comment #1

Mgmax says ...

The marketing has been odd. They make it play like halfway to Blade Runner, and stress the Rollerball-like plot as if it's going to be fairly brutal, which makes it a bit of a turnoff for a genuine kid audience. Somehow they haven't communicated the innocent-fun aspect that says "live action Cars" to parents.

comment #2

roquentin says ...

For a kids film, it seems like too much of an aural-visual assault. It's Spy Kids on crack. I can only imagine a lot of parents are watching that trailer and saying, "Really? I have to endure this?"

comment #3

RMBurnett says ...

Folks,

Based on the terrific screenplay, with far more characterization, plot and heart then is evident in most of the marketing materials, I'm standing by what I've been saying for over a year.

This film will not only be huge, but may go down as a sort of minor classic.

I certainly hope so.

Your mileage however, may vary.

comment #4

jse33 says ...

This will be the dud of the Summer. Not only will it be going up against a strong 2nd weekend from Iron Man, but Prince Caspian opens 1 week later. And then Indy arrives on May 22nd to completely wipe out the remaining grosses Speed Racer could earn. If this gets to $100 million, it'll be a surprise. I'm guessing it'll be a Poseidon like disaster. Have a marginal $20 million opening and then sink quickly.

comment #5

Bocephus says ...

It's gonna be huge. Anyone who thinks that modern youths aren't tuned into cartoonish brutality, fast cars, and aural-visual assaults doesn't know much about kids.

It doesn't matter if parents don't want to take their kids to see it. Parents don't tell their children "no" anymore. They will just drop them off at the theater with a handful of money and leave their supervision to the minimum wage teenage ushers that work there.

comment #6

calraigh says ...

I've seen it and at the end of the day, this is a children's film, R.M Burnett.I really don't know what you gauge 'characterisation' by but it evidently ain't much.These are 2-d characters in an effects -driven, 3-d film.Christina Ricci's part is essentially an avatar and while Emile Hirsch does a very good job of interpreting a 50's-esque , early 60's approximation of a clean-cut, determined character, it is still only a description of a character that he plays.I have to admit the visuals are interesting but to be honest the overrall effect is that of actors in front of a screensaver.Personally I think it's much too 'soft' of a movie to attract teenage boys.Even the colour palette is feminine.

My 2 cent.

comment #7

Wrecktum says ...

If this is a kid's movie, then why has Warners played down the kid and monkey? Kids love monkeys, and the trailers, one-sheets and tv spots barely make a mention of it.

My theory is that WB wants to sell this an an ADULT film (hence the tracking figures) but has done a shitty job of it.

comment #8

Armin Tamzarian says ...

This might underperform in the US, but it's going to be huge internationally.

For what it's worth, I know a five year old girl who can't wait to see it (and neither can her dad).

comment #9

VoiceOfReason says ...

I hate being the off topic guy but these are some really god-awful terrible tunes:

http://www.scarlettalbum.com/

comment #10

CinemaPhreek says ...

Now, if this was a legitimate-type news outlet, Mr. Wells would put a disclaimer next to RMBurnett's (FREE ENTERPRISE) name and point out that he is DVD content producer who works closely with Warner Brothers (he did SUPERMAN RETURNS) and we can assume he is probably doing SPEED RACER as well. Even destroyer-of-Alan-Moore-properties Don Murphy usually has a tag line denoting his involvement in a project when he posts about it.

*********** ************ **************

This is anecdotal to be sure, but a friend of mine with two boys who are 9 and 13 said that their May movie choices were IRON MAN (by a huge margin - Welcome to the A-List John Faveau and Rob Downey, Jr.) and then INDY 4. While they liked the trailer, SPEED RACER was a distant 3rd (or 4th as one wanted PRINCE CASPIAN more).

Because they do the full program of popcorn, soda, candy, a trip to see a film is usually just once a month, twice in the summer. Doesn't take much to imagine this scenario will be pretty common in the target audience, perhaps even worse because of the economy tanking.

Warner should have pushed the release up to April (which after 300 has become the new May anyways) or back to early August. At this point, their smartest move would be to cut their losses on advertising now and make a big push on DVD next fall.

comment #11

RMBurnett says ...

CinemaPhreek,

I have nothing at all to do with SPEED RACER, either the film or the DVD. I come to this site because I'm a fan of Mr. Wells and the folks who post here. Besides, do you really think posting on the message boards on HE has any effect whatsoever?

I've spend my life as a movie fan and my professional career working in the industry. My work speaks for itself. Doesn't mean I have to present my professional credientials every time I have an opinion.

