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capri0mniToday – Today (10 August, 2019) is the 35th Anniversary of the movie called "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension"
What is this movie with such an unwieldy title, you ask?
It’s a:
It also saved my relationship with my mother.
Our relationship had always been strong, but after flunking hard out of my Freshman year at university, it was clearly at a tipping point, and it was hard to be around each other in the muggy heat of August without feeling angry, sad, or both at once. It's a testament to my mother's wisdom that she suggested we take a break, go to a movie theater with air conditioning, and see this movie that had just opened and looked interesting. We emerged back into the sunlight with our diaphragms aching from laughing. And from that day forward, whenever things got tense, we'd quote lines to each other to lighten the mood.
We were both convinced at the time that it would rise to the status of Cult Classic on par with “Rocky Horror Picture Show” – that even people who hadn’t actually seen it would at least recognize catchphrases and characters for cosplay and the like. That didn't happen at the time. But maybe it will happen someday.
"Spoilers" below the cut, if you want to call them that. Though I'm of the opinion that the strength of this film has less to do with plot points than it does with execution:
) The movie came out during the first year of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and pointedly critiques, through mockery, the Military Industrial Complex, and the zeal behind the rhetoric of Mutually Assured Destruction.
2) The evil aliens are explicitly modeled after the Fascists (John Lithgow, who plays their leader, watched old films of Mussolini to prepare for the role). Furthermore, the threat they pose is ideological, not advanced technology. . They are so focused on their racial superiority, and crushing “lesser beings,” that they have no real interest in science – their tech is downright shoddy.
3) The good aliens are modeled after the Rastafarians – they are the ones who are the engineers, scientists, and diplomats. They defeated the evil aliens in the past, and imprisoned them in the Eighth Dimension. Buckaroo Banzai’s successful experiment inadvertently gave the evil aliens a potential key to that prison, with the Planet Earth as the doorway. So the Good aliens are prepared to fool humans into starting a nuclear war to keep that from happening.
If this movie had played the tropes as usual, the humans would have just destroyed the Good Aliens’ ship, and let the Evil Aliens escape, because their planetary politics is none of our business. But in This Movie, the real threat is framed as the intersection between Fascists and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. And the titular hero recognizes it was his actions that gave Space!Mussolini the potential means for escape, so he takes it upon himself to stop him -- he never once even contemplates attacking the Rastafarian!aliens.
4) The one who first raises the alarm when Buckaroo has his first close shave with the Baddies is a little black boy named Scooter Lenley. He tells his father, and his father believes him (There’s none of the usual adults-are-incompetent-fools-who-ignore-the-kids trope in this film).
And Scooter is the one, at the end, who gets the better of the militaristic Secretary of State, and returns the Magic-technobabble-watsit to our titular hero, and it’s strongly implied, in dialog and and visuals (during the closing credits) that the future belongs to the young black kids.
5) Yes, the closing scene of the movie is of Our Hero kissing his Love Interest as sparks Literally fly, before the screen fades to black. But then the script puts a lampshade on the fact that this plot element is -- and always has been, throughout the movie -- peripheral to the actual story (Quote: “So What? Big Deal!”). So it tweaks its nose (gently) at hetero-amato-normativity, too.
6) “Don’t be mean. There’s no need to be mean. No matter where you go, there you are.”
And. None. of the. Good. Guys. Are.
What is this movie with such an unwieldy title, you ask?
It’s a:
- Sci-fi spoof
- Comic book hero movie parody (for a comic book hero that doesn’t actually exist)
- Anti-fascist
- Anti-military-industrial-complex
- Unabashedly Chaotic Good (with emphasis on chaotic)
- An art film
- Underrated to an almost criminal degree
- FREE on YouTube – Legally free; not a bootleg (~ 102 minutes)
It also saved my relationship with my mother.
Our relationship had always been strong, but after flunking hard out of my Freshman year at university, it was clearly at a tipping point, and it was hard to be around each other in the muggy heat of August without feeling angry, sad, or both at once. It's a testament to my mother's wisdom that she suggested we take a break, go to a movie theater with air conditioning, and see this movie that had just opened and looked interesting. We emerged back into the sunlight with our diaphragms aching from laughing. And from that day forward, whenever things got tense, we'd quote lines to each other to lighten the mood.
