* In the film, Goku is a semi-normal high school student, rather than a childish monkey-boy with a tail who lives in the woods. However, even in the anime and manga, Goku does eventually grow up from a three-foot-tall Peanuts character into a normal-sized, perhaps Chatwin-sized adult.
* Piccolo's skin isn't a very bright green, and he doesn't seem to have antennae
* Master Roshi, who in the manga is a dirty old man who asks to look at Bulma's panties in return for a Dragon Ball, doesn't commit any acts of sexual harassment
* a bunch of characters have been removed, including Kuririn (Goku's fellow student under Master Roshi), the talking animals Pu'ar and Oolong, and Master Roshi's pet turtle
* plenty of plots and subplots have been removed, leaving the movie as kind of a mixture of Dragon Ball volumes 1-2 (the introduction of Goku and Bulma) and 13-16 (the introduction of Piccolo, and the big fight).

There's plenty more. A more serious complaint, however, is that "the script is an absolute, unmitigated disaster," to quote Zach Berlatsky of anime news network. What does the creator, Akira Toriyama himself, think about the Dragonball adaptation? Here's a translation of his words in a text announcement preceding a February 2009 promotional video:

"As the original creator, I had a feeling of "Huh?" upon seeing the screenplay and the character designs, but the director, all the actors, the staff, and the rest are nothing but "ultra" high-caliber people. Maybe the right way for me and all the fans to appreciate it is as a New Dragonball of a different dimension. Perhaps, this might become a great masterpiece of power! Hey, I look forward to it!!"

Toriyama is more charitable to Hollywood than Alan Moore-but then again, Toriyama, like most manga artists, has always had no illusions about producing mass entertainment. (Incidentally, it's worth mentioning that Dragonball: Evolution is not the first Dragon Ball film; that honor goes to 1989's Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins, an unlicensed Chinese live-action adaptation.)

The best thing going for Dragonball: Evolution is that, beneath all the spiky hair and shouting, Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball is a good story. (Particularly if you're a 14-year-old boy.) The fights and cliffhangers are exciting, the villains are reprehensible and the heroes are noble (and sometimes the villains are noble too, deep down), and the mixture of sci-fi, fantasy and comedy is entertaining and imaginative.

But there are other elements of Dragon Ball which may be difficult to make the transition to live action. One of these is the quirky, simple art style which gives Toriyama's work so much of its appeal. Toriyama's stories may be intense by the standards of American children's animation, but the appeal of his art is the cartooniness, which, when Dragon Ball started in the '80s, stood out among more square-jawed macho manga like City Hunter and Fist of the North Star. (Today, on the other hand, the influence of Dragon Ball has made the big-eyed, spiky-haired angular look the default manga style.) Putting simple, cartoony characters in dramatic situations is one of the trademark elements of manga and anime, and a more interesting way to adapt Dragon Ball might have been with film-quality animation or CGI, like the upcoming Astro Boy live-action movie. Although Keanu Reeves may not look entirely like Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop, no real human being can look quite like a Toriyama character.

To use another example, Akira is set in a recognizably real urban sci-fi environment, but Dragon Ball is set in a primary-colored, fairytale world. The Wachowski Bros.' Speed Racer tried the "live-action cartoon" approach, with mixed success, but will Dragonball: Evolution go the grim-and-gritty route and turn out like the live-action Super Mario Bros.? Manga and anime fans cringe at the word "cartoon," but it's a good word to describe Toriyama's creations: a world which combines aliens and magic dragons, comedy and drama, absurdity and sincerity, a world of sweat and blood and winking unrealism.

After I saw Watchmen, which was a bumpy but intriguing ride, I realized what the movie was missing that might have saved it. It needed the visual pyrotechnics of the Wachowskis, whose movies always make you feel like your eyeballs just got an upgrade. Watchmen may have been gorgeous, but it wasn't visually arresting the way The Matrix was. Remember when you first saw bullet time? Or any of the fight scenes in any of the Matrix flicks (even the sequels)? They were insane in the best possible way.

If only Zack Snyder could have brought in the Wachowskis to do the visual effects and fight staging for Watchmen, the movie might genuinely have changed the way we see comic book movies - the same way the Matrix Trilogy changed scifi. Arguably, Snyder's 300 could never have existed without Matrix - all those slo-mo, hyperstylized fights were straight out of Wachowskitown.

The problem with the Wachowskis is that they seem to have a hard time hitting on stories that make audiences flock to the theater. Certainly the first Matrix flick was popular, but that may have been a lucky accident. The second two films were talky and slow, driving away fans. And for various reasons that I must confess I don't entirely understand, Speed Racer was critically panned and sent audiences away in droves. I actually loved Speed Racer, and thought the Matrix sequels had a lot of interesting stuff in them, but they were not hits (though the Matrix sequels made decent box office).

Still, I think that audiences respond to the Wachowskis visual stylings, even if they don't like the movies the duo hang them on. And that's why I think the Wachowskis' next move should be to open a visual effects studio like George Lucas' LucasArts and ILM, or like Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop. We need to get the amazing visual creativity of the Wachowskis harnessed to a Hollywood story that will pull in audiences. I know they want to get more into writing - they worked on the V for Vendetta screenplay - but I think visual effects are their true calling.

Imagine, for example, that the Wachowskis had been hired to do the visual effects on, say, World War Z. This is a post-apocalyptic war flick currently in production, which will require droves of CGI zombies as well as lots of concept design on the cities ravaged by the war between disease-ridden "zombies" and the uninfected humans. Based on a bestselling novel, this movie cries out for a team that can totally reimagine the way CGI might be used to show hordes of rampaging zombies. Imagine the scene where Trinity and Neo gun their way into that building in the Matrix, but with zombies. Or how about a zombie whose body moves with the same cyberorganic grace as the Machines? Or a Battle of Yonkers whose pyrotechnic madness is an echo of the light chaos in Speed Racer? Freaky, awesome, and surprising.

