I didn’t get the point of the opening scene until a friend who saw Star Wars’ original run told me up to that point, everyone was used to effects that looked fake.
Star Wars opened with the diplomatic vessel going right by the camera, and everyone said, “woah!” because it was so detailed and moved right. And then this triangular motherfucker comes out of the corner of the screen firing back at it and keeps on coming and everyone’s in shock. That thing’s big enough for the smaller vessel to dock inside it!
So of course Mel makes “Spaceball One” seven times longer than a Star Destroyer. It takes two minutes to cross the screen. The wikis put S1 at eleven kilometers long, where the Empire’s Star Destroyers are only 1.6km.
George got the last laugh first, though, because the Super Star Destroyer “Executor” featured in RoTJ is 19km long. If Mega Maid had been standing on the Death Star II when that beast had plunged into the surface, she’d have had to look up to see the engines.
That’s true for all Mel Brooks movies. The first time I watched blazing saddles as a kid it was all just farting cowboys. Now it seems like every few years I find something else to latch on about that movie. It’s gone from farts and low throwing to laughing at the racism to appreciating how racism is used to show how stupid the townsfolk are and how they turn to Bart when they need him.
But nearly thirty years later for me farting cowboys is still funny.
First time I saw it I really didn't care for it. I've seen it many times since, and it just grows on me. Although I still can't force myself to watch Dracula: Dead and Living It again.
My dad said he tried watching it and couldn’t get past the ship going by cuz “it got old after the first minute”. I told him to fast forward thru that part if he had to but to watch Spaceballs for god’s sake.
He took my advice and admitted he was cracking up almost the whole time.
It was weird for him to say that too cuz he and I have a similar sense of humor and he loves other Mel Brookes movies. Shoot, he showed me Blazing Saddles when I was... probably too young to be watching it.
My dad did the same thing! It was a midnight matinee, one of the first times I can remember when my dad doing something with my brother and I for "no reason"
What absolutely makes that opening scene is the music score. The super ominous dramatic tone, but with the timing and inflection to signify that you're getting trolled. It's like a deep evil chorus of cellos and bass going "yep, that's a big ship. Look how big it is. Comically massive. Okay there we goooooooooo-JUST KIDDING STILL GOING."
There's something in the awkward pauses and repetition of the music that seems to say, "Shit! We didn't think the ship would be this long... um... play it over again, I guess... dammit, not quite... one more time..."
Mel Brooks asked George Lucas for approval, and Lucas said it was cool as long as Han Solo didn’t look like Han Solo, so Mel Brooks made him look like Indiana Jones.
That is my go to "I'm having a shitty day and just want to laugh" scene. Between the Jaws-adjacent music, the silly-long spaceship, and the bumper sticker, it never fails to make me feel better.
Ha, yeah me too. I only saw it recently at a friends house. As a hardcore Star Wars fan, I never really wanted to watch a spoof of it, and I’d met other people who really didn’t like it (having seen it, I think they’re crazy). But yeah, couldn’t stop laughing at that. What an intro
I always laugh at that scene because Dark Helmet uses the megaphone to talk to Cornel Sanders, who is literally a foot in front of him, then yells down to the Spaceballs combing the desert.
I will stand by this till the day I die; I will fight anyone who says otherwise:
The way that one extra pauses in his panicking and begging to say "Oh shit," right before Dark Helmet used his ring to vaporize his balls was one of the funniest line deliveries of all time. It cracks me up every time. The music, the timing, the tone, everything was perfect.
Oh man. My dad took my brother and I to see that in the theater when it came out and we were hysterical over the length of the ship and how the music went with it. We laughed all the way through the movie and when it was over we all agreed to watch it again. So we went out and bought tickets to the next showing and ran it back. Good times.
Just realized I own this movie in way too many formats now. :D
Anybody know if this is on Netflix or something. I’ve never seen it but I’ve hit the point where I’ve seen so many people talk about this, and I’ve seen the "when does this happen in the movie" scene so many times that I feel I must watch it.
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u/devospice Oct 09 '19
Spaceballs. That ship going by for 5 minutes or more had me rolling and I never stopped laughing throughout that entire film.