On another note, I did produce the BALLET OF BULLETS on the SHOOT 'EM UP DVD, which has many quotes from Don Murphy.

I stand by my SPEED RACER opinion.

comment #12

C Toto says ...

I'm amazed when Hollywood reaches back in time for an old property like "Speed Racer" but then creates a film more in line with children who don't recognize the brand. Isn't name recognition the reason they resort to these antique properties?

Crazy, right? Then again, no kid today watched the original "Alvin and the Chipmunks" shows and look how huge that blew up at the box office.

comment #13

Feathers McGraw says ...

Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel are running different, much kid friendlier ads for Speed Racer (yes, featuring the monkey!) than the ones y'all are seeing in prime time. And all the boys in my son's preschool class are incredibly excited to see it, because it looks like the visualization of what goes on inside their heads when they play with Hot Wheels.

comment #14

Monument says ...

At least Mr. Burnett has the cajones to post under his own name, unlike the rest of us cowards who hide behind anonymous web handles.

comment #15

Monument says ...

"I hate being the off topic guy but these are some really god-awful terrible tunes:

http://www.scarlettalbum.com/"

I'll go off topic with you. As an absurdly obsessive Tom Waits fan I was appalled when I heard she was doing an album of his songs. Having heard the songs, I continue to be apalled. Her singing voice is possibly more obnoxious than her speaking voice.

comment #16

CinemaPhreek says ...

RMBurnett,

Actually, some of us do use information from this site to determine our viewing choices, especially of the "getting my butt to the theater instead of DVD" variety. I think most of us view the opinions of anyone with some sort of financial tie to the company making a certain film to be suspect.

Because if you can't be so brave/fool hardy to come on here and slam Warner releases, why should we trust your judgment when you come to praise them instead of bury? And if memory serves you talked up SUPERMAN RETURNS last summer and we all know how that turned out.

************** *************** **************

Monument,
Some of us have plenty of cajones, but until the site owner gets thicker skin we know it's best to say anything negative from behind a mask for the sake of decorum.

comment #17

frankbooth says ...

Tom Waits songs? Brilliant.

Maybe next we can get Jessica Alba covering Leonard Cohen.

comment #18

Monument says ...

"Some of us have plenty of cajones, but until the site owner gets thicker skin we know it's best to say anything negative from behind a mask for the sake of decorum."

Jeff's a reasonable guy, we had a misunderstanding and after a few emails it was resolved. It's amazing how many folks here think it's appropriate to talk shit, insult, and tear down a guy in his own house and then expect to be invited back.

comment #19

corey3rd says ...

how can you not say this film isn't be marketed to kids - have you not seen the ad - it starts with Little Speed Racer.

comment #20

CinemaPhreek says ...

Monument,
Let's just say I'm happy for you if that was your experience, but others have learned the hard way what "mercurial" means. And if were using emails instead of phone calls, then you aren't getting where I'm coming from.

comment #21

Edward says ...

Speed Racer had to be one of the worst animated shows ever, why anyone would be excited by it amazes me.

comment #22

RMBurnett says ...

Folks,

CinemaPhreek says:

"Actually, some of us do use information from this site to determine our viewing choices, especially of the "getting my butt to the theater instead of DVD" variety. I think most of us view the opinions of anyone with some sort of financial tie to the company making a certain film to be suspect."

Hey, I get lots of info from this site as well, which is why I come here every day.

Um...I've got financial ties to almost every area of the film industry. I've worked for every major studio in some capacity over the past twenty years. However, anyone who's seen me speak or watched any of the work I've done knows I have no problem being critical of something I don't like. One thing I've never been accused of is hiding my opinion, especially for financial reasons.

Heck, I co-produced both AGENT CODY BANKS films and I didn't like the first one and fucking HATED the second one. In my mind, the people directly involved with making the film, from the studio execs to the director himself, ruined what could've been a terrific franchise, because at the time, they stupidly decided to make it a film for "tweens" instead of keeping the original concept of Ferris Bueller meets James Bond.

I want ALL films to succeed. It's better for the entire industry. Every time a film like SPEED RACER, a visionary and risky adaptation of a mostly-forgotten animated show from the late 1960, works, it makes the projects I'm most interested in easier to produce.

Besides, SPEED RACER is really a science fiction film set in an alternate reality. I can't wait to see that.

Now, on to your next ill-considered comment:

"Because if you can't be so brave/fool hardy to come on here and slam Warner releases, why should we trust your judgment when you come to praise them instead of bury? And if memory serves you talked up SUPERMAN RETURNS last summer and we all know how that turned out."