And if the Wachowskis had done the concept design and visual effects for the upcoming Terminator 4 movie? Well, I would have total faith in its awesomeness. Not that I think McG's flick won't rock - but I'm also not expecting to see anything new. A Wachowski-created Terminator, however, would probably blow the eyes right out of my sockets.

I'm not saying I don't want to see another Wachowski movie, because I do. But I also don't want to see the Wachowskis' considerable talents squandered. I want to see their visual audaciousness working its way into many more movies, transforming the way we look at Hollywood flicks from the inside out.

Writing on his blog about the death of the Shazam movie, John August knows just what caused the movie to pass through multiple drafts, contradictory notes from the studio, and other forms of torture, leading to its slow death:

In retrospect, I can point to two summer Warner Bros. movies that I believe defined the real issue at hand: Speed Racer and The Dark Knight. The first flopped; the second triumphed. Given only those two examples, one can understand why a studio might wish for their movies to be more like the latter. But to do so ignores the success of Iron Man, which spent most of its running time as a comedic origin story, and the even more pertinent example of WB’s own Harry Potter series.

With August initially describing his view of Shazam as "Like Big, but with superpowers," it's no surprise that a Warner Bros. looking for movies to be closer to The Dark Knight than Speed Racer's whimsical eye candy, but that doesn't necessarily stop us from wistfully wondering what could have been.

Shazam! It ain’t happening. [John August]

Okay, so here are the movies that blew us away and horrified us this year:

BEST:

10. Let The Right One In. This intense, beautiful Swedish movie about a 12-year-old boy's relationship with a vampire did the near-impossible: it almost made us forget the blah Twilight. It's a parable of the world-destroying power of adolescence, that stays with you long afterwards.

9. Teeth. This year saw a boomlet in feminist horror movies, between this film and Zombie Strippers. But the raw satire of vagina-dentata movie Teeth was sharper, and the story of how Dawn comes to realize her toothy mutant pussy is a superpower rather than a curse is a beautiful spin on adolescence.

8. Speed Racer. Pretty much everyone hates this movie except us — Entertainment Weekly listed it twice on its year's worst lists, even as the mag praised the bland Benjamin Button. But we really did love this film, for its crazy, surreal CG vistas and fun follow-your-heart storyline. Racer was the last thing you'd expect from the Wachowskis: a film about family values, in which Speed learns that love for family trumps everything else. (And Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, as Speed's parents, pretty much run away with the film.) This movie is a cult classic waiting to happen.

7. Cloverfield. Of all the movies on this year's "best" list, this is the one I can least imagine wanting to watch more than once. But that's okay, because the one time you watch it, you'll be blown away. At least in the theater, the movie's shaky-camcorder gimmick actually works: it's totally immersive, and you really follow these yuppie dorks as they fight their way through pubic lice and monster debris to save their friend.

6. Sleep Dealer. We called it one of the best small-budget science fiction movies in years, in our review back in October. Set in a future where Mexicans do menial labor in the U.S. via telepresence, Dealer is a commentary on immigration and racism. But it's also a brilliant thought experiment and a character piece. And it has the hottest cyberpunk node-installation scene since the flawed-but-fun Existenz.

5. Iron Man. This movie exceeded our expectations, delivering a mind-expanding story of the military-industrial complex instead of just a superhero punch-em-up. I was so excited, I wrote a giant essay instead of a simple review.

4. City Of Ember. It could have been just another young-people-discover-their-world-is-a-lie movie, but instead it becomes a post-apocalyptic masterpiece. Thanks to Martin Laing's gigantic sets and Gil Kenan's beautiful direction, the subterreanean city becomes a real place. You can actually feel the terror and claustrophobia when the lights start going out. And Bill Murray is in rare form as the corrupt, short-sighted mayor.

3. Synecdoche, NY. Charlie Kaufman gave us Being John Malkovitch and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but this is probably his weirdest, most surreal movie. Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is suffering from a weird, nonsensical ailment that is making his autonomic functions shut down, and meanwhile his daughter is turning into an anemic fetish model. So he creates an ambitious, incomprehensible work of art — a recursive model of New York inside a New York warehouse, complete with actors playing real people. And it's a comedy. I laughed so hard at the stuff about Caden's therapist, and his attempts to make himself cry when his tearducts have shut down, I nearly choked on my popcorn.

2. The Dark Knight. This movie got us so worked up, we reviewed it twice. Sure, it was too long — and did the Joker really have to put explosives in the hospital and the boats? — but its ambition pays off, in the end. The story of Harvey Dent's fall from grace is epic enough to support all of the movie's endless incidents and action set pieces. And we're still debating the movie's politics (Pro-torture? Pro-surveillance? Anti-hero? Nihilistic or just anarchic?) months later.

1. Wall-E The only movie in years that I've wanted to watch again, right away. If I hadn't been starving and late for dinner, I would have watched it two or three times in one sitting. The first half hour, featuring the cute-bot in the post-apocalyptic abandoned Earth, is poetic and slapsticky. But then Wall-E gets into space, and it just gets crazier and more satirical, all without ever being mean or cheap. Plus it's a moving robot love story.

Even though 2008 was a pretty awesome year for movies, I still ended up with way more candidates for the "worst" list than the "best" list, sadly.

1. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. This is one of those movies that I was so-so about at the time, but it's gotten worse in my mind since then. Too much Shia, especially Shia of the Jungle. Criminally underused Karen Allen. Mostly, too much boring retreading of past Indy movies, and CG ants, and a totally crap alien head-melting ending.

2. Hancock. All we could think about were ways it could have sucked less. Like if it was really a comedy instead of a bland romp that turns melodramatic halfway through. It had one joke, and ran it into the ground like... like a drunken superhero who smashes into the asphalt when he flies. A couple of funny moments couldn't rescue this dud.

