April 7th, 2008 | 
For those of you who are less inclined to keep track of such things, I’m here to tell ya’ that Speed and the Mach 5 are back. The new Speed Racer movie will fill a big screen near you on May 9.
The Speed Racer movie was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers of Matrix trilogy fame. That alone should make it cool. The movie appears to be a wild combination of colors, animation, and visual effects with real (non-animated) actors. I’m sure it’s a trip given the people responsible for it.
Speed Racer was my Luke Skywalker long before Luke was a gleam in George Lucas’ eye. He was my hero. And the Mach 5. What can I say . . . In elementary school, I covered every notebook I had with renderings of the car.
The Mach 5 could do everything and was not bound by the laws of physics. At least not those of this planet. All this power was placed in the driver’s hands through buttons on the steering wheel. Year’s ago, I reproduced a diagram of the buttons for my kids.
My favorite feature was the rotary saws that extended through the front bumper. They could mow down a forest at 100mph. Oh yeah. The best example is when Speed escaped impending danger in the famous Mammoth Car episode.
YouTube Video – Speed Racer & MAMMOTH CAR
I rarely attend movies on the opening day, but I think I’m going to make an exception for this one. You can check out the trailers for the movie here.
Maybe the modern Speed will even make out with Trixie.
Related posts:
Category:
[...] 2-Speed wrote an interesting post today on Speed Racerâ??s Back!Here’s a quick excerpt For those of you who are less inclined to keep track of such things, I’m here to tell ya’ that Speed and the Mach 5 are back. The new Speed Racer movie will fill a big screen near you on May 9. The Speed Racer movie was written and directed by the Wachowski brothers of Matrix trilogy fame. That alone should make it cool. The movie appears to be a wild combination of colors, animation, and visual effects with real (non-animated) actors. I’m sure it’s a trip given the people responsible for [...]
Will- I too was a big Mach 5 fan. Personally being the oldest child I always sort of related to Racer X myself. The good news is that my little sons have seen the trailers and are already talking up the movie. Can’t wait to see it!
Will,
As an adult I’ve wondered what would happen if while sitting at a traffic light with people in the cross walk, Speed accidentaly hit the C button and deployed the saws, not a pretty sight.
I’ve also wondered why Pops, for practical business reasons, didn’t accept a contract with the Brazilian government to de-forest all of Brazil’s rain forest. Given a few quick calculations yields a comfortable 50,000 sq. miles of forest cut down per year, which, if Speed started back in 68, the 1.6 million sq miles of Amazon rain forest would have been cut down by 2000. Perhaps a young Al Gore spoke to him…
I think part of the appeal of the likes of a Speed Racer, is that his “super powers” not un-like Spiderman’s, seemed possible, unlike Superman, which by the time you’re 10-12, you realize, just ain’t gonna happen.
Enjoy the movie, I’m sure I will.
John
Maybe the key difference between Spiderman’s powers (who wants to be bitten by a spider anyway?) and Speed’s is that Speed’s are actually the powers of the car. He’s a normal guy, like you or me (OK, his brother talks to a monkey – so not completely normal), but when he gets into the Mach 5, he becomes a super hero. Sort like the Starship Enterprise and Captain Kirk?
[...] [...]
Speed Racer Video Review! Really worth seeing!
http://yetmorefun.net/mov.php?v=Speed_Racer_Video_Review
The Wachowski bros certainly put a lot of effort into making Speed Racer… the movie overall looked and felt like a cross between anime, a kaleidoscope, that Flintstones movie, a video game and the Dukes of Hazard
This is right here, in the present, not the future.