Yeah okay I did not expect, upon rewatching this movie, to actually tear up My previous defense of this movie is that it's an avant-garde tech demo, not a story -- but that IS the story This movie is a story about the Wachowskis and filmmakinghttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1292692634541031426 …
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Which is why, compared to what another movie would've done with this framing device, it goes on so long and so deep Letting Speed tell the long involved story about how he and Pops almost gave up on the whole business, until one night they watched a tape of the '43 Grand Prix
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And they found themselves cheering and rooting for their guy and screaming at the finish as though they were watching it live and not history that happened decades ago This flashback is shown to us with washed-out color, as though it were a black-and-white film
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This is Lana and Lilly's story When you get the shit beaten out of you, you go back to your happy place, the moment you fell in love That moment when you were a teenager and you saw some old classic chestnut that's been done to death and it blew your fucking mind
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"Is that ALLOWED? Can you DO that? A human being made something this FUCKING COOL? Is that something I could do someday?"
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And Royalton systematically takes it apart The race was fixed from the beginning, the best racer on that track had his car sabotaged and spun out in the first lap, the purpose of the race was just to manipulate the stock market and solidify one CEO's monopoly
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This is something that could apply to any field kids dream about going into But holy shit does it ever apply to the entertainment industry Sports is full of fixing and rigging scandals but in entertainment it's not even actually against the rules
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"This guy did it first, you've never heard of him, he crossed the wrong people and they fucked him hard -- never worked again" "We all know the Academy was pulling hard to shut her out of Best Actress after all the toes she stepped on"
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"He's a loser and a hack but he'll never lack for jobs, not with who his parents are" "...Did you hear what he does to women in the industry? Well, don't go talking about it, you don't wanna make waves" Story after story after story like this
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It is cheesy, sure, but it sure as hell hits different after hearing Lana and Lilly talk about being basically shut out of the industry after Sense8 underperformed and Jupiter Ascending flopped
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About all the doors suddenly getting slammed in their faces after Lana came out and they were no longer the geeky Golden Boys, the Wachowski Brothers, but the awkwardly phrase "The Wachowskis" After they became controversial
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Speed Racer IS THE MOVIE that was they were trying to get in the can while Buck Angel was blabbing to the tabloids about Lana screwing around with his wife and being a pervy crossdressing fetishist
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She had this dark cloud hanging over her that the whole movie might fail, that her career might permanently come to an end -- that the world would reject her transition, the history books would be rewritten "LEGENDARY MATRIX CREATOR EXPOSED AS SEXUAL DEVIANT"
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Royalton snarling with relish in Speed's face "I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to march out of here all self-righteous and you're going to do everything in your power to prove what I've told you is a lie."
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"But you won't. You won't win, you won't place, you won't even finish the race. You'll never win a race again, no matter what you do. Because [Hollywood] isn't about [movies], and it isn't about [filmmakers]. It's about money, and it's about power."
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(Lana's shockingly frank interview before Jupiter Ascending, seven years later in 2015 "We've never had a #1 box office hit since V for Vendetta. This is the last chance they're giving us to do so, and if we fail this time, I don't think we ever will again.")
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It fucking hurts like hell to think about I can only read this movie in that real-life context, that making this movie itself was an attempt to escape from all the bullshit, to make a movie that's about the love of making movies
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Everything else -- money, fame, fans -- is bullshit, it's a distraction The reward for making a movie is *getting to make a movie* The reward for being a racecar driver is *they let you drive a fucking racecar*
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The character's experience of driving the car and the creators' experience of actually making those scenes is one and the same Marveling at the beauty of the technology, the power of it, the way the machine and the human controlling it harmonize with each other
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Mom Racer's little speech that it's not about the trophies or the cash prizes or even keeping their business afloat It's just about watching him race "Like painting a picture, or playing music... the things you do that no one else can do... it's beautiful"
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The Wachowskis, of course, were not literally attacked by ninja assassins and did not literally have mail bombs sent to them and their competitors in the film industry were not literally trying to run them off a cliff to their deaths But in 2008 it sure must've felt like it
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And that cheesy family adventure movie question -- "Why do you keep doing it if it just puts you and your family in danger? Why keep doing it if everyone's spreading lies about you and your fame turns to infamy? Why do it if you know they'll never let you win again?"
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I'm pretty sure Lana has actually said in interviews the same line she gives Speed Racer here "I have to [make movies]... It's the only thing I can do"
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Everyone else sees this machine, this device, this tech, this hunk of metal, as a tool It's a business -- it's for transporting people to and from work, it's for hauling cargo across the country, it's to provide customers for tourist traps and fast food restaurants
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(It's to make commercials and trick people into buying shit It's for putting in every corner of every public place to create a ubiquitous surveillance state and get people arrested It's for making blurry selfies and sexting and other random social garbage)
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You are one of the only ones, the lucky ones, who gets to use one of these things *just because it's cool* Who gets to push it to the limit, to see how fucking cool it is, this miracle the eggheads invented and never understood when they did
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The feeling of moving faster than any animal with legs has ever moved, the landscape turning into a colorful blur, the G-forces clutching your body like a fist, your eyes and hands and nerves becoming one with a steel beast with the power of five hundred fucking horses
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Knowing how steadicam and greenscreen and VFX workstation fit together just like engine and transmission and wheels Pointing and clicking and like magic here's a hail of gunfire, here's a fiery explosion, here's a majestic sunset and a moon that fills half the sky
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I'm allowed to do anything, no speed limit, no red lights, no traffic laws of any kind I get to go as hard as my skill and my tech and my courage can take me
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I can film a flashback that takes place *during* the framing scene flashing back to it, literally overlapping each other through superposition I can break the rules of cinematic space, I can have things and people my character imagines literally physically wander into frame
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(Speed Racer walked where Sense8 ran here, and Rian Johnson, again, owes Lana and Lilly a cup of coffee) I can use modern VFX to make "live-action" transitions -- wild whip-pans and absurdly long zooms -- only dreamt of in the tackiest Saturday morning cartoons
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