Hollywood has been trying to make a live-action movie out of Speed Racer since the early 1990s: At one point, Johnny Depp was set to play the hero. But it was The Matrix creators Larry and Andy Wachowski who figured out how to transplant the 1960s Japanese anime TV show into the world of flesh-and-blood while still retaining the colorful palette and outlandish physical action the show was famous for around the world.
Speed Racer relies heavily on cutting-edge computer-animation technology and could not have been made even three years ago, at least in its current incarnation. But it's certainly not the first film to attempt to capture the popularity and appeal of animated characters using real people, a recurring trend in Hollywood that can translate into big box-office but rarely generates a satisfying movie.
Popeye, director Robert Altman's 1980's adaptation of the character made popular in newspaper comic strips and cartoons, was a wildly ambitious failure. The widescreen musical with elaborate sets and effects and a large cast headed by Robin Williams (in his first starring role) proved just because Popeye worked so well in pen-and-ink didn't necessarily mean he'd make an interesting human protagonist.
That is the essential problem that has dogged most other cartoon-to-real-world film adaptations: When you take Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble out of their animated Bedrock and plop them on sets designed to look just like their 'toon world, they suddenly become much less interesting. But just because 1994's The Flintstones didn't make anyone forget the Hanna-Barbera original, doesn't mean the film didn't sell enough tickets for the studio to ante up for a sequel, 2000's Viva Rock Vegas.
Sometimes, when your cartoon protagonist isn't human, you have no choice but to stay in the animation realm. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle in 2000 kept the flying squirrel and the bumbling moose as computer-generated characters, sharing the screen with Robert DeNiro, Jason Alexander and Rene Russo. That didn't make the film any more watchable -- it was one of that summer's biggest bombs -- but the tactic has been used in other pictures such as Garfield and Scooby-Doo, to greater success.
Warren Beatty proved adapting a cartoon is not all that different from making an ordinary movie with 1990's Dick Tracy, which painstakingly recreated the primary colors and outlandish characters of the popular comic strip, but also took care to give viewers a decent plot and amusing performances . But even though the film was a nice hit, Tracy hasn't exactly remained in the popular consciousness. Maybe, when it comes to movies, it's best to leave cartoons the way everyone liked them the first time around: Animated.
