Spaceballs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Spaceballs | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Mel Brooks |
| Produced by | Mel Brooks |
| Written by | Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan, Ronny Graham |
| Starring | Bill Pullman John Candy Daphne Zuniga Rick Moranis Mel Brooks Dick Van Patten George Wyner Joan Rivers |
| Music by | John Morris |
| Cinematography | Nick McLean |
| Editing by | Conrad Buff IV |
| Distributed by | MGM/UA Communications Co. |
| Release date(s) | June 24 1987 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $22,700,000 (estimated) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
- This article is about a motion picture. For the unrelated video game, see SpaceBall (game). For the demoscene group, see Spaceballs (demogroup)
Spaceballs is a science fiction spoof film written by, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks. Opening on June 24, 1987, it earned only modest returns, although it has gone on to become a cult classic on video. Its plot and characters contain numerous parodies of elements from Star Wars and other popular films. The script was written by Mel Brooks in only six months, and was approved by George Lucas, as he was a big fan of Brooks' previous films.[1] Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic was also involved in the special visual effects for the film. Despite the PG rating, there are uses of strong profanity.[1]
In September, 2004, a sequel to Spaceballs entitled Spaceballs 2 was announced in an interview with Mel Brooks (this was hinted in Spaceballs when the character Yogurt said "God willing we'll all meet in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money".[2]) Brooks said he hoped to have the sequel come out some time around the theatrical release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It was later planned to be turned into an animated television show.[3] On September 21, 2006, Mel Brooks announced that he was indeed developing an animated TV series based on Spaceballs, set to debut on cable network G4 in the Fall of 2007.[4] The series would begin with a one-hour pilot, followed by an initial batch of 13 episodes of Spaceballs: The Series.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The film opens with a parody of the Star Wars opening crawl, ending with "If you can read this, you don't need glasses" in tiny letters.
On Planet Druidia, Princess Vespa - a parody of Princess Leia - is about to marry the boring and narcoleptic Prince Valium, whose name is a pun on both the comic strip Prince Valiant and the sedative drug Valium. Prince Valium is the last prince in the galaxy, so they have to marry despite his characteristics. Vespa runs off from the altar with her droid-of-honor, Dot Matrix (a parody of C-3PO and a reference to the old dot matrix style printers) and escapes into space.
Planet Spaceball has foolishly wasted all of its air and is desperate to find more. President Skroob (an anagram of "Brooks", pun on "screwball", and parody of Emperor Palpatine), played by Mel Brooks, and his top military leader, Dark Helmet (a parody of Darth Vader), along with his aide Colonel Sandurz (a pun on the creator/mascot for Kentucky Fried Chicken: Colonel Sanders, as well a parody of Imperial Officers like Veers, Tarkin, and Piett), devise a plan to kidnap Princess Vespa and extort Planet Druidia into giving all of its air to the Spaceballs. If they do not comply, they will reverse Vespa's rhinoplasty, thus restoring her hooked nose.
Meanwhile, Vespa's father, King Roland, hires two rogues: Captain Lone Starr (a parody of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker) from the Ford Galaxy (in reference to a car and Barfolomew, aka "Barf" (a "mawg", or half-man, half-dog, who is a parody of Chewbacca), who are desperate for money to pay back their debts to a big, fat, pizza-lifeform Mafia boss, Pizza the Hutt (an obvious parody of Jabba the Hutt, and a pun on the Pizza Hut restaurant chain)—to get Princess Vespa back to Druidia so that she can marry Prince Valium. They are helped by the wise alien sage known as Yoghurt (A parody of Yoda) and the mysterious power he possesses, called the Schwartz (parody of The Force; "Schwartz" is a common Ashkenazi Jewish surname, and also used in the movie to indirectly refer to the male anatomy). The Light and Dark sides are parodied by being called the "up side", and the "down side".
