Speed Racer > Iron Man
I'm going to say something that will probably cause me to be dead to a good percentage of you.
I enjoyed "Speed Racer" more than "Iron Man".
I saw them both, one week apart, at Monday VES screenings at ILM so it's hard not to compare them. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed "Iron Man". Robert Downey Junior is an absolutely excellent Tony Stark and ILM's visual effects work was extremely good. I was also happy to see Marvel's foray into producing turn out as well as it did. (Marvel got tired of Hollywood producers buying the rights to their characters and messing them up - Ang Lee's "Hulk" springs to mind - so they decided to run their own show and keep it true to their characters who they know better.)
But "Speed Racer" was just absurd. Mind-numbingly absurd. Every single frame of it from beginning to end. It made me feel the same way I felt the first time I saw New Legend of Shaolin - fascinated, dizzy, slightly afraid, and barely clinging to sanity. "Speed Racer" isn't a big budget summer movie, it's an experimental art project. I'm not just talking about the visual style, either. The casting, the dialog, the costumes, the whole plot. Everything. Especially the monkey. It's the kind of movie where you're like "this monkey is not strictly necessary" but you are wrong. The monkey is necessary, I assure you. Maybe it's because I heard about the unfortunate incidents on set but the monkey lent an air of looming danger and catastrophe which was essential to the mood of the film. "Speed Racer" wasn't a better movie and it won't deprive "Iron Man" of any awards but I sitll ended up appreciating it on its own terms and enjoying myself more.
If you see this movie, see it in digital. Most digital theaters aren't up to snuff for most releases yet, but this movie is all about color saturation and according to the VFX Sups that gave a talk after the screening, digital projectors can push color to a degree that film can't.
I enjoyed "Speed Racer" more than "Iron Man".
I saw them both, one week apart, at Monday VES screenings at ILM so it's hard not to compare them. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed "Iron Man". Robert Downey Junior is an absolutely excellent Tony Stark and ILM's visual effects work was extremely good. I was also happy to see Marvel's foray into producing turn out as well as it did. (Marvel got tired of Hollywood producers buying the rights to their characters and messing them up - Ang Lee's "Hulk" springs to mind - so they decided to run their own show and keep it true to their characters who they know better.)
But "Speed Racer" was just absurd. Mind-numbingly absurd. Every single frame of it from beginning to end. It made me feel the same way I felt the first time I saw New Legend of Shaolin - fascinated, dizzy, slightly afraid, and barely clinging to sanity. "Speed Racer" isn't a big budget summer movie, it's an experimental art project. I'm not just talking about the visual style, either. The casting, the dialog, the costumes, the whole plot. Everything. Especially the monkey. It's the kind of movie where you're like "this monkey is not strictly necessary" but you are wrong. The monkey is necessary, I assure you. Maybe it's because I heard about the unfortunate incidents on set but the monkey lent an air of looming danger and catastrophe which was essential to the mood of the film. "Speed Racer" wasn't a better movie and it won't deprive "Iron Man" of any awards but I sitll ended up appreciating it on its own terms and enjoying myself more.
If you see this movie, see it in digital. Most digital theaters aren't up to snuff for most releases yet, but this movie is all about color saturation and according to the VFX Sups that gave a talk after the screening, digital projectors can push color to a degree that film can't.