tell amazing stories. Tezuka headed this up of course.

Because of budget constraints in the animation studios, the Japanese found a way to cut corners - to create movement, or a sense of weight, but with fewer frames than those used by Disney and Warner bros. etc.

Essentially, these animation methods were copied, almost like formulas, across the Japanese animation industry and are still present today. If you take an anime show like Evangelion, it's easy to see all the shortcuts - the sections where the budget is low - and then the 'money shots', where they spend bursts of money.

Anime has a form now, even in something as big budget as Akira, where the movement and motion of objects is typical. It's very much to do with slowing things down and then speeding them up to give a sense of weight.

Example - a character jumps in the air: he slows down greatly at the apex of the jump. Then there are NO frames at all for the fall. It just cuts to the landing and all the flying debris is animated around the character. Simple, cheap, and really high impact.

Hope thats not confusing, but thats kind of how it works.

Shit. I think I just derailed the thread.

I'm Alec · Post by **I'm Alec** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:56 pm

I'm diggin it already. Big Speed Racer fan here. Used to watch my uncles VHS tapes as a youth. Hope the new Mach 5 will be bad.

zero.otaku · Post by **zero.otaku** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:00 am

What about how modern anime looks just like American animation with way more frames and yet the inbetween work is still garbage and even the keys look like they were drawn by a junior-high doujin wannabe? I liked the good ol' days of anime, where minimal animation was most definitely a budget constraint but was done with such style that it, well, made people actually care about anime. I love those uber-dramatic close ups with tons of detail and thick black outlines and stuff is actually drawn well.

On topic: I think they missed the mark and went a little too over-the-top with Speed Racer, but some of the action sequences look cool enough for me to make a trip to the IMAX.

it290 · Post by **it290** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 12:07 am

Yeah -- anime these days is sucky. They use CG for everything now, too, which is really disappointing.

shmups.system11.org

Speed Racer...the movie? You're damn right

Speed Racer...the movie? You're damn right

Re: Speed Racer...the movie? You're damn right