Forum - View topicSpeed Racer Movie = Movie Flop?
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=speedracer.htm
So assuming they spent in the neighborhood of $50-$80 million for promotions and adverts, and a film is considered to break even if it makes twice it's production, WB is like $170 Million in the hole. And the ironic thing is, the Wachowski brothers will probably still manage to get work. |
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zaphdash
 Posts: 620 Location: Brooklyn |
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Why wouldn't the Wachowskis continue getting work? Speed Racer is their one true failure; their other movies have been box office gold. The Matrix series was absurdly lucrative and V For Vendetta was pretty profitable. Everyone occasionally makes an unsuccessful movie -- in 1938, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, and Fred Astaire were declared "box office poison," and it boggles the mind to consider what the combined gross of all their movies ended up being (although in fairness, their movies at least tended to be good even if they weren't successful -- something that generally works the other way around for the Wachowskis). I don't especially like the Wachowskis, but they'll be back and there's nothing "ironic" about it. Rarely does one dud sink an entire career, especially a career that has produced a movie trilogy worth more than $1.6 billion.
That said, Speed Racer was awful and deserves to tank. I'm not terribly familiar with the TV show aside from having caught an episode here or there years ago; frankly I don't even care about the TV show. Just as a movie, Speed Racer was a ghastly mess, bordering on unwatchable. I don't quite understand how anyone except maybe a ten year old with severe ADD could enjoy just being bombarded with images like that, and even then... I didn't have to pay to see it, but I still lost those two hours. It was far worse than I ever could have imagined. On the plus side, the anime adaptations coming out over the next few years should look much better by comparison -- Speed Racer has set the bar so low, you could step over it, and I suspect the Dragon Ball movie won't do a whole lot to raise the bar, either. But James Cameron's Battle Angel should be pretty awesome, and I'm interested to see what they do with Akira, though I am pretty sure it will not translate to live action at all. |
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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The movie sunk financially, interesting... but OP, what's there to discuss?
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8509 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Speed Racer was a box office flop, but I feel it was largely due to panic brought on by elitist critics who take movies too seriously and the success of Iron Man. Speed Racer didn't really have much of a chance, since it was essentially a live action cartoon, whereas Iron Man was taking a serious approach to a comic book hero. That, and with movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dark Knight coming down the pike, movie goers had to decide which movies to see and which ones to forego. Perhaps this movie will do well in DVD sales, because it's an extremely fun film.
A person truly has to have no joy or love in their hearts not to enjoy this film. It's exciting, campy, and vibrant, and unapologetically over-the-top with its moralizing. Essentially, it's exactly what the cartoon was, but with neon highlights to it. It's a pure thrill ride from start to finish and most critics have totally missed the point entirely, or else simply hate joy itself. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16974 |
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I'll simply say I saw it and I thought it was a good movie for what it was supposed to be. As long as you didn't expect more then what the movie was giving it's an enjoyable movie. I thought most of the racing scenes were very well done and looked amazing. However, I think what hurt it a lot was coming out right after Iron Man and right before Indy 4. If they had done it before Iron Man or after Indy 4 I think it would have done better. That's just me though. I mean I liked FF Spirit's Within so I suppose my opinion has zero credibility heh.
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Veoryn87
 Posts: 808 |
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I think it's unfortunate that it flopped. Me and all my friends went to watch it and it was a really fun movie. I'd see it again if I could. There weren't to many other people in the theater besides us though. Unfortunate indeed. Hopefully future attempts at movies like this will have more positive results.
I liked Spirits Within too, psycho101, and to this day I still fail to see the problem people seem to have with it. Though I don't consider it a masterpiece in any way. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15653 |
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zap: Technically, Assassins was a flop, too. But that was associated more with Stallone than them. But yeah, the rule is they have to bomb twice or even three times in a row to be box office poison.
penguin: My joy and love doesn't extend to dumb arguments about business ethics. Veo: The problem with Spirits Within is that it came off like a generic sci-fi with pretty CG. |
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zaphdash
Posts: 620 Location: Brooklyn |
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I don't really know much about Assassins, but just checking the info on IMDB, it looks like it made a profit, albeit not a huge one ($30M in the US, $53M internationally, $83M all together, budget estimated at $50M). In any case, it doesn't especially matter: we're in agreement that Speed Racer isn't going to sink the Wachowskis, so whether it's their first or second true flop is academic.
