SPACEBALLS Deciphered. Brooks’ Hilarious Sci-Fi Spoof

After this bombastic introduction, a spaceship appears before us, flying endlessly, with a design that looks like the wild dream of a drunk designer who forgot that spaceships have to end somewhere. This is Lord Dark Helmet’s ship, whose crew trembles in fear at his sight — a small figure in an oversized helmet (I’m suffocating in this bucket!!). Acting under orders from the ruler of Spaceball, Dark Helmet and his sidekick, Colonel Sanders, plan to kidnap Princess Vespa to force her father, King Roland, to surrender Druidia’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, Vespa, upon seeing the dim-witted Prince Valium, escapes straight into space with her robot Dot Matrix. There, both are trapped by Dark Helmet’s tractor beam. They are saved by Lone Star and his friend Barf (half-man, half-dog — someone who is his own best friend). Spaceballs it is!

But Lone Star isn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Hunted down for his debts to a gangster, Pizza the Hutt, the space cowboy strikes a deal with King Roland, who is willing to pay anything to secure his daughter’s safety. Lone Star disables Helmet’s radar with a jar of jam, rescues the princess, and escapes into hyperspace. Lord Helmet’s ship speeds up to ludicrous speed (light speed isn’t enough…) and overtakes Lone Star’s ship by a week and a half. After a crash landing on a desert planet, our heroes encounter the mysterious Yogurt, who wields the power of the Schwartz. But Lord Helmet, who controls the dark side of the Schwartz, deceives them and kidnaps Princess Vespa, taking her aboard his ship. There, under the threat of disfiguring Vespa, he forces King Roland to reveal the secret code for the atmosphere shield (code number – 12345). Lone Star and Barf rush to rescue her, land on the Spaceball planet, and free Vespa and Dot Matrix. Meanwhile, Helmet’s ship transforms into a giant maid with a vacuum cleaner, sucking up Druidia’s air. Only Lone Star, who is discovering his own powers with the Schwartz, can stand up to Dark Helmet’s dark side of the Schwartz.

The film career of Mel Brooks centers on parodies of virtually every cinematic genre. His direct, often crude humor (though not as refined as the brilliant gags of Monty Python) appears in spoofs of silent films (Silent Movie), Westerns (Blazing Saddles), Hitchcock thrillers (High Anxiety), classic horror (Young Frankenstein, Dracula: Dead and Loving It), historical epics (History of the World, Part I), and adventure films (Robin Hood: Men in Tights). In the 1980s, the heyday of Adventure Cinema came with George Lucas’s Star Wars Saga. Mel Brooks couldn’t resist the opportunity to find plenty of comedy material in this serious sci-fi genre.

Spaceballs is, above all, a brilliant parody of George Lucas’s ideas. Lone Star and his companion Barf are a comedic take on the Han Solo-Chewbacca duo, though Lone Star also incorporates some elements of Luke Skywalker. Instead of Princess Leia, we have Princess Vespa (a scooter brand). The wrinkled Yoda has become the adorable Yogurt (played by Brooks himself), who wields the Schwartz — the Force, but in a different form. Dark Helmet, in a tie, glasses, and an oversized helmet, is the funniest character of all, brilliantly portrayed by the comedian Rick Moranis. He has his sidekick, Colonel Sanders (Lucas had Grand Moff Tarkin), as well as his boss, the cunning ruler of the Spaceballs, President Skroob (also played by Brooks, whose name, as an anagram, was used to name the character of Skroob). The visual effects for Spaceballs were created by Apogee, headed by John Dykstra, an Oscar winner for his work on Star Wars: A New Hope.

We meet Lone Star in the middle of financial troubles. He’s being hunted by the ruthless gangster Pizza the Hutt, a parody of Jabba the Hutt (and a nod to the pizza chain), who is after Han Solo for the same reasons. Lone Star’s RV-like ship, resembling the Millennium Falcon, is equipped with a hyperspace drive. A breakdown in this drive leads our heroes to a desert planet, automatically reminiscent of Tatooine. The royal guardian, Dot Matrix (voiced by Joan Rivers), is built in C3PO’s likeness. The scene where Yogurt trains Lone Star to use the Schwartz is a parody of The Empire Strikes Back and its Dagobah sequence with Yoda and Skywalker. The plotline of rescuing Vespa from prison is a comedic copy of the scene from A New Hope when Han and Chewie save Leia. Toward the end, when Lone Star and Barf go to a space bar, the Millennium Falcon is seen parked nearby. Naturally, there’s a lightsaber duel ignited from the groin area, humorously entangling in the heat of battle. In a scene similar to Obi-Wan, Yogurt advises Lone Star:

– Use the Schwartz!
– I can’t. I lost the ring!
– The ring’s a fake; I found it in a junkyard. The Schwartz is in you!