The movie features a lightsaber-like-weapon duel between Dark Helmet and Lone Starr, but instead of "lightsabers" as in Star Wars, they create an energy beam emanating from their Schwartz rings. With their rings initially held in front of their pants, the light beams form two obviously phallic images. A further pun depicts Dark Helmet saying, "You have the ring, and I see your Schwartz is as big as mine...now, let's see how well you handle it!"
In the end, Lone Starr and Barf are able to rescue the princess, destroy the Spaceballs' spaceship (Spaceball One), a pun on the President's Air Force One, and get the Druidian air back. At the end, Lone Starr finds out that he is a prince, and returns to Planet Druidia to marry Princess Vespa. Pizza the Hutt gets trapped in his car and "ate himself to death". As for Skroob, Dark Helmet, and Colonel Sandurz, they survive a crash-landing on the Planet of the Apes.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Bill Pullman | Captain Lone Starr |
| John Candy | Barfolemew (Barf) |
| Rick Moranis | Lord Dark Helmet |
| Daphne Zuniga | Princess Vespa of Druidia |
| Mel Brooks | President Skroob/Yogurt |
| George Wyner | Colonel Sandurz |
| Lorene Yarnell | Dot Matrix |
| Joan Rivers | Dot Matrix (voice) |
| Dick Van Patten | King Roland, Ruler of Druidia |
| Michael Winslow | Radar Technician |
| JM J. Bullock | Prince Valium |
| Dom DeLuise | Pizza the Hutt (voice) |
| John Hurt | Kane |
[edit] Selected elements
[edit] Antagonist
The main villain, Dark Helmet, is played by Rick Moranis. Just as the movie as a whole is largely a parody of Star Wars, Helmet is an obvious takeoff on Darth Vader, the immediate villain of that trilogy.
Dark Helmet looks more or less like Darth Vader, except that he is much shorter and his helmet is many times larger. He has short pants, and wears a necktie, shaped like another phallic symbol, with corresponding orbs. When his mask is down, Dark Helmet's breathing is overly audible and he speaks in a deep bass voice (another parody of Darth Vader), but when he lifts his mask he speaks in Rick Moranis' intentionally incredulous, shrill tone. Dark Helmet implies the reason for his deep breathing is due to the nature of the helmet itself (in one scene, he exclaims "I can't breathe in this thing!"). Vader's relationship to his nemesis/son, Luke Skywalker, is also parodied; during their climactic battle, Dark Helmet declares himself to be Lone Starr's "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate," before admitting that this means that they have no familial ties whatsoever, or, as he says in response to "So what does that make us?", "Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become!"
In the movie, Helmet is the commander of the Spaceballs' armed "Imperious Forces" (a parody of the Imperial Forces in Star Wars, as well as the Imperious Leader from Battlestar Galactica), and commands its greatly elongated flagship Spaceball One, which is a visual parody of the Executor, Darth Vader's flagship Super Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He enjoys playing with Spaceballs action figurines, taking special pleasure in acting out a scenario in which he seduces Princess Vespa. This commonly causes him embarrassment, such as when Colonel Sandurz comes in he tries to hide the action figures saying, "Knock next time!", and afterwards, "Did you see anything?", to which Colonel Sandurz replies, "No sir, I did not see you playing with your dolls again!" According to the special edition DVD, Rick Moranis ad-libbed that whole scene.
Instead of line-of-sight strangulation (or "Force Grip"), Dark Helmet uses his Schwartz ring to zap the crotch out of insubordinate minions with a green beam.
While searching for the heroes on the desert planet (parodying the Tatooine droid search scenes in A New Hope), he tells his men to "comb the desert for the princess." A few seconds later you see two men operating a gigantic comb, literally "combing the desert." For Dark Helmet's costume in this scene, he wore khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, and a pith helmet, complete with eye holes, made in similar dimensions as his regular helmet.
