Warner Brothers have gotten a lot of heat for Man of Steel; for throwing Superman into the grim and gritty world reminiscent of Nolan's Batman; for the mass destruction and apparent deaths of thousands; for ignoring or outright destroying the basic underpinnings of what the character represents.
They have also taken flack for letting much of the DC universe languish in development hell. Wonder Woman, in particular, has been the subject of constant hand-wringing and doubt on the part of WB. Including her into what appears to be an overstuffed MoS sequel has not really set well with her fans; who are content for now that she getting a big screen treatment at all.
Why all this fear and doubt? Why not just let the characters wade in their gloriously exuberant comic book glory on the big screen?
Many will point to the underperforming Green Lantern as the reason for their reticence, but I offer another big budget film that (unlike the modestly successful Green Lantern) was one of the biggest box office disasters in history.
Speed Racer
Unabashedly seeped in it's anime origin, live-action turned colorful and cartoonish with a CG brush, and made without fear for it's earnest ability to take seriously the world it establishes, even when that world is hyper-stylized and even silly to the extreme.
Not only did it fail to perform, but it also split people's opinion more than most movies could. Some decried it as eyeball bleeding nausea, others as nothing more than the glorious video game infused future of cinema.
At the time of Speed Racer, The Wachowskis had a string of money makers in the Matrix Trilogy and V for Vendetta. They were given the budget and latitude to create Speed Racer as they saw fit, opting to go with a PG film aimed at the family market that was both lucrative and in keeping with the spirit of the source material.
Things... did not go as planned. The show did not have the cache with the kiddos it did with their Gen-X parents, and adults seemed to be turned off by the bubblegum visuals and tonally off-putting presentation.
Also given that WB had no idea who to market this thing to led to a blanket approach that over-saturated an already super-saturated movie, and still it left many to wonder who this was meant for.
What it also did was make Warner's gun shy about trusting anyone coming into their offices looking to make a film with seemingly childish source material and massive budget requirements. If you want to know why someone hasn't waltzed into the executive offices of WB with a Wonder Woman script that revels in the comic book nature of the character - I guarantee you they have and probably with something sublime enough make a WW fan weep with the sadness of what could be.
"Make it DARK, raise the stakes." they will respond, "We don't want another mess like Speed Racer."
And no wonder they've stuck to the grim world of Batman for their DC films - its paid off. It a safe way to proceed where the way of Speed Racer is fraught with uncertainty and failure.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the dust bin of cinematic history. As is such with all works of such audacity, Speed developed a following. It was lauded by its fans as a tragically overlooked film, one of sheer creative brilliance and unleashed excitement.
Yes it is campy, but it also packs a wallop of an emotional punch; not an easy thing to manage all at once.
What is more striking than the following it has achieved is that the fans of the film are amongst the most passionately feverent and cinematicly knowledgeable folks I've read and talked to, and they also tend to aline themselves well with geek-out sensibilities as well as with the finer masterpieces in the film world.
Few who have actually seen it will tell you its the garbage that many assume it to be, and no one will tell you they've ever seen anything like it.
Those who love the film will tell you that it is one of the best films of the last decade, and not in a "no one else gets it but me" way, but in a "I want EVERYONE to see this and then have to scoop their brains back into their heads" way.
That passion, that following, that feeling that you want to share - well its getting harder and harder to find, but if you are willing, you will find it in Speed Racer.
It is what we need now in the DCCU, no less than the Silver Age reborn in all of its joyously awesome sense of adventure and discovery, splashed across the screen with the sure hand of artists who know exactly what they are doing.