Though the entire movie parodies Star Wars, Brooks also filled Spaceballs with nods to other iconic sci-fi and pop culture classics. After the Star Wars-style opening text, there’s a loooong (1 minute, 37 seconds) shot of a spaceship, poking fun at Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Kubrick loved to linger on views of the Discovery spacecraft. The iconic Thus Spoke Zarathustra theme from 2001 and its kettle drum sounds are used, and in one shot, we even see a Spaceball musician at this instrument.

From Star Trek, there’s a teleportation gag, humorously carried out by “Scotty” (not James Doohan, but a man in a traditional Scottish beret). The joke is that during teleportation, President Skroob’s body parts get reversed. Lone Star tries to put a guard to sleep using Mr. Spock’s technique. Among Dark Helmet’s crew, we unexpectedly see Michael Winslow, the Black comedian who made us laugh in Police Academy with his simulated sound effects. Winslow’s scene in Spaceballs requires the same talent. A group of dwarfs styled after Lucas’s Jawas cross the desert, humming the famous tune from Bridge on the River Kwai. And Planet of the Apes is also included.

President Skroob orders the desert searched for Princess Vespa. Helmet’s troopers obey the command with enormous combs. Vespa, in a fit of rage, destroys the troopers, just as Ripley dispatches the aliens in Cameron’s Aliens. The palace on Druidia is the famous Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, whose replica stands in Disneyland. Lone Star’s ship makes its first appearance accompanied by Bon Jovi’s Raise Your Hands. The best scene in the movie, however, is likely the Alien parody of Kane’s chest-bursting moment (played by John Hurt). In a space bar, we see a crew resembling Nostromo’s. One member begins to choke, falls onto the table, and an alien bursts out of his chest! The twist in Spaceballs is that the unfortunate host is, once again, John Hurt (“You again?!”). And the alien dons a hat and performs a cabaret song.

Attentive viewers of VHS or TV versions of Spaceballs may have noticed a visible wire controlling the Alien puppet in this scene. At first glance, this might look like another parody, this time of special effects techniques, but that wasn’t Brooks’s intention. The film was screened in cinemas with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, where black bars masked the original Super 35 frame. These bars hid the production seams and wiring for the puppet, fully visible in the unmatted TV frame (as seen above).

Self-referential humor is evident elsewhere. Brooks’s absurd humor leads to a scene in which Dark Helmet’s crew uses a VHS tape of Spaceballs itself, even though, as Helmet astutely observes, the film is still being made (piracy has always been lightning-fast!). The onboard rental collection includes all of Brooks’s previous films. In a meta-moment, the videotape syncs with the real action:

– What am I looking at? When is this happening?
– Now. You’re looking at the present.
– But the past?
– It’s over.
– When?
– Now. Now is now.
– Go back to then!
– When?
– Now.
– I can’t!
– Why?
– We’ve just missed it!
– When?
– Just now.

Brooks loves to put a giant quotation mark around his art and the film industry, underscoring the conventionality of his productions’ world. In Spaceballs, the character Yogurt, played by Brooks, runs a shop of Spaceballs merchandise. In the pursuit scene through Spaceball corridors, the troopers catch the stunt doubles of the actors. During the lightsaber duel between Lone Star and Helmet, Helmet’s swing sends a crew member flying. And a close-up of Dark Helmet’s face ends with the camera hitting him. We laugh at both the plot and the fact that the characters are also viewers of their own movie’s reality — a film pretending to be reality, pretending to be a movie, and so on…

This playful atmosphere saves Spaceballs from inevitable comparisons with the films it parodies, which could place Spaceballs in an unflattering light. The Spaceballs sets, compared to Lucas’s works, look like small-scale decorations from a second-rate sci-fi movie (the budget was $23 million). Some dialogues sound like those from a mediocre comedy skit.

Spaceballs carries the unmistakable imprint of the 80s, not only in its references to contemporary films. Compared to modern parodies like Scary Movie, Brooks’s comedy is almost free from vulgarity and the crude, sometimes toilet humor of films like American Pie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, or some of Leslie Nielsen’s last, embarrassing productions (he too parodied the sci-fi genre in the awful 2001: A Space Travesty). Compared to these, Spaceballs feels like child’s play. What was once criticized as Brooks’s crude humor today feels like charming, doll-like fun, as in the hilarious scene with Dark Helmet (improvised by Rick Moranis). In summary, Spaceballs is a rare example of such a comprehensive parody of sci-fi cinema. For fans of good sci-fi and well-done comedy, it’s a must-watch.