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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.

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.

Cast

• 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
• Jim J. Bullock – Prince Valium
• Dom DeLuise – Pizza the Hutt (voice)
• John Hurt – Man in diner (character credited as John Hurt)

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, as well as Harrison Ford, the actor who originally played Han Solo) 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 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). The Light and Dark sides are parodied by being called the "up side", and the "down side".

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!"

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.

Selected elements

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, 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.

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 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), 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 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 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 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, Jaws (gigantic shark-like space ship and Jaws-like music), Transformers: The Movie (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.

Character parodies

• Captain Lone Starr – Han Solo/Luke Skywalker/Indiana Jones
• Barfolemew (Barf) – Chewbacca
• Lord Dark Helmet – Darth Vader
• Princess Vespa of Druidia – Princess Leia Organa Solo of Alderaan
• Prince Valium – Prince Valiant (pun)
• Yogurt – Yoda
• Snotty – Montgomery Scott (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

Sequels

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 either 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) or Spaceballs 3: The Search For Spaceballs 2, the name being a parody of the Star Trek III: The Search for Spock movie.

Trivia

• On the gas station platform towards the end of the movie, the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars can be seen parked.
• When the Winnebago goes inside Megamaid, the infrared map is the game "Cave".
• The last name of President Skroob is an anagram of "Brooks".
• Mel Brooks is allergic to the gold makeup used with his character, Yogurt.
• George Lucas gave his approval to Mel Brooks to make the film after reading the script, as he was a big fan of Brooks' previous films.
• George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic constructed the lightsabers for the film.
• On the DVD commentary, Mel Brooks claims he doesn't like to eat with the cast members (at lunch breaks), however, he said he particularly enjoyed eating with human sound effects icon, Michael Winslow. He does not specify why.
• The new DVD box cover art is supposed to be a gag on the Star Wars box cover art.
• The DVD selection menu is also a spoof on the Star Wars DVD menus, including the shot of the word "Spaceballs" (filled with movie scenes) at the beginning.
• Lone Starr points to the Spaceballs ship and says, "Uh-oh, here comes the Badyear Blimp," a pun on the famous Goodyear Blimps.
• It took Mel Brooks six months to write the script.
• The scene in which Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) is playing with his dolls was not in the script. Mel Brooks came up with the idea on the set one day, and told it to Moranis, who then improvised the entire scene, including the dialogue.
• John Candy ad-libbed the line, "Oh, that's gonna leave a mark," after standing up without undoing his seat belt.
• The movie has several jokes about Spaceballs merchandise, including "Spaceballs the Flame Thrower". This is a reference to George Lucas' making of millions of dollars in his owning of merchandise rights for the Star Wars movies. More specifically, it refers to Lucas insisting that toy guns be made for the movie, despite Kenner saying that they wouldn't sell due to 1970's anti-war sentiment. They went on to become some of the highest-selling and most popular Star Wars toys. Yogurt said "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the picture is made!"
• The "ludicrous speed" scene is a parody of the U.S.S. Enterprise going to warp speed in "Star Trek"; another Star Trek parody involves a malfunctioning teleporter.
• Some of the products in the merchandising scene are actually disguised Transformers products. Transformers are referenced again in the movie during MegaMaid's transformation.
• In one sceen it features a Xenomorph (Alien) coming out of a person. After coming out, it does the Michigan J. Frog act singing "Hello! My Baby".
• Throughout the movie there are many different types of merchandising reading "Spaceballs the X" (X being whatever the item is). For example, there is a placemat in a diner that read "Spaceballs the Placemat."
• The long introduction of Spaceball One at the beginning of the movie is an exaggerated reference to the semi-lengthy introduction of Star Destroyers.

See also

• Astropolis
• Galaxy Quest - a film which lampoons Star Trek and its fandom
• List of movies with Star Wars references
• List of fiction that breaks the fourth wall

External links

• Spaceballs at IMDb
• Spaceballs images
• Sequel announcement, animated TV series announcement
• Spaceballs script

• 1987 films
• Comedy science fiction films
• Parody films
• American films
• MGM films