3. Doomsday. Actually, this one belongs on a special so-bad-it's-great list. You'll be getting drunk/stoned and watching this one on DVD long after most "good" movies are forgotten. Just for the cannibals who dance to Fine Young Cannibals, and Malcolm McDowell's SCA kingdom. Yes, it's pretty terrible, but in a wonderful way.

4. X-Files: I Want To Believe. Wasn't this a show about people who investigate things? Apparently not, or at least the movie turned into a dull relationship drama. Bleh.

5. Jumper. I liked the clips of the "jumpscar" special effect and the whole bus-attack thing, but it didn't make for much of a movie. Even with a script by David Goyer, the whole thing is underwhelming. You keep waiting and waiting for David (Hayden Christensen) to step up and become a hero — or at least become interesting to watch — and it never happens.

6. The Day The Earth Stood Still Unlike my colleague Nivair, I hadn't pre-judged this one. I really thought it could be a good film in its own right, even if it wasn't true to the original. I was horribly, eye-searingly wrong. It starts out great, but then Keanu goes on a boring road trip while droning about the environment and eating at Mickey D's. Giant robot Gort shows up here and there, but he can't stop the movie from standing still.

7. The Happening could have been an interesting film — people start killing themselves in horrible ways, for no reason. But then it had to turn into a horror film about trees trying to destroy us, until they change their minds. People stare in horror and despair — at trees. Ohh kay.

8. Meet Dave. With a script by MST3K's Bill Corbett and a cool concept (a tiny guy lands on Earth in a human-sized spaceship that looks like him), this could have been a fun ride. Instead, it's a showcase for Eddie Murphy doing funny voices.

9. Space Chimps We got one great animated science fiction movie, so of course Hollywood had to punish us with an avalanche of drek. Including this horrific Andy Samberg vehicle about monkeys in space. Probably Fly Me To The Moon belongs on this "worst movies" list too, but none of us saw it. It was too soon after Chimps, and it just looked like pure torture.

10.The Spirit could have been sorta great too — we love Will Eisner, and Frank Miller used to be one of the greats, 20 years ago. But Miller has turned into a self-parody, and he decided to go all-out with the crazy camp in this film. Weirdly, even though this film is a visual maelstrom and features an eyelinered Samuel L. Jackson dressing as a Nazi and torturing cats, the film's biggest problem is that it's boring.

And then there were a lot of movies that were neither "best" nor "worst," they just were. Like, say, Incredible Hulk. It wasn't a great movie, it wasn't a terrible movie, it was just adequate. Call it "the credible Hulk." Or Death Race, which I couldn't bring myself to hate despite the lackluster third reel. Or Wanted, which was as dumb as ten piles of rocks but looked purty. Or Star Wars: Clone Wars, which was a fun, if forgettable, TV show, which got put on the big screen due to George Lucas' hubris.

I understand that this summer's big screen version of Speed Racer may not have been everyone's cup of tea, but I did think that those who saw it all admitted that the special effects were amazing... until I found out that the movie wasn't on the short list for Oscar recognition in visual effects. The argument that, "well, there were a lot of other movies with great special effects this year, maybe Speed Racer wasn't as worthy of recognition as those" loses all respectability when you see that Hancock and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull are two of the fifteen films up for selection for the Oscar Short List. Can anyone out there really argue that Indiana Jones was more visually impressive than Speed Racer?

15 films on Oscar's visual effects list [Variety]

It's an especially heavy week of multimedia tie-in books — Dark Horse has two great collections for you to pick up, Serenity: Better Days and Star Wars Omnibus: Early Victories (which includes the comic version of Splinter Of The Mind's Eye, which is awesome in so many ways). Meanwhile, IDW goes for the coffee table audience with The Art of IDW's Transformers and the brokenhearted-thanks-to-the-Wachowski-Brothers audience with the first volume of Speed Racer: The Next Generation.

If you're missing Sci Fi's greatest show — No, not Eureka, although stay tuned for that comic in December — then Dynamite has the first issue of Battlestar Galactica: Ghosts, a new series that spins away from the cast that we know and love to provide its own brand of psychodrama. With the exception of the first issue of the beautiful must-have (previewed elsewhere on the site today) Ender's Game: Battle School, the most interesting tie-in book this week is probably The Ferryman, a new series about the ultimate black-ops operative, written by Entertainment Weekly's Marc Bernardin Marc Andreyko (thanks, Alex) from an idea by Joel Silver. As far as I know, it's not in the works as a movie or TV show... yet. But keep your eyes on this one.

In terms of original comic stories, there's a lot worth paying attention to this week — there's the third series of Marvel Zombies, which we've already written about. But if that doesn't float your boat, then the hardcover collection of Warren Ellis' superhero-political-drama Black Summer or DC's collection of 1950s and '60s monkey tales, DC Comics Goes Ape, represent two ends of the spectrum available to you from this week's releases.

(Marvel's Young Avengers Presents collection and first issue of Wolverine flashback storyline X-Men Original Sin fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, both both are worth leafing through, if nothing else).

But the gold star of original material this week is easily Annihiliation Classic, a hardcover collection of various space stories that led to Marvel's new intergalactic franchise that includes an issue of 1980s weirdness Rocket Raccoon featuring very early art by Mike Mignola. Everyone must see this, trust me.

If you need more than just Hellboy's daddy drawing spacebound raccoons, you can find a complete list of this week's new comic releases here, and then the the Comic Shop Locator Service will help you find your closest local store. Remember: TV may offer you moving pictures, but only comics can offer you Beatles-influenced mammals fighting aliens.

The Hollywood Reporter is somewhat schizophrenic about the success of the summer's movies; in a piece called "Summer exceeds boxoffice expectations," they point out that despite three movies grossing over $300million domestically (The Dark Knight, Iron Man and, somewhat surprisingly, Indiana Jones And the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull), fewer movies crossed the $200million mark this year when compared with 2007.

