How SPEED RACER reminds me to look at the world through my little brother’s eyes.
REVISITING THE WACHOWSKIS
PART V: ‘SPEED RACER’
In the days leading up to the release of the new Netflix show Sense8, I’m going to be revisiting the Wachowski oeuvre, one day at a time. I’ll be looking at the movies themselves, as well as the critical reception of each film, and thinking about how this all relates to questions of film criticism at large. You can read my introduction to this little writing experiment here, where I rambled a bit about when I started to have a personal stake in how Wachowski films were being received. Warning: Some spoilers follow.
‘SPEED RACER’ (2008)
Directed by: The Wachowski Siblings, credited as the Wachowski Brothers
Starring:
Emile Hirsch as “Speed”
Christina Ricci as “Trixie”
John Goodman as “Pops”
Susan Sarandon as “Mom”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 39%
The Plot
This bright, colorful, flashy, splashy children’s movie is set in the high-octane world of car-racing, sometime in the near future. (Or is it set in an alternate-reality past, where the world became obsessed with racing and built entire, glossy, chrome cities devoted to the sport?) Eight years after a horrible accident that may or may not have killed his older brother Rex, Speed Racer is all grown up and making a name for himself in the World Racing League. His virtuosic racecar-driving skills catch the eye of E.P. Arnold Royalton, Esq., President and Chairman of Royalton Industries; Royalton wants to sign him to his company’s racing team, but Speed wants to stay with his family-owned Racer Motors.
His unwillingness to commit to a mega-corporate sponsorship lands Speed in hot water with several global racing cartels, so to help Inspector Detector shut down the criminals who fix the Grand Prix every year, Speed must join up with his girlfriend Trixie, fellow racer Taejo Togokahn, and the mysterious Racer X to thwart the cartels’ evil plot. Can he do it? Can Speed Racer win without cheating, even though every other car on the track is outfitted with state-of-the-art weapons meant to destroy him? Can he honor the memory of his brother Rex while still forging his own path, a path his family can be proud of? And speaking of Rex… is just a coincidence that Racer X debuted two years after Rex “died?” And just what… in the world… are chim-chim cookies?
What’d the Critics Think?
Critics hate happiness. They hate fun. They shriek and cower at the sight of the shining sun, or even someone smiling, and they want to drag everyone else down into the deepest depths of darkness with them, to wallow forever in sorrow, cynicism, and ironic detachment.
I have no other way to explain the critical reception of Speed Racer. Look, I know The Matrix Revolutions sucks. It’s bad. It’s so disappointing that it retroactively sours your enjoyment of the first two Matrix films. Fine. But does it really need to prevent you from enjoying the Wachowskis’ output for the rest of forever?
Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal calls the film “genuinely painful — the esthetic equivalent of needles in eyeballs — and weirdly benumbing, like eye candy laced with lidocaine.” Claudia Puig of USA Today thinks “the races feel like a drag.” Dana Stevens of Slate insists, inexplicably, “The Wachowski brothers couldn’t really have intended this Starburst-hued assault on all that is holy as a homage to the pleasingly dorky old Speed Racer cartoon, with its flat planes, chalky colors, and stiffly drawn tableaux.” Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com “can’t figure out who in the world it’s supposed to appeal to,” calling it “bereft of intelligence, style, and excitement.”
When I first saw the movie in 2008, I was in a transition period, about to graduate from high school and leave my family behind for the first time in my life. I saw it with my little brother, and we had a blast. When I came home and started reading reviews online, expecting raves, I found only one review that seemed to agree with me. He praised the visual thrills, the stunningly beautiful design, the fast-paced, heart-stopping action, the deeply realized familial bonds… and then ended by saying something along the lines of, “As a movie for children, they don’t get any better. But for those of us hoping for The Matrix in cars, it’s a serious disappointment. One star.”
This is a problem.
What Did I Think?
I know I shouldn’t let reviews bother me. I know I should like what I like and forget about the critical consensus, because it’s at times pretty arbitrary. And for the most part, I do! If I’m interested at all in a movie, I’ll watch it and form my own opinion. But, this one bothered me. This one felt personal.
As I explained in my introduction to this whole Wachowskis rewatch, when I first saw Speed Racer I was weeks away from graduating high school, just a few months shy of moving six hours away from my family to attend college. I saw the movie with my eight-year-old brother knowing full well that it was one of the last times we would hang out together for many months. He was blown away by the bright colors, fast cars, and the silly monkey. I was awed by all of that, too… with maybe the exception of the monkey… but I was also very moved by the depiction of Speed’s relationship with his older brother Rex, who he idolized, and his younger brother Spritle, who he often views as a distraction.
The movie deftly balances its corporations-are-evil race-fixing plot with a more subtle storyline about Speed coming to terms with his brother’s death, trying to navigate a fine line between honoring his brother’s memory and making a name for himself in the world of racing.
This is never more evident than in the film’s opening Thunderhead race, a time-hopping, gravity-defying sequence that quickly establishes Speed’s love for his older brother, his relationship with Trixie, the family’s sense of loss when a horrific crash appears to take Rex’s life, all in service of heightening the deep emotional stakes for the race. It’s dizzying, dazzling, shimmering and stunning; in short, it’s exactly the kind of mesmerizing scene you want from an action movie geared toward kids.
