Speed Racer is a 2008 American sports action comedy film written and directed by the Wachowskis, based on the 1966 manga series by Tatsuo Yoshida. The film stars Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Roger Allam, Benno Fürmann, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rain, and Richard Roundtree. The plot revolves around Speed Racer, an 18-year-old automobile racer who follows his apparently deceased older brother's career, choosing to remain loyal to his family and their company, Racer Motors, which causes difficulties after he refuses a contract that E.P. Arnold Royalton, owner of Royalton Industries, offers him.
A live-action Speed Racer film had been in development hell since 1992. In 2006, producer Joel Silver and the Wachowskis began production on the film. Speed Racer was shot in and around Potsdam and Berlin from June to August 2007.
Speed Racer premiered on April 26, 2008, at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, and was released in the United States on May 9, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office failure, grossing $94 million against a $120 million budget. In later years, the film would garner a strong cult following among filmmakers and audiences. It was nominated in three categories at the Teen Choice Awards.
Plot
Speed Racer is a young man passionate about automobile racing. His parents, Pops and Mom, run Racer Motors, which involves his brother Spritle, their pet chimpanzee Chim Chim, mechanic Sparky, and his girlfriend Trixie. He also idolizes his late older brother Rex, who was killed racing in the Casa Cristo 5000, a deadly cross-country rally. Now starting his own career, Speed is rapidly gaining fame with his brother's Mach 5 and his own T-180 car, the Mach 6, while focusing on racing and family. One day, E.P. Arnold Royalton, CEO of Royalton Industries, offers Speed a luxurious lifestyle in exchange for racing with him; Speed declines due to his father's distrust of corporations.
Angered, Royalton reveals that key races have been fixed by corporate interests, including himself. As a show of power, Royalton has one of his drivers crash Speed's Mach 6 during a race, and also has Racer Motors sued for intellectual property infringement. Speed can retaliate through Inspector Detector, head of a corporate crimes division, since fellow racer Taejo Togokahn has evidence to indict Royalton but will only share it if Speed and the masked Racer X race for his team in the forthcoming Casa Cristo 5000, which could raise his family's racing business stock and block a Royalton buyout. Speed accepts but keeps it secret from his family, and Detector's team makes defensive modifications to the Mach 5 for the race.
After driving together and working as a team, Speed begins to suspect that Racer X is Rex in disguise. His family discovers that he has entered the race and agrees to support him. With Trixie and his family aiding him, Speed defeats many brutal racers bribed by fixer Cruncher Block and overcomes obstacles to win the race, while Detector's team arrests Block. However, Taejo's plan is revealed to be a sham, as his true intention was to boost his family's company to secure a higher price for Royalton's buyout.
Enraged by this news, Speed confronts Racer X, suspecting he is Rex. Racer X removes his mask, revealing an unfamiliar face and stating that Rex is dead, but advises Speed to stay true to himself and find his own reason to race. Speed returns home, planning to leave, but Pops expresses pride in him and admits his own stubbornness drove Rex away. Taejo's sister Horuko unexpectedly arrives with Taejo's rejected invitation to the Grand Prix. The Racer family unites and builds a new Mach 6 in 32 hours.
Speed enters the Grand Prix with Inspector Detector against great odds; Royalton has placed a $1,000,000 bounty on him, and he faces future Hall of Famer, five-time WRL champion, and two-time Grand Prix champion Jack "Cannonball" Taylor. Speed overcomes a slow start to catch up with Taylor, who cheats using a spear hook to tie the Mach 6 to his car. Speed reveals it to the cameras, exposing Royalton's crimes, causing Taylor to crash and lose, and eventually winning the race. As Racer X watches from afar, a flashback montage reveals him to be Rex, having faked his death, secretly attended his funeral, and undergone facial plastic surgery to protect Speed. He chooses not to reveal his identity to his family, opting to live with the consequences. The Racer family celebrates Speed's victory, and Taejo testifies against Royalton and his henchmen, leading to Royalton's imprisonment for his crimes.