Internationally, the picture is slightly rosier, according to Variety, with Universal having their most successful year ever outside of the US, despite being third in terms of studio grosses (behind Warners, who were helped by The Dark Knight being the first massive blockbuster Batman movie in foreign markets, and Paramount, whose Indiana Jones is currently the top movie of the summer internationally). Interestingly, Variety mentions that part of this success is down to the non-genre fare (Sex And The City, Mamma Mia! and, stunningly, What Happens In Vegas) performing much more strongly than initially suggested (Hellboy II and Speed Racer both flopped internationally, showing that non-American audiences would rather watch Carrie Bradshaw try on wedding dresses than Guillermo Del Toro's imagination at work, which is depressing on multiple levels). Perhaps everyone else needs to get with America's superhero fetish; four out of the top ten movies this summer in the US featured men in tights. The reason? Perhaps the shitty American economy, believes Warner's Dan Fellman:

There’s no question that the poor economy historically has given the motion picture a boost... Also, the [release schedule] was spread out and wasn’t grouped together as it was in ’07, when it was all in May. We opened ‘The Dark Knight’ after the May crunch and had the marketplace pretty much to ourselves for a big tentpole film.

We're guessing that next year's going to be a much different affair; studios will have learned the lesson of spacing releases out, but the WGA strike - and still possible actors strike - may have made that lesson moot; the next Harry Potter movie has already been pushed back to next year because Warners have no other big movies ready for the summer, and it's unlikely that they'll be the only ones with that problem. This time next year, expect to see reports of a slower year... And maybe one where audiences got the time to revisit their favorite movies a lot more.

For a remake of a 49-year-old movie based upon a 144-year-old book, the movie industry is looking at upcoming Brendan Fraser flick Journey To The Center Of The Earth as a sign of things to come. Why, you may wonder? Well, it's got something to do with another retro technology as well as Disney's tween popstar Hannah Montana.

The movie, released on July 11th, is being seen by many as a test for just how well live-action 3-D movies will do with the summer blockbuster audience:

Live-action 3-D pics are considered risky to start with, and producing them carries extra cost. Although they can still be unspooled on 2D screens, 3-D is more problematic for [DVD and video]... "It's sort of a tricky proposition right now to make live action 3-D movies because you have to make sure it works on both formats," acknowledges New Line topper Toby Emmerich. "We think it does."

The movie will play on 800 3-D screens nationally (many of them owned by co-producer Walden Media's boss, Philip Anschutz), and the people behind the movie are hopeful that it can at least equal the record of the last major 3-D live action success: Disney's Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert (You may mock, but it made $65.3 million in limited release last year in the US alone. That's about $20 million more than Speed Racer). If it fails at the box office, expect minor panic from all of the other 3-D movies currently in production (including James Cameron's Avatar, Tim Burton's live-action remake of Alice In Wonderland and the fourth installment of the Final Destination franchise).

Will viewers make 'Journey' in 3-D?" [Variety]

When asked if the Wachowski brothers were going to jump on the 3-D bandwagon Joel Silver confirmed that they had all been talking about making the original Speed Racer in 3-D. But thankfully the screen jumping cars will have to wait for the sequel.

"Yeah, we talked about this being 3-D. We actually discussed this being 3-D. There aren't enough theatres yet right now to make it really...it would have taxed us to make this 3-D right now. But maybe if we make a sequel, I mean, they have a story for a sequel and if they make it."

Silver also explained that the Speed Racer story isn't over for the brothers, and while they may not be the ones to direct it, they definitely don't want to give up writing for Speed Racer.

"Well, there's things they want to do with him," Silver explained. "There's as many episodes of this cartoon so there's a lot of ideas, but if we make the sequel maybe that will be in 3-D, but I mean it would have been possible, because it was digital to begin with, to do it in 3-D and all those shots were rendered so it would have been possible."

Talking about his secret knowledge of the end of television's most Kurt Vonnegut-influenced island-set show, Fox revealed why he's probably hated by his fellow castaways:

They understand I can't talk about it, but sometimes they'll ask hoping I'll just blurt it out. Besides, having a secret is fun.

We're going to catch up with the flash forwards this year and then it's going to be really interesting to see how time is structured in season five. But we will have closed on two points - the finale of last year where you had that juxtaposition of Jack on the island feeling like he'd finally accomplished a rescue, and this future where he's desperate and at the pit of despair and he feels like he has to go back. We will eventually be back in the present.

Fox also couldn't help but accidentally raise some strange family dynamic when talking about his Racer X outfit from Annalee's favorite summer bomb, Speed Racer:

It's pretty sexy. I think my wife thought so! The minute the mask dropped over my face people would change around me. It's amazing because they can't see your eyes and you can really manipulate that. You can mess with them in a big way... [My sons] thought it was cool. They were sitting on the set, which was huge and I'll never forget their faces when I walked in wearing the full gear. They both turned and did this double-take and went: 'Daddy?' So I'm like, 'Yeah it's me, don't worry, it's just me.' When I walked on set to do a scene, my little boy turned to my wife, and said: 'I want to be Racer X for Halloween next year.'

Lost star Matthew Fox reveals his wife thinks he's sexy in leather [Sunday Mirror]

These days, a hit film usually scores over $50 million at the box office its first week, and it's not unusual for it to have as much as a fifty percent dropoff in the following weeks. In other words, hit films are almost never created via word-of-mouth anymore. Either the studio and reviewers have created enough buzz about a film before opening day to drive insane crowds into the theaters, or the film flops.

Says Scalzi:

What Star Wars could do that Speed Racer and other movies today generally can't is just keep running. From its first limited release on Memorial Day weekend, 1977, Star Wars stayed in movie theaters for nearly an entire year, and for that year, experienced very small drop-offs in business from weekend to weekend: Between ten and twenty percent each weekend. Compare this to last year's Transformers, which made $300 million in six weeks — and experienced 40 to 50 percent dropoffs in attendance each week. In both their eras, Star Wars and Transformers are state-of-the-art blockbusters, in terms of how they made their money — it's just that the state of the art evolved.

