speed racer

PopSci’s Guide to Sci-Tech Summer Movies

From the gadgets in Get Smart to the gamma rays in The Hulk, we rate the scientific jargon quotient of the summer's hottest flicks

Its blockbuster season, and that means mad scientists, angry robots and a certain flexibility with the laws of physics. Heres our guide to movies made especially with PopSci fans in mind. In it, a roundup of the season's best (and worst) geek candy, along with our expected gibberish quotient, so youll know which lines are pure comedy—even if no one else is laughing.

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Hollywood Science: How to Make a Digital World

The high-speed stunner Speed Racer resets reality by creating a fantasyland out of nothing but computers and imagination

Go, Speed Racer: A fully composited single image from the Speed Racer movie. More than 500 effects artists worked on the film. Photo by Warner Bros.
Filming conventional high-speed action fare is hard enough, but to bring the classic cartoon Speed Racer to life, the Wachowski brothers had to contend with 300mph racecars sporting fanciful features like robotic reconnaissance pigeons and wheels that can rotate 180 degrees. With 2,300 visual-effects (VFX) shots—twice as many as last year’s eye-popping 300—it heralds the future of summer-blockbuster fare: The entire movie, aside from the human actors, exists only in a computer.

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