Although it is quite improbable that Moranis had seen archive footage beforehand, his helmet-down Dark Helmet voice sounds remarkably like David Prowse in the Darth Vader suit, shown undubbed in the documentary Empire of Dreams, during filming of A New Hope. Also, while perhaps mere coincidence, Matthew Wood's delivery as General Grievous is very reminiscent of the vocal tics and pauses, albeit over the top, of the mask-down Dark Helmet.
[edit] Spaceball One
Planet Spaceball's weapon of conquest, Spaceball One, is a powerful and absurdly large vessel. It bears resemblances to Battlestar Galactica, the Super Star Destroyer, and the Death Star, and has a large bumper sticker that reads "We brake for nobody." Spaceball One is capable of traveling at four different speeds: sub-light speed, light speed, ridiculous speed, and ludicrous speed. When going into ludicrous speed all crew members must use a seat belt for their own safety, and the ship goes so fast, it leaves a trail of plaid behind. The ship is quite large, containing a shopping mall, a zoo, and a three-ring circus (complete with a freak show), and takes 1-2 minutes to cross the screen at the beginning of the film. Anyone traveling from one end of the ship to the other must jog: walking takes so long, the film would be over before they make the trip. The ship's music theme is a take on the theme of Jaws, and the ship itself even vaguely resembles a shark. This is especially noticeable in a scene where Spaceball One is about to "devour" Princess Vespa's ship with its frontal hatch, or when it is transforming and the "fins" are folding inwards.
Poking fun at the length of the ship, the music theme plays, then after it ends, it plays again, each time growing louder and louder, as if the orchestra is getting frustrated with its seemingly endless length.
Spaceball One's secret weapon is its ability to transform (in a sequence reminiscent of the climax of Transformers: The Movie, during which Unicron undergoes a similar transformation) into Mega Maid, a colossal cleaning lady holding a gigantic vacuum cleaner (with two settings: suck and blow), with a head like that of the Statue of Liberty, and escape pods in the spikes of the crown. The Spaceballs use this contraption to rob the air from other planets and take it back to planet Spaceball. Barf makes light of the reference when he mentions "It's not just a spaceship... it's a Transformer!" during the metamorphosis sequence.
Because of its size, Spaceball One carried a very large crew, and (though not all of them were shown) enough escape pods to evacuate all but two people (or all but three if, as in the movie, a bear uses one pod).
The ship is destroyed at the end of the movie in a manner similar to the destruction of the Death Star: Lone Starr's ship, Eagle 5 (a modified Winnebago RV, and a parody of the Millennium Falcon) flies through Mega Maid's ear and down an absurdly winding tunnel in order to access Mega Maid's self-destruct switch. The head-section of the craft successfully goes through re-entry and impacts what appears to be the Planet of the Apes (forming a parody of the Statue of Liberty's appearance in that movie). President Skroob, Dark Helmet, and Colonel Sandurz all survive, much to the chagrin of the apes who witness the event, and who comment: "Spaceballs? Oh shit, there goes the planet!"
[edit] Reception
[edit] Box office
The budget for Spaceballs was $22,700,000 (estimated). The film grossed $38,119,483 during its run in the United States, taking in $6,600,000 on its opening weekend.[5]
[edit] Cultural context
The plot is deliberately evocative of fairy tales, as are the scenes on the planet Druidia. Throughout the film, the Spaceballs regularly break the fourth wall, often to promote their merchandise, and they are aware that they are making a movie, and the events are not "real life." The majority of the scenes and characters are parodies of Star Wars, although the film parodies other movies as well. The most notable are 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jaws (gigantic shark-like space ship and Jaws-like music), Transformers: The Movie (Spaceball One, during the merchandising scene with Yogurt, Spaceballs The Coloring Book has Optimus Prime on the cover), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Skroob's transporter accident), Battlestar Galactica, Superman: The Movie (only in the musical score), the Police Academy movies (Michael Winslow sound effects; Winslow has a cameo in the film as a Spaceball officer), and the Sir David Lean films The Bridge on the River Kwai (only in the musical score) and Lawrence of Arabia (the musical score and the sand dunes). Also, The Wizard of Oz, Zardoz, Planet of the Apes, Rambo, Max Headroom, Back to the Future, Rocky, It Happened One Night, Superman and Alien (with John Hurt reprising his famous death scene from that movie, and even groaning in despair, "Oh no! Not again!"). However, when the chestburster emerges from the victim, it screams, smiles, puts on a straw boater hat with a miniature bamboo cane in one hand, and begins dancing and singing like Michigan J. Frog, performing Hello! Ma Baby.