$20 Million Now, $20 Million Then [AMC]

10. Most of the colors in Speed Racer are sparkly pastels, not the hard reds and butch "gold titanium alloy" of Iron Man. What is this? Queer Eye for the action hero?

9. Speed Racer dresses in a shiny purple suit at one point, and in a scarf at another. He wears a lot of white, and is just as pretty as Trixie, his girlfriend who drives a helicopter and repairs engines in the shop. Gender bending in an action movie not directed by Ridley "G.I. Jane" Scott? Not allowed.

8. Monkeys are gay.

7. When there's a ninja fight, Racer X pulls the ninja's pants off and we see that he's wearing big white boxers with a cute pattern on them. What kind of counter-ninja pulls off the ninja's pants? And what kind of ninja wears big white boxers?

6. One of the semi-good guys, Taejo (Rain), dresses up like a woman as part of an elaborate scheme for revenge. And he looks seriously hot in lady clothes.

5. Which reminds me of director Larry Wachowski, long rumored to be fond of lady clothes himself — or perhaps even on the road to becoming a woman. I can't believe how many people writing about Speed Racer have mentioned Larry's gender. Who the fuck cares about whether Larry is a he or a she or a bug person? Unless you are worried that this movie is too GAY for you.

4. One of the bad guys wears fake snakeskin and yells "ooohhhh!" a lot.

3. Several other bad guys are giant hairy men dressed in furs and Viking helmets. I think some of them might even have been centerfolds in Bear magazine.

2. Trixie's outfit matches her helicopter.

1. Speed loves his mother and is super-nice to his girlfriend. Obviously a homo! A true straight dude would be like Iron Man, obsessing over his dead dad and abusing every woman in his life.

The protagonist was a starry-eyed, two-dimensional protagonist named Go who wore white ankle-length pants and struck cool, determined poses while moving in simple staccato animation. His car was called Ma-ha Gogo, or Mach No. Five, and it did seemingly impossible things like jump through the air, grow super-grip tires on command, and slash obstacles with rotary swords. (The series title has a triple meaning—the name of the car, the name of the boy who drives it, and an exclamatory expression.)

Mach GoGoGo was an instant hit. The plots were easy to follow, the characters immediately likable. Neither writer/producer Tatsuo Yoshida or director Tsuyoshi Sasakawa were car enthusiasts—in fact, neither even had a drivers license. But it didn't really matter. The two knew how to craft a good story. The near-impossible challenges imposed on the protagonist by evildoers were the perfect setup for themes like revenge, competition, and honor to play out over and over again. In one series of early episodes (each story often spanned two or three), Go races against a mysterious, remote-controlled, robot-driven car that has been causing accidents. Go quickly gains a reputation as the mercenary hero who can fight superhuman nemeses that even the cops are helpless against, and inadvertently launches into a busy career of globe-hopping and car-racing.

Go is cool and collected, but the rest of the anime is chock full of humor and an ironic mix of strengths and weaknesses. The girlfriend, Trixie, might complain about her foot hurting, but then she'll parachute out of a burning airplane; the father, who created the Mach 5, is an engineering genius but a social goof; and his little brother who runs around in a candy-striped bodysuit with his monkey, often solves crimes way before the adults do.

The characters in the original Speed Racer are not atypical of Japanese anime. In fact, you see the repetition of these same types of characters to this day—the adventurous, disobedient young male hero, the feminine-yet-sassy girlfriend, the wise but slightly goofy father, and the unbearably cute extras.

The original series ran over 52 episodes. It kicked off in a prime spot, 7PM on Sunday nights—one of the few times when children and families in Japan gathered to watch TV. You can still rent the dubbed originals at certain video rentals stores, and on Netflix if you're lucky. An anime remake came out in the 90s and was aired in the US, but it's not quite the same thing.

On one level, the Wachowski brothers' new Speed Racer preserves a lot of the elements of the classic anime. The Mach 5's special features are derived from the original, and Go, or Speed, is pretty much the same dude—as are some of the other main characters. But the similarities end there. Of course, the obvious difference is that the Hollywood version is live action and features super CGI and cost a gazillion dollars more to produce.

But more importantly, the essence of storytelling is completely different. The Hollywood version is chock full of drama and emotions—the child who dreams about racing all day in school, the mother who encourages him to follow his dreams, the family's tragedy of the dead Rex Racer (Speed's older brother). There's all this buildup and tension. None of this in the original anime. The very first episode begins very abruptly: Go "borrows" his dad's super car and enters it in a race, and wins. There's a certain charm about that blunt simplicity that is increasingly hard to preserve as the prerequisites for a box office action movie become more elaborate.

So whether you come home from Speed Racer opening night feeling amazingly hyped up or strangely dissatisfied, try to watch at least one episode of the original anime sometime soon. It's worth the 30 minutes, if only to see how its creators applied antiquated animation to portray superfast, superhuman car racing.

From the moment the movie begins with young Speed Racer in elementary school spacing out during a test by drawing pictures of cars, you know the movie isn't just going to be a lot of empty visuals and "oh look we can make live action look cartoony." For when Speed draws, the next thing you see is him zooming through a landscape that looks just like his drawing — it's a lovely, quick way of showing us the inside of a kid's imagination, as he draws himself crossing the finish line and lets out a "crowd goes wild" noise in the middle of class.

There's a lot of stuff like this scene in the movie, where kids are going nuts over pop culture — and it works. The kid excitement in Speed Racer is genuinely infectious. You'll find yourself whooping along with Speed's little brother Spridle and chimp Chim Chim when they watch anime on TV and suddenly jump inside it, fighting each other and the spikey mechas with bright CGI lines careening around their bodies, and their faces transfigured by crazed, abandoned childish delight. Maybe it's just because a lot of us who grew up with nutty, zoomy pop culture like original Japanese cartoon Speed Racer still have the walls of our minds painted with crayon-bright explosions. Whatever the reason, the Wachowskis have hit a sweet, goofy nerve here and they play it well.

