Ask any movie buff about 2008’s Speed Racer, and you’re bound to hear the words “masterpiece,” “ahead of its time,” “live-action manga,” and much more praise directed at the blockbuster movie. Inspired by the 1960s Japanese anime, the movie was adapted by visionary sibling directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski and pushed the boundaries of filmmaking. Jonh Wick: Chapter 4 director Chad Stahelski was there to witness it all, and now he talks exclusively to Collider about his experience on set.

At the time, Stahelski was a stunt performer who had worked with the Wachowskis on The Matrix franchise and V for Vendetta. During an interview to promote Day Shift, the filmmaker revealed to Collider's Steve Weintraub that looking back through the director's eye, he can say that the movie was a career-changer for him, in the sense that he learned a lot about directing with the project. So, was Stahelski excited to work on Speed Racer at that time?

“Are you kidding? Yeah, a ton. […] we had just got done with all the ‘Matrixes’ and we had done ‘V for Vendetta’ at that point, [and] the Wachowskis came, "Hey, we want to do the live-action version of ‘Speed Racer’. […] We're thinking about doing this in a very anime look." Almost with different layers, like these big composition shots, but we might need some real driving. […] we'll use motion-based systems because we wanted to move the background and stuff as well." […] So, it became a much different movie, more technological movie than a practical, which is super interesting to us at that time because we had done so much practical [effects].”

Stahelski also took the opportunity to break down the impressive work that the Wachowskis did when bringing the movie’s concept together, and how insane it was to make it all come to life. According to the director, the movie ended up looking the way it does because they shot “each scene three or four times in different layers”, and then stuck those layers together.

“So, there's the first unit that does all the main right-in-your-face stuff. There's the second unit, the background or second tier cast layer, or as the cast was walking it back, depending on who that would be in the blocking. The third tier would be the dog, the chimpanzee, the animals, all the action stuff. Then they'd put in the fourth layer, which is the VFX blue screen environmental stuff. So, four layers, four different versions of comps depending on where the cast would go, who was in what layer, four different directors to handle it all. And an amazing VFX department from John Gaeta and Dan Glass that would put it all together.”

In addition, the filmmaker revealed how being on the Speed Racer set helped him to learn how to work and think on many levels when it comes to all different technical aspects of production. He stated that even though he was “fortunate enough to work on some very big budget and very large productions that used enhanced VFX in the combination with practical” effects, Speed Racer was on a whole other level. “Because now, you had to think very much three-dimensionally on how we're wrapping around and anticipate you had to do your homework every morning while the other units were shooting.” Stahelski adds that “it was just a massive, massive learning curve.” He sums it up with a big “thank you” to Speed Racer and flat-out says that he doesn’t think he’s “ever learned as much in such a short period of time.”

Stahelski helmed all installments of the John Wick film series, and is attached to direct a slate of other exciting projects which include the Highlander remake, the movie adaptation of the best-selling video game Ghost of Tsushima. Watch what he had to say about Speed Racer above and look for more from Steve's interview soon.

#SpeedRacer #ChadStahelski #JohnWick4

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