WTF Happened to Speed Racer?
Author: Lucas
July 25th, 2008
Lets forget about the live-action movie that just came out and let’s look at the real monstrosity in the Speed Racer legend. Lionsgate is putting out this new Speed Racer: The Next Generation DVD and expects people to pay money for it.
Why do I think this is so terrible? Well apparently the now defunct toy company Art Asylum had created a very cool version of a new generation of Speed Racer before the Wachowski movie was greenlit, even before Vince Vaughn wanted to play Racer X back in 2003. These designs look very cool and had a fresh modern vibe to it, the Lionsgate one has Speed with a mullet?!! Was this made in Canada? Oh snap, it was…
Art Asylum also apparently designed a whole line of toys on these designs here - as it was to follow a webseries online. So what happened? I guess bad sales, thus proving what was the actual worth of making a movie on a property that was probably quite stale at a retail level. A great article on the Speed Racer history is here.
All the same, this Lionsgate version looks so low rent that its impossible to imagine the thought process behind it. Then again the same can be said for the movie. I guess some franchises are better left in the past no matter how cool the theme song was.
Looking at a few of the old school Japanese properties coming out soon: I don’t have warm feelings for the upcoming Astro Boy CG movie either (boy in his underwear flying around), but I do have hope for the Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets one, so we’ll have to wait and see. With the success of Transformers, I was hoping that a Shogun Warriors movie would have been greenlit already?
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5 Responses to “WTF Happened to Speed Racer?”
July 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Cartoon Network was running commercials for the Lionsgate DVD just before the release of the Wachowski movie. I was concerned that it was going to be a new CN series.
Basically, it looked like one of those knock-off Disney movies you see right after the official Disney release but they can do it because it’s based on a public domain character like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Little Mermaid, Cinderella etc. and it’s not like Disney thought up something on their own or paid someone to create something since that’s all Disney knows how to do because they don’t pay enough for any real creative talent like Pixar has.
Anyway, it looked that bad.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
This DVD is the first three episodes of the new cartoon on Nick. It’s as ugly as you might imagine, but generally awesome comics guys Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti wrote them, so the story is actually pretty decent.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Thanks for the further input John and Anthony.
July 28th, 2008 at 6:17 am
I stand by my ruling that the SPEED RACER movie was good.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:08 am
I also did not hate the Speed Racer movie.