Cast
Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer, a professional race car driver. Nicholas Elia as Young Speed Racer Christina Ricci as Trixie, Speed's girlfriend. Ariel Winter as Young Trixie John Goodman as Pops Racer, Speed's father. Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer, Speed's mother. Matthew Fox as Racer X / Rex Racer, Speed Racer's older brother and idol, who was presumed to have been killed in a race, and is tasked with exposing the corruption undermining the WRL. Scott Porter as Young Rex Racer Roger Allam as E.P. Arnold Royalton, the corrupt owner and CEO of Royalton Industries. Paulie Litt as Spritle Racer, Speed's younger brother Benno Fürmann as Inspector Detector, head of the Corporate Crimes Division, Central Intelligence Bureau Hiroyuki Sanada as Mr. Musha, president and CEO of Musha Motors Rain as Taejo Togokahn, a rookie racer Richard Roundtree as Ben Burns, a race commentator and former racing champion Kick Gurry as Sparky, Speed's mechanic and best friend John Benfield as Cruncher Block, a professional race fixer and gang leader Christian Oliver as Snake Oiler, a shady racer who wears snakeskin racing clothes Ralph Herforth as Jack "Cannonball" Taylor, a superstar racer, 5-time WRL champion, 2-time Grand Prix champion, and future hall of famer sponsored by Royalton Industries Yu Nan as Horuko Togokahn, Taejo Togokhan's sister Nayo K. Wallace as Minx, a scientist and Racer X's girlfriend Melvil Poupaud as Johnny "Goodboy" Jones, a race commentator Ramon Tikaram as Casa Cristo Announcer Ben Miles as Cass Jones Peter Fernandez as Local Announcer Cosma Shiva Hagen as Jeannie Moritz Bleibtreu as Gray Ghost, a French racer for Eccran Establishment. Karl Yune as Taejo's Bodyguard Joon Park as Kakkoi Teppodama, a Japanese racer for Musha Motors tasked with taking out Speed at the Grand Prix for a million dollars. He is credited as "Yakuza Driver" in the end credits. Togo Igawa as Tetsua Togokahn, Taejo, and Horuko's father, and a corporate rival to both Royalton and Musha Chim Chim, Spritle's pet chimpanzee and best friend, is portrayed by two chimpanzees: "Kenzie" and "Willy". The series' original English dubbing artists, Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr, appear as race announcers. Andres Cantor also makes a cameo as a Spanish-language race announcer. Venezuelan professional racer Milka Duno also makes a cameo appearance as Kellie "Gearbox" Kalinkov, a Grand Prix racer who is tasked with eliminating Speed in exchange for collecting a bounty of a million dollars by Royalton.
Production Development In September 1992, Joe Pytka announced that Warner Bros. held the option to create a live-action film adaptation of the 1960s Japanese anime and manga series Speed Racer, in development at Silver Pictures. In October 1994, singer Henry Rollins was offered the role of Racer X. In June 1995, Johnny Depp was cast into the lead role for Speed Racer, with production slated to begin the coming October, with filming to take place in California and Arizona. The following August, Depp requested time off from the studio for personal business, delaying production. However, due to an overly high budget, the same August, director Julien Temple left the project. Depp, without a director, also departed from the project. The studio considered director Gus Van Sant as a replacement for Temple, though it would not grant writing privileges to Van Sant. In December 1997, the studio briefly hired Alfonso Cuarón as director. In the various incarnations of the project, screenwriters Marc Levin, Jennifer Flackett, J. J. Abrams, and Patrick Read Johnson had been hired to write scripts.
In September 2000, Warner Bros. and producer Lauren Shuler Donner hired music video director Hype Williams to take the helm of the project. In October 2001, the studio hired screenwriters Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring for $1.2 million split between them to write a script for the film. Eventually, without production getting underway, the director and the writers left the project. In June 2004, Vince Vaughn spearheaded a revival of the project by presenting a take for the film that would develop the characters more strongly. Vaughn was cast as Racer X and was also attached to the project as an executive producer. With production never becoming active, Vaughn was eventually detached from the project.
Pre-production
In October 2006, the Wachowskis were brought on board by the studio to write and direct the film. Producer Joel Silver, who had collaborated with the Wachowskis for V for Vendetta and The Matrix Trilogy, explained that they were hoping to reach a broader audience with a film that would not be rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. Visual effects designer John Gaeta, who won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for the Wachowskis' The Matrix, was brought in to help conceive a live-action adaptation of Speed Racer. Production was set to begin in summer 2007 in European locations for a summer 2008 release. In November 2006, the release date for it was set for May 23, 2008.
Producer Joel Silver described Speed Racer as a family film in line with the Wachowskis' goal to reach a wider audience. However, contrary to the apparent mainstream appeal of the project, the directors decided to take the source material in an avant-garde direction, declaring: "Okay, we are going to assault every single modern aesthetic with this film." According to Lana, representatives of Warner Bros. were initially "gleeful" that the directors chose to take on "a known entity that seemed like a family movie for kids", but when executives reviewed the work-in-progress, "they were like, 'Oh my god. Are you insane? What are you doing? This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.' And we're like, 'Yes, that's the reason we're making it.'" For the Wachowskis, the project presented a unique opportunity to experiment with techniques of postmodernist cinema, as they believed the film's younger target audience would be more receptive to radical experimentalism than adults. In a 2012 interview, Lana said:
While planning out the film's pace and structure, the siblings embraced techniques of nonlinear narrative—such as stream-of-consciousness storytelling—from modernist novels like Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce and Purple America (1997) by Rick Moody, seeking to play with the conventions of cinematic language as those authors had done with prose. They deemphasized traditional cuts in favor of more fluid transitions, with the intention that scenes would "feel like this experiential flowing thing that was transcending normal simple linear narrative". The film's bright, colorful, smooth look is indebted to pop art, including paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and art photography by Andy Warhol, David LaChapelle, and Jill Greenberg. To achieve the desired visual aesthetic, Gaeta and effects supervisor Dan Glass developed a method of layering photographic and computer-generated imagery that they described as "poptimistic photo-anime", taking inspiration from animated films like The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Tron (1982), Akira (1988), and Tarzan (1999).
Casting