![]() ![]() Perhaps this history is why Speed Racer caused less of a stir for its racial representation when it hit theaters critics more routinely panned its dizzying effects and incoherent storytelling. It is worth noting that Speed Racer’s Western reinvention did not begin with the Wachowski duo, with the Americanized cartoon having a long history in the United States. Hollywood’s Speed Racer keeps the Americanized names adopted by the English-langauge dub of the original cartoon from the 1960s, but that doesn’t forgive the fact that the entire primary cast is white. The Wachowski siblings released Speed Racer in 2008, adapting the classic Tatsunoko Productions anime for the Western viewer. Speed Racer’s Japanese roots have all but vanished since the series came overseas in the 1960s. It’s also hard to rationalize why studios continue to insist on white leads for these expensive projects when all available evidence suggests it doesn’t actually help them find an audience. Looking back at how films like Dragonball Evolution, Speed Racer and The Last Airbender - each one either drawn from a Japanese source or about non-white heroes - fared, it’s not surprising that Ghost in the Shell is struggling with ticket sales. ![]() Movies based on properties with Asian leads often see the hero role go to a white actor, and they tend to fail spectacularly at the box office. Asian erasure has been commonplace in Hollywood adaptations of anime over the years. Ghost in the Shell isn’t unique in this regard, and neither is its poor reception. The film replaces the original anime’s Japanese leads with an overwhelmingly white cast, a frustrating oversight that’s familiar to Western anime fans. ![]() Ghost in the Shell’s biggest failure - and there are many - is its representation of race. ![]()
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