Spaceballs

Spaceballs
Movie poster
Directed by	Mel Brooks
Written by	Mel Brooks Thomas Meehan Ronny Graham
Produced by	Mel Brooks
Starring	Bill Pullman John Candy Daphne Zuniga Rick Moranis Mel Brooks Dick Van Patten George Wyner Joan Rivers
Cinematography	Nick McLean
Edited by	Conrad Buff IV
Music by	John Morris
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn Mayer
Release dates	June 24, 1987
Running time	96 min
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US $22,700,000 (estimated)

Spaceballs is a 1987 science fiction parody film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks. It was released on June 24, 1987, and earned only modest returns, but it has gone on to become a cult classic on video.

Its plot and characters contain numerous parodies of elements from the original Star Wars trilogy and Star Trek in particular, as well as other popular science fiction 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's previous films. Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic was also involved in the special visual effects for the film. As of 2007, an animated sequel TV series is in preparation.

Plot

Planet Spaceball, led by President Skroob (Mel Brooks), has wasted all of its air and, desperate to find more, aims at the extortion of all the air from planet Druidia. They plan to kidnap the Druish Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), who is about to marry the narcoleptic Prince Valium. Resenting this marriage, Vespa runs off from the altar with her Droid of Honor, Dot Matrix (Joan Rivers), and escapes into space, where she is attacked by the Spaceballs under the command of Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis).

Vespa's father, King Roland (Dick Van Patten), hires Captain Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his mawg Barf (John Candy) who are desperate for money to pay back their debts to the Mafioso Pizza the Hutt (Dom DeLuise), to rescue his daughter. They manage to rescue her and escape the Spaceballs, but crash-land on a desert planet. There, they meet Yogurt (Mel Brooks), who introduces Lone Starr to The Schwartz. However, the Spaceballs trick Vespa and capture her again. Lone Starr and Barf rescue the Princess again, but not before the Spaceballs have succeeded in forcing King Roland to reveal the entry code to Druidia's atmosphere. Their spaceship Spaceball I transforms into Mega Maid with a vacuum cleaner, which starts to extract the air from Druidia. Lone Starr uses his Schwartz ring to reverse the procedure, defeats Dark Helmet in a duel using lightsaber-like weapons emanating from their Schwartz rings, and causes Mega Maid to self-destruct.

Lone Starr returns the Princess to Druidia and, since his creditor Pizza the Hutt "ate himself to death" while locked in his car, leaves without taking the agreed payment, a million spacebucks, instead taking 248 spacebucks. Shortly afterwards, on finding out that he is a "certified Prince", he returns in time to interrupt the marriage and marry Vespa.

Notably, Daniel Lichtblau was first considered for the leading role of Lone Starr, but declined due to a prescheduled European tour of his then current play "The Sinister Hand." Many in the industry liken this move to Jack Lord's now infamous declining of the role of Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

Cast

Actor	Role
Mel Brooks	President Skroob/Yogurt
John Candy	Barfolemew (Barf)
Rick Moranis	Lord Dark Helmet
Bill Pullman	Captain Lone Starr
Daphne Zuniga	Princess Vespa of Druidia
George Wyner	Colonel Kernel Sandurz
Dick Van Patten	King Roland, Ruler of Druidia
Michael Winslow	Radar Technician
Joan Rivers	Dot Matrix (voice)
Lorene Yarnell	Dot Matrix
JM J. Bullock	Prince Valium
Dom DeLuise	Pizza the Hutt (voice)
John Hurt	Kane (John Hurt's character from Alien)
Dey Young	Waitress
Joan Cusack	Marilyn Monroe in Dark Helmet's dream

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.

Cultural Context

File:Spaceball1.jpg

"What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?": Dark Helmet taunts Colonel Sandurz on the bridge of Spaceball One.

The plot is deliberately evocative of fairy tales, as are the scenes on the planet Druidia. Throughout the film, the Spaceballs 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, for example, at one point the villains succeed in capturing the main characters' stunt doubles, while at another accidentally kill one of the filming crew during a fight scene. In fact, in one scene, they pull out the video version of Spaceballs being shown in real time, as it is being filmed and temporarily take a look at the scene they're in: "now".