You should trust my judgement because I've spent my life as a student of both films and the film industry with a small body of work I think gives me some amount of professional credibility.

Why would you call it brave/foolhardy to slam a certain release from a certain studio? I might consider a film a failure, but as an industry professional, I'm very aware of just how much work goes into a film, even those which don't ultimately work.

I'm so tired of this attitude that Hollywood intentionally cranks out shitty films. It doesn't. In fact, I've never, in over twenty years in the business, seen anyone, in any aspect of film production, put anything other than their best efforts forward toward whatever project they're working on. With the amount of people and opinions involved in the making of a film, it's miraculous they even get finished at all.

Finally, regarding SUPERMAN RETURNS. I think it's a terrific film. It's handsomely mounted, thoughtful, beautiful to look at and provides a previously unseen viewpoint on a classic American pop-culture icon. I don't think it's a perfect film, however and there's many choices which were made that don't, in hindsight, work, but I still enjoy it.

I was on-set each and every day of filming, and I can honestly say you've never seen a group of so many talented people working their asses off to make the best film possible.

I'm sure the same was true of SPEED RACER.

comment #23

MAGGA says ...

""I hate being the off topic guy but these are some really god-awful terrible tunes:

http://www.scarlettalbum.com/"

I went to her site and I was shocked to find she actually had quite an interesting voice. The production was also kind of cool. It's stupid to do an album of Waits-covers as your debut, as no one can improve on his brilliant interpretations, but she does have an interesting sound. I would never have expected that.

comment #24

MilkMan says ...

I used to live in the basement of a Japanese man's house in Silverlake. The place was infested with creepy crawlers and vermin. Being chronically self-unemployed, I used to sit in my bedroom all day getting stoned and playing a video game called Kinetica, which is exactly what Speed Racer looks like. And the fact that the people who work in the film industry can work so hard and consistently crank out and endless amount of mediocre movies is precisely the problem, and speaks to the dearth of truly talented and visionary people who are chosen to work in the film industry. Why I should cut these people some slack for doing what everyone else does on a daily basis is beyond me. A lot of work goes into making a Big Mac, from the people who work at the slaughterhouses, to the drivers who haul across country, to the kids who get paid minimum wage to stand in front of a double fryer all day long. And yet, lo and behold, you bite into a Big Mac and it's...okay. Same with this movie and 90% of the movies that are made. Get over yourself dude, it's only the movies.

comment #25

christian says ...

I will be there opening day with my GO GO GO shirt on.

This will play big. BIG.

comment #26

corey3rd says ...

Her voice is OK, but the musical arrangements are crap. At best it rips off Suicide. At worst it sounds like the guy who sold organs at the mall. She needs the ghost of Serge Gainsbourg to guide her career.

And Speed Racer still rules as a cartoon - you're just watching it sober. And you should chase Speed with an episode of Ultraman

comment #27

Gnome de Guerre says ...

The car-fu choreography is amazing in all the clips I've seen. The Wachowskis keep a sense of the geography, what the drivers are doing, what the cars are doing, the moves and countermoves, the intricacy of it all, and all without sacrificing the sense of speed.

Raimi never quite managed this in any of the Spider-Man flicks.

And Nolan utterly failed at it in Batman Begins. I really REALLY hope Dark Knight has a better handle on this kind of thing.

comment #28

christian says ...

SPIDER-MAN 2 has two of the best fight scenes in superhero movie history: the bank fight and the train battle. Perfectly shot, choreographed and edited.

comment #29

Doug says ...

I'd be more interested in this film if it looked like there was anything resembling an actual race.
And if there wasn't a monkey.

comment #30

Ray says ...

@ Doug - Funny you should mention that about Chim Chim. The version of SPEED RACER that I wrote a few years ago had Chim Chim die in the opening ten minutes during a horrendous explosion on the race track.

Everyone thought I was crazy for killing the monkey. I, however, always thought Chim Chim and Spritle were detrimental to the intrinsic story of SPEED RACER ... so I killed him off. I thought his death (and Spritle's life-threatening injuries) gave Speed some dramatic thrust to conquer the villain.

comment #31

D.Z. says ...

"The marketing team for Speed Racer (Warner Bros. 5.9) is facing an ironic challenge. It's basically "a kid's movie," as a critic friend recently confided, but the tracking, according to Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason, says the biggest interest levels so far are with the over-25 crowd who grew up on the animated versions in various media."

