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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