The plot of the flick couldn't be simpler. Nice kid Speed Racer wants nothing more than to compete in the big leagues of racing. His family runs Racer Motors, a tiny independent car design company that turns out beauties like the Mach 5 (and later, the ultra-awesome Mach 6). After he wins his first big race, giant mega-corp businessman Royalton tries to become Speed's sponsor, promising him all the riches in the world. But Speed turns him down because he wants to stay independent with Racer Motors. That's when Royalton gets ugly and says racing is all about money and power and Speed can never hope to compete without corporate sponsorship.

Will the love of family and indie production values be able to topple big business and evil corporate overlords? And who is the mysterious Racer X who keeps helping him fight the evil Royalton thugs? That's what Speed Racer is all about. There's a heaping dose of Matrix-style politics here, and even a long speech from Royalton about the nature of power that totally felt like a satiric take on the Architect's speech in Matrix Reloaded. Luckily, we don't linger too long in the chambers of philosophy and instead head out to the glowing, crazy, hallucinogenic race track.

As I said earlier, you won't be shocked to know that the visuals in Speed Racer are seriously awesome. You've probably seen some previews by now, so you know the cars swirl and shimmy and the citiscapes are full of dazzling rays of light. Nothing on screen remains unaltered by CGI: it's augmented reality top to bottom, and the attention to detail is sometimes a little overwhelming. What may startle you, though, is the feeling you got watching The Matrix for the first time and said, "Holy fuck what the hell I have never seen that before and it looks crazy fucking great." There are a lot of things in Speed Racer your eyeballs will be experiencing for the first time — cool ways of composing scenes to make them look like cartoons, awesome concept design, and ninja fight scenes that are both exciting and silly enough for kids.

Those silly fight scenes are the other really cool thing about this flick, especially for the usually grim-and-dirty Wachowskis. A whole lot of Speed Racer is pure CGI slapstick and it's funny as hell. Blink and you'll miss some zany shit like a crazed Segway race in Royalton's tower, evil racing Vikings doing their evil Viking thang, and ongoing hijinks with Spridle and Chim Chim. Normally, I hate cute kids and monkeys in flicks, but (dare I say it) the Wachowskis did the right thing with them here. We get just enough monkey poop, and then we're back on the mesmerizing race track.

As somebody who watched the Matrix trilogy more times than I care to admit, one of the interesting things about Speed Racer was realizing that maybe those previous movies were actually a lot more tongue-in-cheek than they seemed. Or maybe the Wachowskis have finally grown a sense of humor about their previous deadly-serious, ninja-laden efforts. While Speed Racer may not go down in history like Matrix did, I think it marks a hopeful turning point in the Wachowskis' careers. If they can keep successfully switching gears like this, I think they have a lot more awesome in store for us in years to come.

In the meantime, they've given you a giant dose of fun and flash to start your summer right.

Speed Racer opens tonight.

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Speed Racer:

On the heels of its featurette about Racer X, IGN Movies has a 3-minute clip featuring Speed Racer himself. It's mostly footage we've already featured, but I think there might be a teeny bit more of it. [IGN Movies]

X-Files: I Want To Believe:

X-Files 2 features a scene between Mulder and Scully in the FBI offices. And Scully is struggling with the conflict between her rational scientific outlook and her faith (as a Catholic.) Mulder is still struggling with his faith in the paranormal. [XFilesNews]

Hancock:

That scene in Hancock where the slovenly superhero has sex with an underage girl? It's been cut, to try and get the film a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating. Apparently there was a scene where he gets drunk and fools around with a 12-year-old too, but that was mostly a "bargaining chip" to try and convince the ratings board to let a similar scene involving a 17-year-old stay in. But now all the underage girls are gone. The movie is about "why Superman can't get a date," and involves Hancock being physically unable to spend the night with a woman he meets at a party. (Because of the "woman of tissue paper" thing, or something else?) [New York Times]

The Happening:

M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening is a 90-minute paranoia movie, which pays tribute to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. A group of people are trying to get out of an area affected by some other-worldly threat, and they understand the situation better than everyone around them... but nobody else will listen. [LA Times, via Defamer]

Doctor Who:

The title of episode 12 of Doctor Who's current season is still a mystery, but fans are speculating it could be "War On Skaro." (Skaro is the name of the evil Daleks' home planet, which has been destroyed a couple of times.) After all, British toymaker Play.com has started taking preorders on a "War On Skaro" playset, which goes on sale in October. And the playset includes a Davros action figure. [Room 515]

In next week's episode, "The Doctor's Daughter," the daughter in question says "Hello, Dad!" to the Doctor. And she wields a machine gun. And the aliens in the episode, the Hath, are half fish, half human, and communicate using bubbles. [SciFiPulse]

Heroes:

Heroes' Noah Bennett, aka HRG, is currently imprisoned at the bottom of Level Five in the Company's secret facility. "I think there may be an escape in the offing, but at a cost," says actor Jack Coleman. And HRG will probably be hunting those escaped psycho villains who are like a dozen Sylars. Meanwhile, Mohinder is getting a lot less mild-mannered, and Claire wants to use her powers for a greater good instead of just blending in. And I'm not sure what to make of Coleman's prediction for Hiro:

"He's firmly planted in Yakamoto Industries now," says Coleman. "I think Hiro's more the guy who starts out wealthy and comfortable and is very unhappy taking over his father's business and needs the quest. That's his destiny."

