Look, it’s hard to picture a century-old Mel Brooks playing the Yoda-spoofing character Yogurt again without smiling. When 100 years old you reach, be this funny you will not, hm? That was the unavoidable reaction to the objectively lovable idea of a Spaceballs sequel, much discussed over the years – including in the original film, which offhanded that hopefully everyone would meet again for Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money. Now the search is underway, with an announcement teaser recapping the full franchise hell we’ve become immersed in during the past nearly-40 years since Spaceballs seemed, however briefly, like a late arrival to the Star Wars craze in 1987.
Today, the idea of a Spaceballs II coming, presumably, right around the 40th anniversary of the original film and the 50th birthday of Star Wars itself seems perfectly natural. But back in 1987, Brooks seemed late to the party, and maybe not that interested, either. His spoofs of the ’70s were ridiculous and goofy, of course, but they also clearly sprung from a lifetime of immersion in genres like the western and the monster movie, respective subjects of his unbeatable 1974 Blazing Saddles/Young Frankenstein double feature. High Anxiety may not have been as successful, but it’s hard to spoof the work of a specific director without knowing his moves pretty well.
Spaceballs, which seems to have leapt onto the HBO Max charts in excitement over the sequel announcement, knows some of the moves. It memorably opens with a long, long, long pan over an impossibly huge spaceship, knowingly kidding a similar shot from the original Star Wars, and throughout the film Brooks has a lot of fun with emerging 1980s film-junk culture: merchandising (or MOICHendizing! as the sage Yogurt puts it), VHS tapes (the bad guys get a replay by producing a copy of Spaceballs The Video), and kids making their own backyard adventures (Dark Helmet, the Vader-ish bad guy played by Rick Moranis, is caught role-playing with his dolls – er, excuse me, action figures). Also, the guy who does the noises from Police Academy is there. I guess you could call it a tribute to the pioneering sound-effects editing on the original trilogy?
Or, maybe Brooks just wanted some of that Police Academy magic in his first spoof picture in some years. Spaceballs isn’t as crass as History of the World: Part 1, which has some great bits but often comes across as a poor man’s Monty Python. In fact, it’s perfect for kids learning the art of the spoof; I admit that as a 12-year-old, I had probably seen Spaceballs more times than any single Star Wars movie. It’s probably the best Brooks movie since the 1970s. But it’s not exactly shot through with any particular affection for Star Wars, or even sci-fi in general, despite an all-timer of an Alien-related gag. It doesn’t use that lack of affection to really go after the genre, either. It’s just an aimable framework for some hit-and-miss gags. Though it trailed Return of the Jedi by only four years, it was greeted at the time as too little, too late.
These days, there’s just so much more of that stuff to parody in the first place; in 1987, there were three Star Wars movies, two Alien movies, and, I don’t know, do four Superman movies count? Now there are 11 Star Wars, about 15 movies featuring the Alien and/or Predator, three Guardians of the Galaxy movies, two and counting Dunes, and countless more fantasy-adventures that don’t specifically take place in outer space. It’s all there in that video scroll. It seems like fertile ground, and it doesn’t depend on Brooks to care about any of it; obviously he’s there to sign off and appear as Yogurt, but the man will be 100 next year (we hope). Josh Greenbaum (who made the very funny Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) will direct a screenplay from Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Josh Gad (yes, Olaf from Frozen). Samit and Hernandez have Star Wars experience; they’ve worked on the recent LEGO Star Wars cartoon miniseries Rebuild the Galaxy. Maybe they’ll keep the movie on-mission; while spoofs always have a certain number of unrelated anything-for-a-laugh gags, the subgenre was cheapened throughout the ’90s with increasingly grotesque slapstick and broader mugging. (Compare Airplane! to the third Naked Gun, for example.)
The bigger question is whether a franchise-spoofing comedy can make for the rare good comedy sequel. There are plenty of okay comedy sequels, and a few great ones. But comedy is timing, and timing doesn’t generally involve waiting decades to repeat a bunch of jokes; the sheer number of barely-watched sequel series to classic comedies like Wet Hot American Summer can attest to that. As hard as it is to picture not being tickled by a 100-year-old Brooks as Yogurt, it’s also hard to picture a Spaceballs that doesn’t reprise all manner of throwaway bits from the original and treat them as the equivalent of sacred Jedi texts. Sanctity is the enemy of comedy, and whatever genuine irreverence Spaceballs may have once possessed could easily be blasted apart by too much affection – not for Star Wars, necessarily, but for Spaceballs itself.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.
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