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Speed Racer vs. Iron Man: Double Feature Night By: Ken Barrens Ah, the Double-Feature. A favorite past-time of bored teens before video games and going to the mall dressed all in black and spikes in a vain attempt to give old people heart attacks came into fashion. A tradition all but forgotten these days, for reasons unknown. Seeking to revive this old American dream (and because we couldn't decide and weren't making two trips to the movies in one week), my lady and I opted to see both movies. ...to the tune of $38.00 for the tickets plus somewhere around $15.00 for snacks and popcorn. No wonder the tradition kicked the bucket! Somewhere along the line (probably during the hour wait between the two movie showings) I realized that there was no better way to make a comparison of two movies than to see them back to back so they're both fresh in your mind. And what better way to make comparisons than with charts? Below is a series of criteria which I used to inaccurately judge each movie, followed by a (+) or (-) indicating whether or not presence of said criteria is a good or bad thing. |
| Speed
Racer Vs. Iron Man Battle Royale
Round 1: Movie Basics | ||||
| Movie: | Speed Racer | Iron Man | Point: | |
| Contains explosions (+) | Yes, but they look like they were copy/pasted in from an Adobe Aftereffects trainee's demo reel | Yes, and I thought I was watching Star Wars. | Iron Man | |
| Contains love sidestory (-) | Yeah... Unlike most movies this one was set in stone from the beginning, and it was tolerable until the part where they kissed, and the movie actually freezeframes so that some kid and his monkey can play doctor and warn children of impending cooties. | Yeah, but it's kept really subtle, and kind of ends up the way it did in the first new Spiderman. Also, Stan Lee cameos himself as Hugh Heffner. | Iron Man | |
| Contains Swearing (?)* | Technically no. There's one part where a guy starts to say "Holy shit," and it's actually bleeped out in the movie. I'm not kidding. | Used sparingly where needed. | Iron Man | |
| Round 2: Action Movie Showdown | ||||
| Movie: | Speed Racer | Iron Man | Point: | |
| Contains ninjas (+) | Actually, yes it does! Though one is totally emasculated by John Goodman, which just shouldn't happen. | None to be found. | Speed Racer | |
| Special Effects (+) | This is kind of a sensitive issue with Speed Racer. The tracks, cars, city, and anything CGI all look gorgeous... and then you have your really awkward "Look at what my son did in art school" transitions and 2D graphics. The movie literally bleeds Adobe Aftereffects, and it was bad enough to break immersion several times. However, I understand that the Wachowski brothers were emulating the special effects of the original Speed Racer cartoon, but how many casual movie goers - many of whom may not have seen or remembered the original series - are going to realize this? | It's all nicely done and convincing, right down to the smallest details like battle damage on Iron Man's suit. As you can expect, a lot of time and money went into developing the graphics here. Unfortunately, there are a few times when Tony Stark's face looks sort of awkward when the mask is up. I see it every time I see the damn commercial. | Iron Man | |
| Body Count (+) | Zilcho. When cars crash, the drivers get encased in styrofoam and shot out of the car in an airtight bouncy ball (OK, that's actually kind of cool). The worst that actually happens to anybody is they get a face full of monkey poo. | Maybe. You get one of those falling "Well he's probably dead, there's no need to go down there and check" sort of deals. | Iron Man | |
| Fight Scenes (+) | There's one, but... I think Speed Racer is actually going to lose a point for this. The choreography is worse than the fights you'd find in an Austin Powers movie. | Admit it. You came to see Iron Man for the shooting and fighting. It delivers. | Iron Man | |
| Round 3: Sci-Fi Fantasmablasters | ||||
| Robots (+) | There are a few in the background, they're pretty much just for atmosphere. | While the robots in Iron Man are more primitive (aside from the actual Iron Man suit and its foe), they actually have some character and serve as comic relief. | Iron Man | |
| Cool weapons (+) | Very yes. There's quite a comical emphasis on the kinds of weapons you can hide in a car. One scene feels like the good ol' Wacky Races of Hannah Barbara fame. Also, I had no idea that cars could be so acrobatic. | Come on! The main character owns a military weapons manufacturing firm. Of course there are cool weapons! The thing is, they're all the 'point-shoot-occasionally an explosion follows' variety that we're already used to seeing. OK, plus the jet boosters in Iron Man's hands count too, which is pretty unconventional and cool. | Tough call, but Speed Racer gets it for the creativity and physics-defying special effects. | |
| Segways (?) | Speed Racer explains in very plain terms just how silly it would look to see a hundred or more people on segways. There's even a segway chase scene. | Just one, and it gets about 6 seconds of screen time and belongs to the bad guy. You can't get more bad ass than scooting into work on a segway. | Even after
polling several people on this one, the results are inconclusive.
No point for either movie. | |
| Supercomputers(+) | Like robots, they're present but merely atmospherical. | There's only one, and it's Tony Stark's. And it has a touch of sass. | Iron Man | |
| Alternate Universes (+) | The movie begins with a young Speed Racer in modern times failing a test due to a weird hallucination about racing. Fifteen years later society has developed so much that there are hovercars and F-Zero race tracks. Oh, and the bad guy says he remembers when he was a boy programming on a Commodore 64, yet another indication of the weird time vs. technological development gap. I really hate to bring this up, but the hallucination in the beginning brings up the possibility that everything is happening inside the head of an autistic young man. | Pretty much what you see is what you get. There aren't really any other opporunities for alternate storylines. | Speed Racer | |
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*This is one of those things where it's not exactly "black and white." There's some ambiguity about how much is too much, or could the timing have been better, or maybe there were some scenes that even could have used more. Final Verdict: The fake score says Iron Man, but that's pretty much all bogus anyway. Even so, Iron Man satisfies a much wider audience. Whether you're a fan of the comics or this is your first time seeing anything related to the Iron Man character, the movie is a thrill ride and extremely entertaining to watch. The characters are well designed and dynamic, so they're just as interesting as the explosions and the action. Meanwhile, Speed Racer suffers from a self-contradiction in its intended audiences. It's clear that the movie was trying to remain loyal to fans of the original cartoon series. There's no other reason for the horrid looking screen transitions; it's clear that they're intentional to mock the graphics of the original show. But at the same time, the movie is full of kid-oriented humor and John Goodman, twisting it into a family movie for the current generation, meaning extremely high-end CGI and special effects have to be in there to keep the movie afloat. The end result is you have a lot of really bad looking special effects trying to mesh with really spectacular special effects, and simultaneously you have the tense atmosphere of the original storyline trying to coalesce with kid-oriented humor. Together, it's just a bad recipe. The movie actually is enjoyable, but if you're somewhere in the middle between these two very different audiences (i.e., a casual moviegoer who has heard of Speed Racer and knows it was made in Japan), there's a lot you need to bring yourself to overlook, and that means you're constantly breaking immersion. - Ken |