Back in 2008, the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer was greeted with mixed-to-negative reviews from critics. For all intents and purposes, the film was seen as a bomb. Though, to be fair, it did release in the same year that Iron Man came out.
In the nearly two decades since its release, Speed Racer garnered a cult classic reputation among diehards as both the greatest racing movie about the film industry and the greatest live-action anime adaptation of all time. Thanks to Warner Bros.’ recent 4K theatrical rerelease, audiences who slept on it or are seeing it for the first time have turned a hot take into the widely held belief that Speed Racer was a criminally overlooked masterpiece.
To celebrate the imminent 4K digital release of Speed Racer (and take a well-earned victory lap over the movie finally getting its flowers), io9 spoke with star Emile Hirsch about witnessing the movie’s resurgence as a cult classic ahead of its time.
Isaiah Colbert, io9: What originally drew you to the role of Speed and made you say yes to a project as visually experimental as this one back in the 2000s?
Emile Hirsch: The initial pull for me was I’d watched the cartoon as a kid. They did replays on Cartoon Network, so I was always watching a cartoon. I loved the cartoon, and I loved The Matrix and what the Wachowskis did with that. So when I heard the Wachowskis were making Speed Racer, my imagination went wild. This was the first film that they were making after they finished The Matrix trilogy, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to audition now.” I went through the whole audition process, which was pretty crazy because I remember everyone and their mother was auditioning for Speed. It was like if you lived in Idaho and were an able-bodied male, put yourself on tape. That’s what it felt like. It felt like this worldwide casting call.
When I finally got the part, I was beyond excited. And then the Wachowskis showed me some of the artwork and what they were doing, and it kinda blew my mind because it made me realize they weren’t going to do The Matrix aesthetic with Speed Racer—which is what most people first thought. They were gonna reinvent their aesthetic in this more colorful, hyperpop anime visual element. That was cool because, in that moment, now I know we were making something really different than The Matrix. We’re not just adding on to that; we’re making our own thing. There’s a certain excitement about making something so wild and experimental.
io9: Was there a particular moment or scene during filming that crystallized for you that you guys were on to something great, or did you feel a little rudderless when it came to how the whole thing would shape up with it being shot on a green screen?
Hirsch: Some of the family scenes at the dinner table after the Thunderhead race were great examples of how I could see all the main characters in one room interacting. We’ve got a chimpanzee that we’re shooting plates of. We’ve got Roger Allam as Royalton, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Kick Gurry as Sparky, John Goodman, [and] Matthew Fox as Racer X. We have all these wonderful actors together, and everybody was so well cast. It really felt like it was gonna be a really cohesive cast and piece.
io9: Over the years, Speed Racer has transformed from a misunderstood release into a cult classic that audiences now champion as one of the best live-action anime adaptations of all time. What has it been like to watch that revolution unfold?
Hirsch: Honestly, it’s taken me aback a little bit. We loved the movie in ’08, but the world didn’t accept the movie to a certain extent. The public and the critics sorta rejected the movie. That’s what it felt like. There were plans to make sequels if it did well and all that stuff, and they were like, “Aw, it didn’t do well,” so everyone was heartbroken.
(Laughs) To see it slowly change [after] having had the world go, “This was a disaster,” to suddenly coming around and being like, “Just kidding, it was a masterpiece,” it’s kinda crazy. It’s almost hard to believe, in a way, because it doesn’t seem like that happens very often with films to have this big a difference in reception to the point where, 18 years later, the chatter and fans push Warner Bros. to release this 4K and push for a theatrical release. And then the chatter from that pushes for IMAX. It’s cool because it’s all very organic.
Speed Racer‘s rise was not corporately engineered. It was just people liking the movie. That’s really what it was.
io9: One of my favorite moments of the film, watching it as a kid, was your PG-13-worthy line: “Get that weak shit off my track.” Were you at all surprised at the line being in the film? Was it something that was scripted or improvised? Walk me through how that line came to be.
Hirsch: It wasn’t the script. Lily Wachowski was like, “Try ‘Get that weak shit off my track!'” And I was like, “Really?” And they were like, “Yeah!” so I did it. It wasn’t in the script because Warner Bros. probably would’ve been like “No.”
There was that, and there was also the moment when Allam’s Royalton was like, “Get this racer trash out of my building,” and Spritle flips him off. As the doors closed, he gives him the middle finger. I don’t necessarily know if that was scripted either. That was just something [where] they were like, “Just give him the finger!”
PG-13 movies at the time were so hardcore violent and had so much swearing. There was so much R-rated content in PG-13 at the time that, even with those couple of little things we had, we still got the PG rating because the other PG-13 movies were just so much worse. We sorta slid in with the PG-13 with that.
io9: What do you hope Speed Racer’s resurgence signals to Hollywood—particularly when it comes to studios and filmmakers bold enough to make live-action anime adaptations today?
Hirsch: (Laughs) Gosh, I don’t know. I guess I would say, “If your movie comes out, bombs, and gets bad reviews, and you still love it, don’t trip too hard ’cause it might be like Speed Racer.” It might take like 18 years for everyone to love it.
Speed Racer’s 4K remaster will be available digitally on May 19
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