The majority of the scenes and characters are parodies of Star Wars, although the film parodies other movies as well, most notably:

• Jaws (gigantic shark-like space ship with Jaws-like music)
• Battlestar Galactica
• Superman: The Movie (musical score)
• The Police Academy movies (Michael Winslow sound effects; Winslow has a cameo in the film as a Spaceball officer)
• The Sir David Lean films The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia
• The Wizard of Oz (first meeting with Yogurt)
• Planet of the Apes (crashed remains of Spaceball One)
• Rambo
• Star Trek The beaming sequence with the character Snotty (a parody of Scottish character Montgomery "Scotty" Scott), and the scene where Lone Starr attempts to knock out a Spaceball by performing (at first, unsuccessfully) the Vulcan Neck Pinch.
• Max Headroom
• Back to the Future
• Rocky (including its supposed continuation up to "Rocky Five ... Thousand")
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• It Happened One Night
• Alien (John Hurt reprising his famous death scene from that movie, and even groaning in despair, "Oh no! Not again!"; the chestburster emerges from the victim, screams, smiles, and in stereotypical vaudeville fashion, puts on a straw boater hat with a miniature cane in one hand, and begins dancing and singing like Michigan J. Frog, performing Hello! Ma Baby)
• Dumbo (Yogurt saying to Lone Starr that he doesn't need the ring)
• Transformers (When Spaceball I is transforming, Barf says "It's a Transformer!")
  • The transformation itself is also similar to Unicron's transformation in The Transformers: The Movie, released in 1986.
• Thunderbirds The Mercedes Benz launching from the Planet Druidia platform.

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 try to locate a copy of Spaceballs on video (which confuses Dark Helmet, as they are still making the movie at the time), Sandurz passes by video cassettes of several of Brooks's earlier movies (The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, and To Be or Not to Be) before he finds the video he is looking for. Scenes from Rocky can also be seen.

At the end of the final battle, in the final minute of the self-destruct countdown, Spaceball One's computer reminds Dark Helmet that there is a self-destruct cancellation button. Rushing to the button, he, President Skroob and Colonel Sandurz find it out of order, to which Dark Helmet curses, "Fuck! Even in the future, nothing works!"

One of the features of Skroob's presidential office was beverage cans filled with air, branded "Perri-air".

Rick Moranis reportedly modeled Dark Helmet's "mask-down" voice not on that of James Earl Jones, the actor who provided Darth Vader's voice, but on that of Geoffrey Holder, a popular performer with similar voice intonations to Jones.

Parodies

Heroes

• Captain Lone Starr combines traits from Star Wars' two male heroes, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. His name is derived from Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr series. He hails from the Ford Galaxy in reference to Harrison Ford (who played Han Solo), and also a play on the Ford Galaxie, a full size car made by the Ford Motor Company. Lone Starr is revealed as being a prince from an unknown kingdom at the end of the film. Exactly where in the Ford Galaxy he's from has to this day never been revealed. The only clue to his true identity was a pendant which later turned out to be 'a royal birth certificate', according to Yogurt; by film's end, the pendant is what allows him to marry Vespa. A further clue is hinted at, but never followed up in the film: Just before their fight, Dark Helmet "reveals" to Lone Starr that he is a former roommate to one of his cousins (your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate, which could also make him Lone Starr's ex-roommate, but Lone Starr does not seem to remember any such thing). Lone Starr's costume is intentionally misplaced, resembling Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones costume rather than that of Han Solo or Luke Skywalker.
• His companion Barf (Barfolomew), a Mog (half-man, half-dog), is a parody of the Wookiee Chewbacca (Chewie).
• Their ship Eagle 5 is a modified Winnebago RV. Its shabby state resembles the Millennium Falcon. The name Eagle 5 also refers to both Luke Skywalker's call number (Red 5) and Han Solo's ship (Millennium Falcon) in Star Wars. Also the seal for the Eagle 5 is an altered parody of the Apollo 11 patch.
• Yogurt, a parody of the Jedi master Yoda (named after the food yogurt), is a sage with deep knowledge of the mysterious power called The Schwartz (The Force). His bombastic entrance resembles that of the wizard in The Wizard of Oz. Like many characters played by Mel Brooks he embodies several Jewish stereotypes. Note Alan U. Schwartz is Mel Brooks' long time legal counsel.
• He is assisted in his work, particularly merchandising, by the Dinks, a group of red-clad little people who resemble the Jawas from Star Wars while making sounds similar to the Seven Dwarfs and singing a version of the Colonel Bogey March.

Druidians

• Princess Vespa resembles Princess Leia in her noble heritage and her love/hate relationship with Lone Starr/Han Solo. Her name references the motor scooter Vespa. She is a Druish princess (a play on Jewish princess), a characterization of a spoiled young Jewish-American woman. She was spoiled by her father and is used to a life of luxury, which includes a Mercedes Benz spaceship. Her hooked nose was changed by rhinoplasty as a 16th birthday present. In one scene she appears to have a hairstyle similar to Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, but it is revealed that she is actually wearing headphones.
• Dot Matrix, Vespa's droid-of-honor, resembles C-3PO, whose placid nature is only broken by her dedication to keeping Vespa safe. Her name is a reference to the old dot matrix style printers.
• Prince Valium, the last prince in the galaxy and Vespa's fiancé. He takes his name from the comic strip Prince Valiant but combines it with the sedative drug to reflect his narcolepsy.

