Emile Hirsch always believed in Speed Racer. The world just needed time to catch up.
$94 million at the box office against a $120 million budget made this the most unforgivable flop of 2008. Plus, it was the Wachowskis’ first film since The Matrix trilogy, and that fact alone has to compound the disappointment. Critics did not hold back. The film was almost unanimously panned, and even their few positive reviews weren’t exactly effusive, more like tossing a bone.
Years passed. Something quietly shifted.
Hirsch started seeing signs of reappraisal around the film’s tenth anniversary, when he watched his then four-and-a-half-year-old son enjoy his first viewing. That moment planted a seed. Shortly after, he really felt the change when the New Beverly, the Los Angeles cinema owned by Quentin Tarantino, screened the film at midnight.
“I remember going to Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly theater for a midnight showing,”
“When we got to Speed Racer winning the Grand Prix, I could audibly hear everybody in the audience crying. And that’s when it hit me that this is more than just something that’s visually or aesthetically on another level. There’s heart and emotion behind it.”
Hirsch said
“There’s a catharsis and a sincerity and a purity of intention to Speed Racer, and those were some of the things it was knocked for at the time of its release. But I think they’re the reasons why it connects now aside from the technical elements and the fun adventure of it.”
He told The Hollywood Reporter
The reappraisal wasn’t just emotional. After years of relentless comic book movies and mainstreaming of animated multiverse storytelling and anime-inspired visuals, the film began to look revolutionary rather than bizarre. Online film communities almost single-handedly championed the film, fighting for it to be recognized for its earnest emotion and kinetic editing.
“I feel like audiences have just changed in the last 18 years, and a lot of the stylistic visual aesthetic things that alienated people then now draws them in a different way that they maybe never even have seen before.”
Hirsch bluntly stated
Much of the original snub was circumstantial. Speed Racer hit cinemas one week after Iron Man launched the MCU, and six weeks before The Dark Knight opened. Audiences were after grounded realism, not the film’s bright color palette and cartoon physics.
Now, things look very different. The 4K Blu-ray re-release quickly sold out, and IMAX’s limited re-release proved so popular that extra showtimes were added to meet demand. Following a theatrical re-release celebrating the film’s new 4K Ultra HD remaster, Speed Racer became available digitally and on 4K UHD Blu-ray on May 19.
Hirsch told The Hollywood Reporter he texted Lana Wachowski a couple of weeks ago to say he loves the movie. For a film once written off completely, that is the kind of ending nobody saw coming.