You can get a sense of this scene’s style in the clip below, although it goes on for longer than this:
There’s one short scene in that mix that shows Rex leaving the family home as accusations of cheating and corruption start to pile up. “Can I come with you, Rex?” a young Speed asks, literally looking up to his brother. Rex turns him down. Minutes later, Rex is dead. The scene is echoed later in the film as Speed himself decides it’s time to strike out on his own, as Spritle asks in the same hopeful, idolizing tone of voice, “Can I come with you, Speed?” Like his older brother before him, Speed denies the youngster’s request to tag along.
How many times had I told my little brother that I didn’t want him along, that I wanted some time alone? Had I made up for it with the few times I had indulged him in a game of “cars and blocks,” a deceptively intricate game he liked to play multiple times a week? He’d spread bags and bags of Legos, Duplos, building blocks and K’nex across the living room floor, constructing racetracks and cities, and then he’d follow it up with a Rubbermaid trunk full of Hotwheels cars. The cars all had backstories and personalities, rivalries and love lives and varying senses of humor. He’d play for hours, racing the cars around the block-city, getting them into squabbles with each other, making up, crashing and careening around the living room in ways only a little kid can, seeing an entire world spread before out him.
I played sometimes, sure. But the game of cars and blocks became too complex for me. I didn’t know the characters, and he and my sister would be frustrated when, controlled by me, they acted in ways that defied their established histories. I’d find myself launching my car over the edge of what I’d thought was a racetrack mogul, only to find my brother staring at me in consternation, because I’d crushed what he had just explained were the spectator stands. Eventually, I stopped playing, frustrated that I wasn’t having any fun, because I had forgotten how to indulge him and play along. I was headed off to college, after all. I had far more exciting things than this to concern myself with. Like, classes, and textbooks. I was headed out to the “real world.”
And then Speed Racer came along. For my brother and me, Speed Racer was a movie-length game of cars and blocks, one we could both enjoy together. We could lose ourselves in the dazzling cinematography, a cinematic language of imagination that he, as a kid, intuitively understood, but which I had completely forgotten. Speed Racer is what cars and blocks looked like to him. Speed Racer taught me how to see through his eyes again, to remember what the world was like when it was full of something new and exciting every single day.
On a technical level, the movie is a marvel. Yes, as all of the reviews say, it’s largely entirely computer-generated. But why does that mean it’s bad? An actual camera, constrained to a physical location and a real-life racetrack, would never have been able to capture shots like the .gif above. The Wachowskis, once again, developed an entirely new technology that allowed them to film in ways that had never been seen before. They use the language of video games and cartoons, anime and kung-fu, to tell the story of a family banding together to lift up one of their own and support him in whatever he does.
“I go to the races to watch you make art,” Speed Racer’s mom tells him when he doubts himself for not giving in to Royalton’s attempt to corrupt him. “And it’s beautiful and inspiring and everything that art should be. Even though there are times when I have to close my eyes. But then there are other times…when you just take my breath away. And it’s at those moments — when I feel your father’s chest swell and I know that he’s smiling because he’s pretending that he doesn’t have tears in his eyes — that I just go to pieces.”
“Why?” Speed asks.
She smiles. “Because I’m so impossibly proud to be your mom.”
I got misty-eyed in the theater back in 2008 several times, but probably never more than at this scene. I saw the movie twice while it was still playing, and that Christmas — back home from college for the first time — I got it on DVD, and I watched it over and over. But, I don’t think I’d seen it since probably 2010 or so, and I was nervous to rewatch it this week, unsure if I’d still respond to the material, if I’d still find it as emotional as I did back then, when I felt so strongly connected to Speed.
I’m happy to report that the movie still works, and I still consider it a masterpiece of children’s entertainment. But it’s more than that; it’s not just for children. The movie very intentionally is designed to remind adults what it’s like to be a kid. You just have to be open to it.
When I read reviews like Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, saying “You have to be 12 to like it,” I find myself wanting to shake him and say, that’s not true at all! You don’t have to be 12! You have to make the choice to let the movie affect you.
When I read reviews like that, I’m reminded of the scene where Royalton tells Speed that racing isn’t about cars. It’s about money, he insists, about stock prices and fixes and megacorporation buyouts of smaller businesses. “Are you ready to put away your toys and grow up?” he spits. “Are you ready to become a real racecar driver? Then sign that contract!” Speed Racer chooses not to believe Royalton’s version of racing, instead focusing on the potential of racing to change his family’s fortunes rather than buying into the cynical view that corporations necessarily must control the world.
I choose not to believe the critics’ view of cinema. If I may paraphrase Mrs. Racer… I go to the movies to see filmmakers make art, and Speed Racer is beautiful and inspiring and everything art should be. Even though there are times when I may feel myself tempted to groan... like that damn monkey. But then there are other times when it just takes my breath away. And it’s at those moments — when I feel my chest swell and I find myself smiling because I’m pretending that I don’t have tears in his eyes —that I just go to pieces.
People who hate Speed Racer for being too juvenile, too bright and flashy, who insist that this means that the film can’t be saying anything worthwhile, are real-world versions of E. P. Arnold Royalton, Esq. They’re trying to say that adults can’t have fun, that adults should be more concerned with money and contracts and companies, instead of giving themselves over to a big-screen game of cars and blocks.
In the immortal words of Speed Racer himself… get that weak shit off my track.