Smallville:

Even though Michael Rosenbaum just announced he's through with Smallville, the producers are still dropping hints he may be back for the eighth season finale, which may be the show's finale episode ever. Also, all the signs point to the show's new female villain being Maxima, the alien queen who wanted to marry Superman in the comics and wasn't willing to take no for an answer. And apparently this time around, Clark may not want to give no for an answer anyway. [ComicBookResources]

Lost:

Castaway drama Lost just filmed a scene for the season finale in which the Oceanic Six (plus Sawyer, and some person who's not moving) swim onto a life raft. (And it looks like Desmond might be there too.) [Ryan's Flickr page, via Approaching Lost]

Also, in Thursday's episode, Claire goes into Jacob's Cabin with Locke, and we learn more about why we saw her dad (and Jack's) in there. We see Ben's father figure Horace Godspeed (who got Ben's dad his job and died in the purge) back from the dead. And Michael and Frank argue on the freighter. [Nicole's Lost]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

We will see some more of the mysterious girl at John Connor's high school, Cheri, again at some point in TV's Terminator spinoff. But season two of the Sarah Connor Chronicles will move towards having one plot per episode, instead of juggling three or four plots every time. And the show's second season will flip some of its character dynamics on their head, as John becomes more of a man instead of a boy. [IGN]

Eureka:

Do any of you guys watch the Sci Fi Channel's Eureka, the show about a town full of supergeniuses and weirdos? If so, then you'll be happy to hear that Sheriff Jack Carter may actually get a girlfriend in the new season. Also getting lucky in love may be Sally, the Smart House and possibly even Fargo. The new season will also include a Biodome-themed show, a Groundhog Day riff involving "2 AM and ice water," a "robot mangy dog show," and maybe more disappearing pizza guys. Eight episodes of the new season will air starting in late July, with the rest airing later. [Monsters And Critics]

Star Wars:

The blurb for the upcoming Star Wars novel Millennium Falcon gives some spoilers about what happens in the earlier novel, Invincible. The brief-but-brutal rain of Darth Caedus (worst "Darth" name ever) comes to an end, and the formerly evil Imperial Admiral Daala unites the galaxy to forge a lasting peace. Luke Skywalker tries to chart a new future for the Jedi Order and tries to understand why his nephew Jacen Solo turned to the Dark Side. Leia and Han, grieving for both their dead sons, adopt Jacen's force-sensitive daughter Allana, at the request of her mother, Queen Tenel Ka of Hapes. The newly formed family goes off to research the history of Han's ship the Millennium Falcon, but then they stumble on a new threat to the Jedi Order — and maybe to the Force itself. [The Force.net]

And the blurb for the first graphic novel based on the new Clone Wars movie/series has gone up on Amazon: In "Shipyards of Doom," Obi Wan and Anakin lead a mission to destroy the Separatists' shipyards, but the enemy finds out. They're forced to rely on their new wet-behind-the-ears padawan, Ahsoka, who must face the droid armies of General Grievous. [Amazon]

Apologizing for raping multiple childhoods with one ill-considered use of intellectual property, Time Warner Cable's Chief Marketing Officer Sam Howe explained that the ad campaign isn't just about making fans realize that Road Runner is much faster than any car out there:

The Road Runner vs Speed Racer spots are created in the same visually stunning style used in the movie and tie together this highly anticipated film with our premier High Speed online service, Road Runner Turbo. We are giving viewers the ability to see exclusive content and a chance to win a new car.

Time Warner Cable Launches Speed Racer Promos [Comics2Film.com]

Speed Racer:

Here's a featurette that IGN Movies posted, showcasing Matthew Fox's Racer X character from Speed Racer, including a few snippets of footage we haven't seen before. It looks as demented as everything else I've seen from the film. [IGN Movies]

X-Files 2:

There's a rumor whooshing around the web that Mulder and Scully are still a couple in X-Files 2... but Scully "has someone on the side." After searching all over, I tracked the rumor to the movie's IMDB FAQs, which cited co-writer Frank Spotnitz as a source. (The item has since been removed, but here's the Google cache.) [IMDB]

Iron Man:

Iron Man comes out today, which means this may be the absolute final chance to obsess about whether Samuel L. Jackson has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. Now MovieHole is claiming there definitely is a moment of Jackson as pirate-eyed spymaster Nick Fury after the credits of the theatrical release (but not the version screened for critics). Says MovieHole:

At the end of the credits, Stark comes home and finds Nick Fury in his living room -staring towards the window. He then turns to tell Stark he's the not the only superhero in the world. Stark asks who he is, and Fury turns and says he's "Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D, and I'm here to talk to you about The Avengers Initiative".

Incredible Hulk:

Here are some new Incredible Hulk stills that came out on the heels of that new trailer. I have to admit, the more I see of the CGI in this movie, the more it feels like it belongs in a 1990s haunted house movie. [MovieHole again]

Doctor Who:

One viewer has an absolutely airtight theory about what's going to happen on this Saturday's Doctor Who:

I think that the gas isn't actually gas, but really it is a teleporter device where 1 particle of gas teleports 50 sontarans. Then they will shoot the humans and afterwards, get out a shotgun. Then they will shoot the humans heads off, take their heads and put them on their feet. Then they will go ice-skating and fall in love with the doctor. They get married and have a child; hence 'the doctors daughter'

Also, some guy who knows someone says that David Tennant's Doctor will make a cameo appearance in the second season of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. [TenMartha4Ever]

And Alex Kingston (ER)'s character in the upcoming Steven Moffat super-library two-parter "Silence In The Library"/"Forest Of The Dead" is named Professor River Song and may have her own sonic screwdriver. And "Turn Left," this season's Doctor-lite episode, may take place in an alternate universe where military rule is in force and everyone has a strange insect-like creature on his/her back. (Is this the alternate universe where Rose lives, or another one?) In the final two-parter, Dalek creator Davros may do a "Borg Queen" style entrance. And there will be tons of different Daleks, including some fitted with claws. [Death Ray, via Keith]

