Ah, Speed Racer

Yes, the Star Wars movies are primarily intended for children, and always have been. Like many sane, right-thinking people, I've had many conversations about just how the new Star Wars films failed, and why, and occasionally someone has posited the theory that because they're kids' films, I'm just not able to enjoy them the way a new generation of viewers does, or even how I myself enjoyed the first three films as a child.

Lately, for reasons unrelated to Star Wars, I've been told time and again that there are limits to what children can understand in entertainment. While that may be true, I know for a fact that children understand the stakes that characters in films are fighting over. For example, in Star Wars, the heroes are trying to stop a magic monsterman from using a huge metal moon to blow up a planet. By comparison, the Phantom Menace is about heroes battling racially insensitive Asian stereotypes to keep them from blockading a trade route. Not exactly the same kind of 'zing', is it?

What does this have to do with Speed Racer? Well, it goes back to the question of what children are able to understand, or are interested in. If the Wachowski brothers are to be believed, there's absolutely nothing that children are more enthralled by than stock manipulation. Oh, sure, there are plenty of races, but the film goes to painstaking lengths to point out that who wins the race is only important inasmuch as how it effects the price of a given stock.

It seems to me that the Brothers Wachowski might be better off going back to making lesbian-themed film noirs.