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Transformers and Scooby Doo, after all. The real concern is if it only connected with people who first saw the show 40+ years ago.

"As Mason points out, even 20th Century Fox's What Happens in Vegas, another 5.9 opener that feels to me like a whatever thing, is doing better on this score."

Maybe Ashton Kutcher should've played the lead role in Speed Racer. I doubt "What Happens in Vegas" is gonna do better than Speed Racer, though, simply for the fact that Cameron Diaz stopped being attractive.

"I for one am fascinated by the visual textures in this thing and therefore consider it a must-see, "

If it doesn't suck, and you like it, too, might I recommend checking out Akira, Neo Tokyo, and Revolutionary Girl Utena?

jse: "This will be the dud of the Summer. "

I'm betting on Hancock myself.

"Not only will it be going up against a strong 2nd weekend from Iron Man, but Prince Caspian opens 1 week later."

Iron Man could end up being the superhero equivalent of "Iron Giant", while the marketing for Prince Caspian only seems to suggest, "Look, new monsters!" True, that didn't hurt Harry Potter, but the books for that series are more recent, and movie-goers relate to the teen actors better than the ones in Narnia.

calraigh: "Personally I think it's much too 'soft' of a movie to attract teenage boys.Even the colour palette is feminine."

That didn't stop Spider-Man.

Phreek: "destroyer-of-Alan-Moore-properties Don Murphy "

V for Vendetta was pretty horrible without Don's help.

"Warner should have pushed the release up to April (which after 300 has become the new May anyways) or back to early August."

Releasing it in April would have put it up against Forbidden Kingdom, while releasing it in August would have killed its worth as a tentpole film.

"I think most of us view the opinions of anyone with some sort of financial tie to the company making a certain film to be suspect."

Generally yes, but Don hated Transformers, and most Bayphiles loved it, so nothing is constant nowadays.

"And if memory serves you talked up SUPERMAN RETURNS last summer and we all know how that turned out."

Superman Returns still did a helluva lot better than the last film. I think that's all that matters to the studio.

C Toto: "Then again, no kid today watched the original "Alvin and the Chipmunks" shows and look how huge that blew up at the box office."

I think they might be old enough to have seen the 80s cartoon or heard those crappy infomercials for "best of" CDs...

Edward: "Speed Racer had to be one of the worst animated shows ever, why anyone would be excited by it amazes me."

I'm excited, because they didn't screw it up like Inspector Gadget and Garfield.

RM: "Ferris Bueller meets James Bond."

Already been done. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm9oMGJDY-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHfrRtPU-xs

christian: Spider Man 2 has great fights, but a boring villain. Probably worse than Dafoe's rendition of the Green Goblin. That is one thing I liked about Spider Man 3. The villains had more depth and motivation than in the other films.

comment #32

Gnome de Guerre says ...

Christian... yes, I agree about the SM2 subway fight. I haven't seen it in a while, so I'm going more on the SM3 fights, esp. the goblin fight at the beginning. I thought it was good, but still, there were moments I was wondering exactly where they were or what I was looking at (esp when the camera moves along w/Spidey).

Check out this Speed clip for what I'm finding particularly impressive: www.reelzchannel.com/video/33780/speed-racer-clip-7

comment #33

Pelham123 says ...

I haven't seen any of the "Speed Racer" trailers on the big screen, but judging by what I have seen on my computer this should look amazing if not revolutionary blown up big and wide. That alone will be worth a visit to the theater and yes, kids will catch on to it fast.

comment #34

btwnproductions says ...

My press invite says SPEED RACER is 135 minutes long. That strikes me as a concern.

comment #35

moorish says ...

DZ said:

"Phreek: "destroyer-of-Alan-Moore-properties Don Murphy "

V for Vendetta was pretty horrible without Don's help."

I have to disgaree, DZ; Vendetta is easily the best of the Moore adaptations made to date. It is not the home-run that that the graphic novel is (surprise), but it stands two clear heads and shoulders over Murphy's From Hell or The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Brilliant books with fantastic ideas made into leaden, boring, overwrought, UNSUCCESSFUL films.

As for Speed Racer, it's definitely the movie that interests me the least out of the summer slate. It looks like a big ugly neon turd.

comment #36

D.Z. says ...

moorish: The V for Vendetta movie is great, if you want everything spelled out for you.

comment #37

Edward says ...

Maybe a few tokes or a tab of acid would help make "Speed Racer" really rock.

comment #38

D.Z. says ...

Someone plastered pics of 'shrooms on one of the posters.