Every time I hear someone talk about the Wachowskis’ “revolutionary” idea of shooting Speed Racer with everything in focus I want to smash them in the face with Gregg Toland’s skull. When people wonder why Citizen Kane still gets hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, there’s one reason why. That crazy idea of Toland and Orson Welles to shoot in deep focus 66 years ago is apparently still revolutionary. (Ignoring the fact too of course that a deep depth of field on film is so much harder to achieve than it is on digital.)
Oh and shooting on sets that are mainly greenscreen? I seem to remember someone else pioneering that about nine years ago. Someone who said that process would be the future and most people thinking he was crazy (of course if the script had been better or apparently had included a chimp instead of Jar Jar people might have paid more attention). Heck, even the idea of using cgi to blur the region between live action and source authentic animation has been done several times over (Sin City and 300 being the two most prominent examples). Granted neither was bright and colorful, but Dick Tracy certainly was.
None of which is to say they’re hacks, just that none of their ideas on this project are truly revolutionary.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -George Santayana