Spaceballs

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Spaceballs
File:Spaceballs DVD cover.jpg
Directed byMel Brooks
Written byMel Brooks,
Thomas Meehan,
Ronny Graham
Produced byMel Brooks
StarringMel Brooks,
Rick Moranis,
Bill Pullman,
John Candy
Distributed byMGM
Release date
1987
Running time
96 min
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25,000,000

Spaceballs is a 1987 science fiction spoof movie written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks.

Opening crawl

Once upon a time warp...
In a galaxy very, very, very,
very, far away there lived
a ruthless race of beings
known as ... Spaceballs.
Chapter 11
The evil leaders of Planet
Spaceball, having foolishly
squandered their precious
atmosphere, have devised a
secret plan to take every
breath of fresh air away from
their peace-loving neighbor,
Planet Druidia.
Today is Princess Vespa's
wedding day. Unbeknownst
to the princess but knownst
to us, danger lurks in the
stars above...


If you can read this, you
don't need glasses.

Plot

Template:Spoilers On Planet Druidia, Princess Vespa (a parody of Princess Leia) is about to get married to the boring and narcoleptic Prince Valium (who is the last prince in the galaxy, and thus they have to marry despite his characteristics). She runs off from the altar with her droid-of-honor, Dot Matrix (a parody of C-3PO), 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" and pun on screwball, and a 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 cosmetic surgery, 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 of the same name) and Barfolomew, aka "Barf" (a mawg, or man-dog halfbreed, who is a parody of Chewbacca), who are desperate for money to pay back their debts to 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 Yogurt (A parody of Yoda) and the mysterious power he possesses, called the Schwartz (parody of the Force; "Schwartz" is a common Ashkenazi Jewish surname).

The movie features a lightsaber duel between Dark Helmet and Lone Starr, but instead of "lightsabers" as in Star Wars, they create a light beam emanating from their Schwartz rings. With their rings initially held in front of their pants, the light beams form an obvious phallic image.

In the end, Lone Starr and Barf are able to rescue the princess, destroy the Spaceballs' spaceship (Spaceball 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.

Antagonist

File:Dark Helmet angry.jpg
Dark Helmet angry after a subordinate goes "over his helmet."

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, his helmet is many times larger, he has short pants, and he wears a necktie. When his mask is down, Dark Helmet's breathing is overly audible and he speaks in a deep baritone voice (Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones), 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!") He also wears glasses.

In the movie, Helmet is the commander of the Spaceballs' armed "Imperious Forces", and commands its greatly elongated flagship Spaceball One, which is a visual parody of the Discovery One interplanetary spaceship from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. From a different point-of-view, Spaceball One could be a parody of the Executor, Darth Vader's flagship Super Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but this is unlikely.

He enjoys playing with Spaceballs action figurines, taking special pleasure in acting out a scenario in which he seduces Princess Vespa.

Instead of line-of-sight strangulation (or "Force Grip"), Dark Helmet uses his ring to zap the crotch of insubordinate minions with a laser beam.

Spaceball One

Planet Spaceball's weapon of conquest, Spaceball One, is a powerful and absurdly large vessel. It bears a bumper sticker that reads "We brake for nobody." Spaceball One is capable of travel at three different speeds other than sub-light speed: light speed, ridiculous speed, and ludicrous speed. When going into ludicrous speed every part of space goes plaid and all crew members must use a seat belt for their own safety. The ship is so big, it has room for a shopping mall, a zoo, and a three-ring circus (complete with a freak show). 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.

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 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.

Spaceball One carried, because of its size, a very large crew and (though not visually shown) enough escape pods to evacuate all but two people (or three if a bear uses one of them).

The ship is destroyed at the end of the movie. The head-section of the craft successfully goes through re-entry and impacts a planet, à la The Planet of the Apes. President Skroob, Dark Helmet, and Colonel Sandurz all survive, much to the chagrin of the apes who witness the event.

Cultural context

The plot is deliberately evocative of fairy tales, as are the scenes on the planet Druidia. Throughout the film, the characters 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 it parodies other movies as well. The most notable are 2001: A Space Odyssey (with the entrance of the very elongated spaceship near the beginning, and other details), Jaws (gigantic shark-like space ship and Jaws-like music), Transformers (Spaceball One), Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Battlestar Galactica, 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, and Alien (with John Hurt reprising his famous death scene from that movie, and even groaning in despair, "Oh no! Not again!" before dying). The film also mocks various aspects of 1980s culture, including video rental, fast food, Mr. Coffee, action figures, and merchandising. On the other side of the coin, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, also by Mel Brooks, borrowed from the main storyline of Spaceballs. During a scene in which Dark Helmet and various other crewmates actually view the movie 'Spaceballs' (which confuses Dark Helmet, seeing as how they're still making the movie in the first place!), several video cassettes of other Brooks films, such as Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, can be seen.

Also, in an allusion to the S.F. novel, a character is referred to as Sgt. Rico, from Starship Troopers, where Juan Rico was the main character of the 1959 novel, with the Paul Verhoeven film coming later than Spaceballs.

Some critics 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.

In September 2004, a sequel to Spaceballs entitled Spaceballs 2 was announced in an interview with Mel Brooks. 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, but, except for that announcement, there has been no news regarding the sequel. More recent rumors suggest Brooks is in fact working on a sequel, but not a TV series. A common rumor (but not canon among fans) is that the sequel will be called Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money in reference to a joke in the original movie (actually, a common feature of Brooks movies is that they must include a reference to an unmade sequel).

Cast

Character parodies

Trivia

  • On the gas station platform towerds the end of the movie, the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars can be seen parked.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Spaceballs.
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