"You do it because you're driven" | Speed Racer (2008)

In May 2008 Warner Bros released the glossy and expensive action film Speed Racerinto cinemas around the world. Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski, it was a live-action adaptation of a once-popular children’s cartoon made on a US$130 million dollar budget, blessed with wall-to-wall advertising and given a prime summer release date. It under-performed terribly, losing the studio tens of millions of dollars and failing to engage too many critics.

It’s not simply that the film wasn’t a commercial success; it seemed to be actively ignored. Here was an expensive, visual effects-driven blockbuster, written and directed by the siblings who created the phenomenally successful Matrix trilogy, featuring performances by quality actors like John Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Christina Ricci, based on a Japanese anime with enormous cult appeal, and it was as if one could hear crickets. Movies under-perform and flop all the time, but in the case of a visually distinctive, colourful film like Speed Racer there is usually the consolation of some kind of cult status. At the time of writing the film is eight years old, and that cult following still has not developed.

It’s a sad end for a movie that took Warner Bros 16 years and five directors to bring to the screen.