The film also satirizes various aspects of 1980s culture, including video rental, fast food, Mr. Coffee, action figures, and merchandising. During a scene in which Dark Helmet and various other crewmates actually view the movie Spaceballs (which confuses Dark Helmet, as they are still making the movie at the time), several video cassettes of other Brooks films, such as Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, can be seen.
The character Sgt. Rico alludes to Juan Rico, the main character of the 1959 novel Starship Troopers.[citation needed] The Paul Verhoeven film had not yet been made.
The name of Dark Helmet's second in command, Colonel Sandurz, is a reference to Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder and mascot of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain. In one scene, Dark Helmet mocks him with the line "What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz - chicken?"
Some critics[attribution needed] pointed out that since timing is the essence of comedy it was odd that Brooks should have waited ten years to spoof Star Wars, though his supporters say that he wanted to wait until the entire trilogy was available for mocking.[citation needed] Some Star Wars fans[attribution needed] find Spaceballs as the final chapter in the "Decade of Star Wars", which began with the release of New Hope.
[edit] Character parodies
| Character | Parody |
|---|---|
| Captain Lone Starr | Han Solo/Luke Skywalker/Indiana Jones/Lieutenant Starbuck, The Lone Star State (pun) |
| Barfolemew (Barf) | Chewbacca (Chewie) |
| Lord Dark Helmet | Darth Vader |
| President Skroob | Emperor Palpatine/Grand Moff Tarkin |
| Princess Vespa of Druidia | Princess Leia Organa Solo of Alderaan, Jewish-American princesses |
| Prince Valium | Prince Valiant, Valium (pun) |
| Yogurt | Yoda, Yogurt (pun) |
| Snotty | Montgomery Scott, nicknamed "Scotty" (Star Trek) |
| Dot Matrix | C-3PO, dot matrix printer (pun) |
| Pizza the Hutt | Jabba the Hutt, Pizza Hut (pun) |
| Colonel Sandurz | Admiral Piett (among other Imperial officers), Colonel Sanders (pun) |
| The Dinks | Jawas/the dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs/Ewoks |
| Ping Pongs | Imperial Stormtroopers |
[edit] See also
- Galaxy Quest - a film which lampoons Star Trek and its fandom
- List of fiction that breaks the fourth wall
[edit] References
- ^ a b "Trivia for Spaceballs." IMDB. Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
- ^ "Mel Brooks Says 'Spaceballs' Sequel In The Works." Slashdot. September 29, 2004. Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
- ^ Guider, Elizabeth. "'Spaceballs' rolls to TV." Variety. January 19, 2005. Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
- ^ Staff Writer. "'Spaceballs' to become TV cartoon." CNN. September 21, 2006. Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
- ^ "Business Data for Spaceballs." IMDB. Retrieved on September 21, 2006.
[edit] External links
| Films Directed by Mel Brooks |
| The Producers | The Twelve Chairs | Young Frankenstein | Blazing Saddles | Silent Movie | High Anxiety History of the World, Part I | Spaceballs | Life Stinks | Robin Hood: Men in Tights | Dracula: Dead and Loving It |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Wikipedia articles needing factual verification | Films directed by Mel Brooks | 1987 films | Cult science fiction films | Comedy science fiction films | Parody films | American films | MGM films | Space adventure films | English-language films