In this Saturday's episode (really) the Doctor shepherds Donna into the TARDIS for safety, but then the Sontarans teleport the TARDIS aboard their ship. With the world's sky turning poisonous, the nations of the world unite to launch a nuclear strike against the Sontarans, in spite of the Doctor's warnings that it'll do no good. After the adventure is over, Martha's ready to go home to her fiance, but she's physically restrained from doing so. And here's some dialogue from the episode, plus a new clip:
Donna: God, the air's disgusting.
Doctor: Its not so bad for me - go on, get inside the TARDIS —
(holds out key)
Oh. Never given you a key. Keep that, go on. That's yours. Quite a big moment really.
Donna: Yeah, maybe we can get sentimental after the world's finished choking to death. [Planet Gallifrey]

DC Universe 0:

The 50-cent DC Universe 0 comic which goes on sale today (possibly by the time you read this) ends with Barry Allen, the fast-running superhero known as The Flash, coming back from the dead. Which means almost everyone who's ever died in DC Comics is now alive again. Good for Marvel Comics leaving Spider-Man's Uncle Ben dead — except for that alternate universe version a couple years ago, but that hardly counts. I think. [Superhero Times]

The original Speed Racer series was made in Japan as Mach GoGoGo, and the English dubbed version was shown in 1967 to 1968, then shown in syndication for several years afterward. It finally disappeared from TV screens for a while in the mid-1970s. "Speed Racer, the superviolent, antieducational cartoon series that lived by the sword, is dead," proclaimed the Chicago Tribune on Jul. 12, 1974.

It took 25 years for a new Speed Racer cartoon to appear on American television:

The New Adventures of Speed Racer (1993). This show only lasted 13 episodes, and was widely regarded as a shallow reinvention of the original series. For one thing, Speed could now travel in time, which seems kind of like a weird tangent. And the paranoid conspiracy subplots of the original cartoon were missing, replaced with scifi-ish plots, such as Speed racing against aliens. As a scifi enthusiast, I aprove — except that the end result doesn't look that great. It was created by Fred Wolf Productions (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and featured more American-style animation.

"Winston Smith" wrote on Usenet:

In my opinion the "new Speedracer" really has nothing to do with the "Speed Racer" of the 1960's. It has the characters and a car, but has very little to do with the original. The "new Speedracer" is spiritually closer to the animation of "James Bond Junior", which is funny since "James Bond Junior" has more of the "Speed Racer" feel to it than the "new Speedracer". I would consider it "James Bond Junior, PART VI" with racing cars. There are none of the emotional social dynamics that make up the original. Either the creators are intimidated by the original, or they have no concept of what the idea of "family" means. It is more like a series of adult divorced people running around and masquerading as a family.

Volkswagen commercials. (1997) VW did a series of 30-second spots that formed sort of a continuing adventures of Speed Racer — and they were a horrendous travesty of everything we hold dear. In a typical ad, Speed is driving along when the Mach-5 is sabotaged... so he's forced to drive a Volkswagen GTI instead. Says producer J.J. Sedelmaier:

They were doing a cool, Baby Boomer-type campaign. I don't know if it's Baby Boomer or Generation X or whatever, but they were obviously hitting people my age (41) and a little younger, trying to sell Volkswagens, specifically the GTI.

Speed Racer X (2002). Another short-lived cartoon, this time on Nickelodeon, which pulled it after only a few episodes. At least this one was made by Japanese animation studio Tatsunoko Productions, back in 1997, before being imported to the U.S. In this version, the Mach 5 can fly. Also, some of the buttons on the steering wheel were different: "A" was "aero jack" instead of "auto jack," "B" was "balloon tires instead of "belt tires," "E" was "emergency wire" (a grappling hook) instead of "evening light" (a floodlamp), and "F" was "fish diver" instead of "frogger mode" (so the car's wheels would turn inwards and it would become a full submarine.) The animation was supposed to have a "darker" and more "grown-up" feel to it.

Speed Racer Lives (2006). A series of webtoons to tie in with a new toy line, it looks as though this series only lasted three brief installments before being killed. It features Speed Jr., the son of the original Speed Racer — who's still hanging around as Speed Sr., complete with Reed Richards-style white streaks over his temples. Speed Jr. is supposed to be hip and trendy, and hangs out with people with names like Nitro, Clutch and Vortex. (NItro is a girl with purple hair, Vortex wears a sort of Tron-looking jumpsuit.)

Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008). A new animated series airing on NickToons and then coming out almost immediately on DVD, this series looks like it'll consist of three 30-minute episodes squished into 90-minute TV movies. Like Speed Racer Lives, this is all about the son of the original Speed Racer, who goes to a racing school where Speed's younger brother Spridle is the headmaster. And there's a new Racer X as well as an evil racing girl named Annalise. New characters include Speed's friends Conor and Lucy, plus a robot monkey named Chim Chim. The new Speed has to prove his worth, probably by winning a really important race.

In this scene, where Speed and his pals race through a geometrically-impossible "ice mountain," it's clear we're inside an artificial world where humans and machines have become interchangeable. Watching Speed and his car is like seeing the movie Tron from the point of view of one of the programs. Lights dance everywhere, nobody obeys the laws of physics, and the cutsey thrill of it reminded me of Mario Kart 64. This flick captures the fun of racing videogames better than many racing games themselves do.

There's a kind of Disney-cartoon surrealism here: every character is a caricature, and reality has been pared down to one astonishing idea, which is that Nascar has become both beautiful and the very center of all culture. I love the way Speed does something visually incomprehensible with his car (going behind a guy to make him swerve or something?) that the announcer greets with the shout, "Great move!"

Speed's racecar work-family is like something out of the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 2000s; meanwhile, the scene itself is a mashup of Grease and Power Puff Girls. What is happening here? What decade is it? Who has the freakin nerve to make a muscular, tough-guy thing like a race car out of shiny white and pretty, pyrotechnic fizz? You have to be seriously badass to do that, and the Wachowskis pull it off with glammy zeal.

Ninjas make everything better, as you can see in this scene where the guy being attacked by the ninja knows that first he should put a shiny scarf over his face to do his anti-ninja moves. When I saw this fight, I was finally sold on the movie. This really is The Matrix, except with a sense of humor this time around.

7 New Clips from Speed Racer [Collider]