Honestly, I have no idea how anyone could like Speed Racer though. I'm not trying to be antagonistic or anything, I would really like to know what you guys saw in it, something a little more concrete than just "it was fun" or joyful or whatever. I watch and enjoy a pretty wide range of movies, from the darlings of "elitist critics" to the finest that Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich (The Rock and Independence Day, respectively, among others) have to offer. But I just couldn't put up with Speed Racer. It's not that I expected more than what it was trying to give, as Psycho 101 suggests -- content-wise, it was basically exactly what I expected. But stylistically, it was abhorrent. The beginning was the worst part, just an unrelenting barrage of images. Superimposing shots over other shots with yet more shots wiping across the screen...ridiculous. There was that one scene toward the beginning where the two guys were talking and they were just framed normally in the shot, but then super closeups of their faces wiped across the screen at the same time -- and in the process, the 180 degree rule was broken. Breaking rules doesn't specifically bother me in and of itself (hell, I'm a sucker for the French New Wave and they were all about challenging convention), but sometimes it's really inappropriate and just serves to show you why these rules existed in the first place. Speed Racer wasn't being smart and making a point with it like good movies do, it was just trying to add more eye candy and ensure that there is constantly something moving or something new to look at. It was exceptionally irritating. As the movie progresses, it gets a little more tolerable (in retrospect I'm not really sure if this is because they toned it down or I just got used to the ADD overdrive), but it's never enjoyable. Still, I suppose I can understand why they felt compelled to do stuff like that, considering that the non-racing scenes are all pretty boring (and the hotel room fight against the "ninjas" was comic relief at its worst) because the plot is paper thin and the characters are practically zero-dimensional. But that doesn't especially matter in a movie like this, because you're not seeing it for an engrossing story or well developed characters, you're watching it for races. Unfortunately, the racing scenes themselves are way too frenetic and busy, and sometimes it's difficult to even tell exactly what's happening. They're like a nine-year-old's wet dream, but extremely difficult to sit through for those of us who haven't had to fill a Ritalin prescription. I like action sequences as much as the next guy, but good action sequences only, please. Michael Bay is known for extremely quick cuts and short takes, and frankly it's never stuck out for me in one of his movies like it did here. I don't know what the average shot length was here, but I'm going to guess that it's probably shorter than Armageddon's 1.5 seconds, and if it's not then the illusion is probably due to their aforementioned penchant for wiping other images across the screen. It's just absurd. It's not exciting -- you're caught between unwatchable race scenes and boring everything else. It's not vibrant, it's just a holocaust of colors. I'll give you campy, but that's not nearly enough. What a loathsome mess of a movie. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8509 Location: Penguinopolis |
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zapdash, you can't hate a gumdrop for not being a steak. Speed Racer was fun because it was so over-the-top and colorful, an assault on your sense of sight and exciting in its fast-paced cartoon action and unapologetically garish. Frankly, nobody who watches movies cares about your "rules" of filmography, as long as something is fun. They broke rules, so what? It was cartoonish, silly, and almost surreal, and that's why it was enjoyable.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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It was trash pretending to be candy. That's why I hated it. Cartoonish behaviour generally works when we are dealing with cartoons. Now, if it was Anime instead, then I would have been dismissive, and simply not watched it. This, however, was a live action movie. A sense of fun is one thing, but this was like the visuals were aiming to mimic a drug/alcohol bender. Surreal indeed. Still, we all have different tastes. If you're attracted to a film like that, I promise I won't judge you. I will just stay away from you. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8509 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Don't dismiss me as some easily amused simpleton- I liked the movie because of the great effort put in to making it the colorful, surreal world it was. The detail and spirit of the movie was what I found engaging about it. Feel free to "stay away" from me, though, whatever that means. |
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Veoryn87
Posts: 808 |
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I loved the movie for the same reasons penguintruth liked it. It was an incredibly fun movie thanks to the cartoony visuals, fast paced and well choreographed race scenes, and the sorta Saturday morning cartoon-like story that made me feel nostalgic (though I admit the story is much better than your average Saturday morning cartoon). I also really loved the fighting action. They were funny and visually cool at the same time. Someone here complained about the way the camera moved here, but I loved it. The way it zoomed in on different peoples faces as they were racing gave the movie a lot more energy. Made it more exciting.
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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There is no direct correlation between positive reaction from critics and the success of a big-budget movie. The attention that critics' reviews can get is nothing compared to the reach of a $50-some million US ad campaign. |
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Kurokageshi
 Posts: 22 Location: IA |
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Pen and Veo..You both rock! I agree with all you've said and will back you up 100% ^^b I don't have much to say that a review my friend and I wrote, doesn't say already. I'll post the link to it, hopefully it'll work. Otherwise i'll post the review on here. It's converted several people I know already. ^^v
Sometimes people are just too serious for their own good it seems. http://www.animeiowa.com/cgi-bin/smf/index.php?topic=3154.0 |
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Skylark
 Posts: 827 Location: ORE NO TSHIRT |
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I haven't watched the movie and I guess what I'm going to say isn't really relevant to the topic, but you guys REALLY shouldn't insult each other just because your opinions differ. dtm... seriously, comments like, "If you're attracted to a film like that, I promise I won't judge you. I will just stay away from you." .. Think about what you're saying man. If you find yourself typing something like "I won't judge you, but ...", chances are you ARE judging them. Just because someone liked a movie that you didn't like doesn't mean you can't discuss it with them, it just means your views will be different.
On the flipside, just because someone says they don't like a movie doesn't mean you have to say something like "Sometimes people are just too serious for their own good it seems." which can also be seen as pretty insulting. Just because someone likes or doesn't like what you don't like or like respectively doesn't mean that that person didn't see it the same way you did, or they didn't "get" it, or whatever - it's a thing called an opinion and everyone has a different one. So it'd probably be a good idea if we focus the conversation not on people's opinions of the thing and more on the movie itself. Yeah? I'm not playing backseat mod, I'd just hate to see the topic locked because you guys start mudslinging, and i think you guys are bigger than that anyways. As for the movie; i'll see it when it comes out on dvd. Only for the fact that I watched the show when I was a kid and I'm interested to see how it was done in live-action. I don't expect to take it too seriously though; keeping in mind for example, the name of the characters, and the zany escapades that happened in the cartoon. |
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