The weekend box office results are in, and The Wachowski Brothers’ live-action remake of the old Speed Racer cartoon is looking to be a total bomb. Doesn’t surprise me in the least, as the previews made it look (to this grumpy old curmudgeon, at least) like a blur of meaningless color and noise that nobody would remember five minutes after leaving the theater, let alone a year from now. Peter David, however, liked the film and has a different prediction of how Speed Racer will fare long-term:

…I realized a lot of this negativism was sounding familiar to me. Too long. Too loud. Too overwhelming visually with lots of mindless sound and fury signifying nothing. And I realized where and when I had heard it all before:

 

“Blade Runner.”

 

Critics and fans leveled many of the same complaints at “Blade Runner,” comparing it unfavorably to other then-popular SF films, and it was crushed at the box office by a powerhouse called “E.T.” “Blade Runner” tanked.

 

Yet over time it was seen as visionary, and its stylings le[f]t an indelible impression on fans and future filmmakers. Any number of dramatic endeavors have the visual stamp of “Blade Runner” upon them. …I suspect you’re going to see tricks from “Speed Racer” showing up in other films in the next years, and it’s going to be one of those movies in which, years from now, film students are going to be seeing the basis for many subsequent films.

Well, maybe. You never know what’s going to inspire today’s kids when they become tomorrow’s filmmakers, and it’s tough to predict how any given thing is going to look after 10 or 20 years of hindsight. Still, I can see one big difference between Speed Racer in the year 2008 and Blade Runner in the year 1981:

I wanted to see Blade Runner…