Generally when I leave the theater after seeing a movie, I regard it as one of three things. Good, bad, or entertaining. The first two speak for themselves, ‘entertaining’ generally means I don’t think I wasted my time/money, but I probably won’t go out of my way to see it again.
Every now and then, however, I see a movie that leaves me with a sense of…epicness. Batman Begins was one of those movies. Star Trek another. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Probably one of my favorite movies of all time.)
Speed Racer is another ‘epic’ movie in my book. Now I never watched Speed Racer, the original anime, but as any good anime fan, I knew what it was. When I saw the commercials for the live action movie it looked unreal and both SD and myself were very excited about it, knowing it would either be beyond awesome, or a horrible train wreck.
When the movie came out people said it was awful. Not wanting to disappoint ourselves, SD and I never went to see it. But last week, somehow the topic came up and one of our D&D pals, Evan said that it was really good if you don’t go into it expecting an amazing movie. He said they did a really good job translating anime style into live action.
I was intreagued. I downloaded it. I loved it.
The movie itself was so beyond amazing. The story, of course, is rather typical of anime but not bad, and the way they told it and the style of the movie will have it forever etched in my mind as one of my favorite movies of all time.
The reason the movie did poorly, however, is pretty obvious. The style that I love so much is a cross between Pushing Daisies (A TV show which got canceled.) and anime put to live action. Unfortunately the people who like both are probably a small portion of the population. SD and I just happen to be two people who love it.
Even now I have that ache that I always get after reading a superb book or seeing an epic movie.