We were both convinced at the time that it would rise to the status of Cult Classic on par with “Rocky Horror Picture Show” – that even people who hadn’t actually seen it would at least recognize catchphrases and characters for cosplay and the like. That didn't happen at the time. But maybe it will happen someday.
"Spoilers" below the cut, if you want to call them that. Though I'm of the opinion that the strength of this film has less to do with plot points than it does with execution:
) The movie came out during the first year of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and pointedly critiques, through mockery, the Military Industrial Complex, and the zeal behind the rhetoric of Mutually Assured Destruction.
2) The evil aliens are explicitly modeled after the Fascists (John Lithgow, who plays their leader, watched old films of Mussolini to prepare for the role). Furthermore, the threat they pose is ideological, not advanced technology. . They are so focused on their racial superiority, and crushing “lesser beings,” that they have no real interest in science – their tech is downright shoddy.
3) The good aliens are modeled after the Rastafarians – they are the ones who are the engineers, scientists, and diplomats. They defeated the evil aliens in the past, and imprisoned them in the Eighth Dimension. Buckaroo Banzai’s successful experiment inadvertently gave the evil aliens a potential key to that prison, with the Planet Earth as the doorway. So the Good aliens are prepared to fool humans into starting a nuclear war to keep that from happening.
If this movie had played the tropes as usual, the humans would have just destroyed the Good Aliens’ ship, and let the Evil Aliens escape, because their planetary politics is none of our business. But in This Movie, the real threat is framed as the intersection between Fascists and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. And the titular hero recognizes it was his actions that gave Space!Mussolini the potential means for escape, so he takes it upon himself to stop him -- he never once even contemplates attacking the Rastafarian!aliens.
4) The one who first raises the alarm when Buckaroo has his first close shave with the Baddies is a little black boy named Scooter Lenley. He tells his father, and his father believes him (There’s none of the usual adults-are-incompetent-fools-who-ignore-the-kids trope in this film).
And Scooter is the one, at the end, who gets the better of the militaristic Secretary of State, and returns the Magic-technobabble-watsit to our titular hero, and it’s strongly implied, in dialog and and visuals (during the closing credits) that the future belongs to the young black kids.
5) Yes, the closing scene of the movie is of Our Hero kissing his Love Interest as sparks Literally fly, before the screen fades to black. But then the script puts a lampshade on the fact that this plot element is -- and always has been, throughout the movie -- peripheral to the actual story (Quote: “So What? Big Deal!”). So it tweaks its nose (gently) at hetero-amato-normativity, too.
6) “Don’t be mean. There’s no need to be mean. No matter where you go, there you are.”
And. None. of the. Good. Guys. Are.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-10 11:52 pm (UTC)...unfortunately, it appears the free Youtube version is region-locked, and not available in Australia, but it looks like several of the major streaming platforms have it available to watch for a few bucks.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-11 01:26 am (UTC)(And yes. I actually bought a streamed version of the movie through Amazon, so I could be on record in somebody's algorithm to be very definitely Watching Something Else during Lord Dampnut's inauguration ceremony).
no subject
Date: 2019-08-14 10:33 am (UTC)It is somewhat of a cult film, among a certain subset (which includes most of my friends). I think it's too smart for the average person to appreciate. Which is too bad; I would love to have seen the sequel they never made.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-14 11:47 am (UTC)Mother only found out about it, because she saw the ad in the local paper for movies opening that weekend, and decided it might be fun to check out. ... There was absolutely no advertising for it, other than that.
That said, we two of us went back to see it again (bringing a family friend with us, this time), and that second time, there were people standing in line for tickets already in Buckaroo Banzai cosplay (Which is one reason we were sure it was destined to reach Rocky Horror Picture Show status).
This is a really good analysis of the literary structure of the film, and where it fits in the overall Superhero movie genre, that the YouTube channel "Brows Held High" posted last year: Why Buckaroo Banzai is today’s most important Superhero, wherein he points out that it is ultimately an Art Film.
And someone else replied to the thread I posted on Tumblr that the studio only backed the film to be a tax write-off, and that's why they half-assed the promotion (According to Peter Weller, in a 2011 panel discussion of the film, 20th Century Fox went through a management change in the middle of filming).
And in the back of my mind, considering the political subtext of this film, I'm wondering if the studio were already starting its swerve into being a propaganda mill for Right-wing politics, and that's why they kind of buried it.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-15 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-15 11:27 am (UTC)