Spaceballs

• President Skroob, though in the place of Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine, appears more like a modern president without any supernatural powers. His name is an anagram of "Brooks," but also resembles the verb to screw (to cheat) and Ebenezer Scrooge.
• Dark Helmet, the Space Balls' second-in-command, is a parody of Darth Vader. He resembles Darth Vader in appearance, but is much shorter, has a much larger helmet, and wears a tie. (However, he changes into a khaki uniform and an equally oversized pith helmet during the desert scene.) He speaks in a deep bass voice and breathes audibly, as the helmet hinders his breathing. This often causes him to lift his visor, revealing his bespectacled face and his intentionally incredulous high-pitched voice. Helmet is the commander of the Spaceballs' "Imperious Forces" (a parody of the Imperial Forces in Star Wars, as well as the Imperious Leader from Battlestar Galactica), and commands the flagship Spaceball One (see below). He uses The Schwartz to discipline his subordinates, not by force grip (as with Darth Vader) but by crushing their testicles with the Schwartz. He enjoys playing with Spaceballs action figurines, taking special pleasure in acting out a scenario in which he seduces Princess Vespa, but is embarrassed when anyone notices his playing. Vader's relationship to his nemesis Luke Skywalker is parodied by Helmet declaring himself Lone Starr's "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate", which he sums up as making them "absolutely nothing."
• Colonel Sandurz is a parody of the leading Imperial Officers from Star Wars, such as Veers and Piett or Moff Tarkin. His name is a pun on KFC's founder Colonel Sanders. (At one point, Dark Helmet says to him, "What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?")
• Snotty, who operates the transporter beam in planet Spaceball's capital city, is a reference to Star Trek's engineer Scotty. His thick Scottish accent, stereotypical Scottish attire (kilt and hat) and his referring to "Loch Lomond" also point to Snotty's Scottish background.

Spaceball One

The Spaceballs' weapon of conquest, Spaceball One, is a powerful spaceship. The opening scene is an obvious homage to Alien and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope with the ridiculously long, wide angle continuous shot of Spaceball One. Its shape resembles Battlestar Galactica and the Super Star Destroyers, while its name is a pun on Air Force One, the U.S. president's airplane. The Spaceballs' attitude toward others is expressed by the ship's large bumper sticker: "We brake for nobody."

The ship's absurd size is a frequent point of references:

• The ship is so large that it contains a shopping mall, a zoo, and a three-ring circus (complete with a freak show).
• The ship takes about 1 minute and 47 seconds to cross the screen at the beginning of the film. This is emphasized by the music theme which stops and resumes again several times, each time growing louder and louder, implying that the orchestra is getting frustrated with the ship's seemingly endless length.
• President Skroob is once forced to jog to the bridge in order to arrive before the end of the film. He references this by saying "This ship is too big. If I walked, the movie would be over."

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. Ludicrous speed results in the ship leaving a trail of plaid, parodying the "warp trail" seen in the first few Star Trek films.

Spaceball One's secret weapon is its ability to transform into Mega Maid, a colossal cleaning woman holding a gigantic vacuum cleaner used to extract air from other planets and take it back to planet Spaceball. It can also reverse that process, expelling air.

The ship's destruction resembles the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars as well as the demise of Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie: Lone Starr's ship flies through Mega Maid's ear to reach the self-destruct button. Mega Maid's head and the hand holding the vacuum cleaner crash into a nearby planet, with the pieces resembling the Statue of Liberty as seen in the final scene of Planet of the Apes.

Other villains

• Pizza the Hutt, named after the pizza restaurant chain, is a half-man, half-Pizza Mafioso and a parody of Jabba the Hutt.
• His companion Vinnie, taking the place of the various courtiers and associates of Jabba, such as Bib Fortuna, resembles Max Headroom.

The Schwartz

FAO Schwartz is the toy store chain which distributes the Star Wars toys, therefore it is yet another parody on film merchandising, as in the entire first Yogurt scene. The lightsabers emanating from the Schwartz rings held in front of their crotch also form a phallic symbol, a play on the word Schwantz/Schwanz which is Yiddish/German slang for penis. 'Schwarz' is German for 'black'. The Light and Dark sides of the Force are parodied by being called the "up side" and the "down side".

Sequel

Breaking the fourth wall, the possibility of a sequel was already included in the film itself: "God willing, we'll all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money". In September 2004, news about a sequel (possibly hoaxes), parodying the Prequel trilogy, appeared on the internet. In January 2005, it was revealed that Spaceballs would be turned into an animated television show. On September 21, 2006, Mel Brooks announced that he was indeed developing an animated TV series based on Spaceballs, which was set to debut in autumn 2007. The series would begin with a one-hour pilot, followed by an initial batch of 13 episodes of Spaceballs: The Animated Series.

See also

• Galaxy Quest, a film which lampoons Star Trek fandom.

External links

• Spaceballs at IMDb