Go, Speed Racer, Go!
I am so easy to please, it is embarrassing. You would think a man of high-flown literary pretensions such as myself would insist on films with a deeper meaning, touching the sublime. Nope. All I need are Ninjas, explosions, car-weapons, explosions, fight-scenes, explosions, splendor and spectacle, action, explosions, and a comedy relief monkey, and I am happy as a clam. Throw in Christiana Ricci and John Goodman, and I am sold, bought, and paid for.
SPEED RACER is not a movie meant to explore man’s deeper meaning in life. It is a movie where the mysterious masked racing vigilante, Racer X, attacks a group of cigar-chomping gangland thugs in their heavily armed and armored eighteen-wheeler with his supersonic rocket-car.
If I recall correctly (and someone correct me if I do not, please) in the book NOVA by Delany, one conceit was that any spaceman who looked into the heart of an exploding Nova-O sun while retreated from the fiery shockwave at faster than the speed of light would have his optic nerve overloaded, and his brain dazzled with the immense overabundance of light and color. Well, SPEED RACER is about as close to the Nova-Divers of Delany as we are likely to find soon in real life.
The visuals are simply amazing. The flashbacks are intercut into current action with disorienting seamlessness, and you have to (sort of) pay attention to tell what is happening when. The plot is simple: innocent Farmboy Luke Racer is tempted by the Evil Emperor to join the Dark Side — no, no, wait that is another movie, isn’t it? Anyone, bad industrialist tries to corrupt Speed, and so Speed has to win two or three deadly races to restore honor to the sport.
And then there are the triple-backflipping ninja-Viking deathcars, covered with spikes, that try to mug Our Hero with their hidden weapons systems. And there are ninjas. And a monkey.
What do you want, Shakespeare?
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wait and see this on a small screen: it would have absolutely no point unless you are sitting close enough to the giant screen to suffer from epileptic visual overload.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
