About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Spaceballs

Encyclopedia : S : SP : SPA : Spaceballs

Spaceballs is a 1987 science fiction spoof movie written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks. Opening on June 24th of that year, 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.

Contents

Box office

The budget for Spaceballs was 22.7 million dollars. The film grossed 38.1 million dollars during its run, with an opening weekend of 6.6 million dollars. [link]

Cast

Plot

On Planet Druidia, Princess Vespa (a parody of Princess Leia and a reference to the high end scooter) 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", 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 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, as well as Harrison Ford, the actor who originally played Han Solo) 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 faced 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, 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".

Lone Starr using the Schwartz ring to confront Lord Dark Helmet
Enlarge
Lone Starr using the Schwartz ring to confront Lord Dark Helmet

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. 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), 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 (a stretch limo) and "ate himself to death". As for Skroob, Dark Helmet, and Colonel Sandurz, they survive a crash-landing on the Planet of the Apes.

Selected elements

Antagonist

Dark Helmet, angry at a subordinate for going "over his helmet."
Enlarge
Dark Helmet, angry at a subordinate for going "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" (a parody of the Imperial Forces in Star Wars), 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. 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 of insubordinate minions with a green laser beam.

While searching for the heroes on the desert planet, Dark Helmet wore khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, and a pith helmet, complete with eye holes, made in similar dimensions as his regular helmet.

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 four different speeds: 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), and takes 1-2 minutes to cross the screen at the beginning of the film. 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 , 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.

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 three people.

The ship is destroyed at the end of the movie. The head-section of the craft successfully goes through re-entry and impacts 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.

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 it parodies other movies as well. The most notable are , Jaws (gigantic shark-like space ship and Jaws-like music), ' (Spaceball One), ', 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, , 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.

The character Sgt. Rico alludes to Juan Rico, the main character of the 1959 novel Starship Troopers. The Paul Verhoeven film had not yet been made.

One joke that was not based on sci-fi or fairy tales comes in the form of Colonel Sandurz, Dark Helmet's second in command, whose name is an obvious reference to Colonel Harlan Sanders, the founder and mascot of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain. In one particular scene, Dark Helmet mocks him with the line "What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz - chicken?"

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.

Character parodies

Sequels

In September 2004, a sequel to Spaceballs entitled Spaceballs 2 was announced in an interview with Mel Brooks. [link] Brooks said he hoped to have the sequel come out some time around the theatrical release of . 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. [link]

Spaceballs itself jokingly states that the sequel will be called Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money (a common feature of Brooks movies is that they must include a reference to an unmade sequel, and a reference to ). Fans have also titled the possible sequel Spaceballs 3: The Search for Spaceballs 2.

Trivia

See also

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 | ' | '

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: