Dear God, NO...
Remember Speed Racer? That cartoon series pretty much introduced Anime to America. It was cheesy back when it first appeared on American TV about 40 years ago. Myself, I first saw it around 1976.
Perhaps because of that (and it's unique style compared to American cartoons of that era) it became ''a cult favorite''. Well, after many attempts, (and likely bribes with cocaine and hookers) Vince Vaughn managed to get WB to 'greenlight' it as a live-action movie.
From ANN:
I'll be honest, by today's standards, Speed Racer was not all that great. I use Pokemon as a good example of lousy Anime. Both Speed Racer and Pokemon share the same trait of telling pretty much the same story again and again and again. And in both cases there isn't much of a story to tell. If you've seen one episode of either you've seen all of them. There is nearly no overall story arc.
In fact that's why I hate Pokemon as an Anime series, the games have an overall storyline (that continues from game to game) that the Anime has little of. The thin plot works for the games but does not work for a long-running Anime series.
So if you take a thin, simplistic story that is only functional for a single 22-minute episode and stretch it to fit a 75-120+ minute movie what will you get? Filler. And lots of it.
It's why Star Trek: The Motion Picture was so bad. Take a story that would have worked as a single 45-minute episode and try to make it fit a two and a half hour movie.
The only way to make Speed Racer work as a film is to pretty much write a whole new story from scratch. Pirates of the Caribbean (a Disney World attraction converted to a movie) took that approach and it worked. Disney also tried that with Country Bear Jamboree and it utterly failed.
My opinion? Speed Racer: The Motion Picture will likely be 'dumped' during next year's ''March Madness''. Hey, it got TMNT the #1 for two weeks. Even though it most likely sucked.
Will I watch TMNT? I might, after it's released to DVD and it appears on Bittorrent. I learned my lesson with Idiocracy. I paid $20 for it when I could have just as easily DL'd it via Bittorrent.
I won't flush another $20 down the commode.
I'm glad I DL'd Onagai Twins (HEY, I actually liked Onagai Teacher). I watched that whole disaster hoping it would improve. It never did. I'm just glad I only paid for my mistake when I hit 'play'.
BTW, Onagai Twins is Bandai. Yet it has the patented Gainax ending. It began poorly, continued worse and ended by crashing into the wall. Good artwork, good audio and ample fanservice didn't help it in any way. But it follows the ''one bathing scene per episode'' rule (and that's been done better elsewhere). The whole plot of Onagai Twins is a boy and a girl that are twins. That would make them fraternal twins. Basic 'birds and bees'; two different eggs, two different sperm make two babies in the same womb. Yet the series continually tries to make the point that the boy and girl(s) are twins due to the fact that they all have blue eyes. By that nonsense, I would be a relative as well.
UPDATE: I forgot to clarify the basic plotline here, girl #1 shows up at Mike's (the central character) home bearing a photo supposedly of the two of them as toddlers. Mike also has a copy of said photo. Then girl #2 shows up also bearing a copy of said photo and also claiming to be the long-lost sister. They dispense with the idea of doing a DNA test by calling it unaffordable. So it muddles on for a dozen episodes trying to sort out who is the actual sister and who ain't. To save you the effort of subjecting yourself to this disaster it's girl #2, the mousy one that often faints. And they come up with a very contrived way of discovering this fact. If you want to sit through 13 episodes of angst, be my guest, just don't tell me you weren't warned...
posted by YIH @ 12:42 AM on Sunday, April 22, 2007Perhaps because of that (and it's unique style compared to American cartoons of that era) it became ''a cult favorite''. Well, after many attempts, (and likely bribes with cocaine and hookers) Vince Vaughn managed to get WB to 'greenlight' it as a live-action movie.
From ANN:
WB's live action adaptation of Speed Racer has been canned by the studio several times in the past.Aren't you just eager to see this? Me neither. It's supposed to hit the big screen May 2008 apparently as a medium-budget film. I doubt this will go well, often when a cartoon is adapted to live-action it often sucks. Unless it's about a superhero (and even that is no guarantee of being a decent flick. Batman and Robin as well as Superman Returns come to mind).
I'll be honest, by today's standards, Speed Racer was not all that great. I use Pokemon as a good example of lousy Anime. Both Speed Racer and Pokemon share the same trait of telling pretty much the same story again and again and again. And in both cases there isn't much of a story to tell. If you've seen one episode of either you've seen all of them. There is nearly no overall story arc.
In fact that's why I hate Pokemon as an Anime series, the games have an overall storyline (that continues from game to game) that the Anime has little of. The thin plot works for the games but does not work for a long-running Anime series.
So if you take a thin, simplistic story that is only functional for a single 22-minute episode and stretch it to fit a 75-120+ minute movie what will you get? Filler. And lots of it.
It's why Star Trek: The Motion Picture was so bad. Take a story that would have worked as a single 45-minute episode and try to make it fit a two and a half hour movie.
The only way to make Speed Racer work as a film is to pretty much write a whole new story from scratch. Pirates of the Caribbean (a Disney World attraction converted to a movie) took that approach and it worked. Disney also tried that with Country Bear Jamboree and it utterly failed.
My opinion? Speed Racer: The Motion Picture will likely be 'dumped' during next year's ''March Madness''. Hey, it got TMNT the #1 for two weeks. Even though it most likely sucked.
Will I watch TMNT? I might, after it's released to DVD and it appears on Bittorrent. I learned my lesson with Idiocracy. I paid $20 for it when I could have just as easily DL'd it via Bittorrent.
I won't flush another $20 down the commode.
I'm glad I DL'd Onagai Twins (HEY, I actually liked Onagai Teacher). I watched that whole disaster hoping it would improve. It never did. I'm just glad I only paid for my mistake when I hit 'play'.
BTW, Onagai Twins is Bandai. Yet it has the patented Gainax ending. It began poorly, continued worse and ended by crashing into the wall. Good artwork, good audio and ample fanservice didn't help it in any way. But it follows the ''one bathing scene per episode'' rule (and that's been done better elsewhere). The whole plot of Onagai Twins is a boy and a girl that are twins. That would make them fraternal twins. Basic 'birds and bees'; two different eggs, two different sperm make two babies in the same womb. Yet the series continually tries to make the point that the boy and girl(s) are twins due to the fact that they all have blue eyes. By that nonsense, I would be a relative as well.
UPDATE: I forgot to clarify the basic plotline here, girl #1 shows up at Mike's (the central character) home bearing a photo supposedly of the two of them as toddlers. Mike also has a copy of said photo. Then girl #2 shows up also bearing a copy of said photo and also claiming to be the long-lost sister. They dispense with the idea of doing a DNA test by calling it unaffordable. So it muddles on for a dozen episodes trying to sort out who is the actual sister and who ain't. To save you the effort of subjecting yourself to this disaster it's girl #2, the mousy one that often faints. And they come up with a very contrived way of discovering this fact. If you want to sit through 13 episodes of angst, be my guest, just don't tell me you weren't warned...
Labels: Movies that'll suck
