The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Directed by W. D. Richter
Produced by W. D. Richter
Written by Earl Mac Rauch
Starring Peter Weller
John Lithgow
Ellen Barkin
Jeff Goldblum
Christopher Lloyd
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) August 15, 1984
Running time 103 min.
Language English
IMDb profile

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! (sometimes just Buckaroo Banzai) is a science fiction film that has reached cult film status. It was released in 1984, directed and produced by W. D. Richter and it stars Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and Clancy Brown.

The film is a cross between the action/adventure and science-fiction movie genres, and also includes elements of comedy, satire, and romance. It is also made to feel like one of a series of movies, or like the middle chapter in a book, by the use of ongoing allusions to other characters, adventures, and events.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The plot of Buckaroo Banzai is quite complex, often requiring multiple viewings before it can be fully understood. This is partly due to the fact that it spans roughly 50 years, begins in the middle of the story, and doesn't fill in some of the earliest parts of the story until the viewpoint characters themselves unravel the mystery — roughly halfway through the movie. In its essentials, the plot concerns the efforts of the multi-talented Buckaroo Banzai (whose careers include physicist, neurosurgeon, martial artist, rock musician and comic book hero) to save the world by defeating a band of aliens called Red Lectroids.

The DVD of the film restores a deleted opening scene consisting of a "home movie" from Buckaroo Banzai's childhood, narrated by Clancy Brown, who plays the character Rawhide. The scene depicts an early test of a precursor to the Jet Car, built by Buckaroo's parents and Dr. Hikita. The test ends in disaster, as the Jet Car has been sabotaged by the evil Hanoi Xan, leader of the World Crime League. The "home movie" ends, and dissolves to the present-day opening scene of the film depicting Buckaroo's test run of the latter-day Jet Car. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Buckaroo Banzai's mother, Sandra Banzai.

The theatrical release version of the film opens with Banzai (Weller) performing a test-run of his Jet Car, a heavily modified pickup truck powered by a jet engine and capable of exceeding Mach 1. The car is also equipped with a device called an oscillation overthruster, which allows it to drive through solid matter. The test is a success; Banzai stuns onlookers by driving the Jet Car directly through a mountain. Emerging from the mountain, Banzai finds that an alien, pod-like organism has attached itself to the car during transit.

Hearing of Banzai's success, Italian physicist Dr. Emilio Lizardo (Lithgow) breaks out of the New Jersey insane asylum he's been imprisoned in for some years. In a flashback sequence, we learn that Banzai's assistant and mentor, Dr. Hikita (Robert Ito), was present at a failed overthruster experiment of Lizardo's in 1938. The experiment ended with Lizardo's mind being taken over by Lord John Whorfin, leader of the Red Lectroids — a race of alien reptiles — hence his current diagnosis of a delusional disorder.

Buckaroo Banzai
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Buckaroo Banzai

Despite being trapped in Lizardo's body, Whorfin maintains his leadership of the Red Lectroids, and has brought over a thousand of them to Earth in an incident that was reported by Orson Welles in his radio broadcast The War of the Worlds, only to have it mistaken as fiction. The Red Lectroids now pose as employees of a defense contracting company named Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, and all bear the first name John, with various last names such as Yaya, Smallberries, and Bigbooté. Now that Banzai has produced a working overthruster, Whorfin hopes to steal it and use it to return his people to their home planet and subjugate its current inhabitants, the peace-loving Black Lectroids.

In the meantime, a Black Lectroid spaceship orbiting Earth contacts Banzai, giving him a cryptic nonverbal message that enables him to see through Lectroids' natural pheromonic camouflage. (To unassisted humans, Black Lectroids appear to be black, Rastafarian Jamaicans, while Red Lectroids appear as Whites.) The ship also sends a "thermo-pod" to Earth, with a messenger who brings Banzai a holographic message from the Black Lectroids' leader, explaining Lord Whorfin's history and motives, and giving an ultimatum: stop Whorfin and his Red Lectroid army, or the Black Lectroids will protect themselves by staging a fake nuclear attack and letting the US and USSR destroy the world in a burst of Cold War paranoia. With help from the Black Lectroid messenger John Parker, and his usual posse of helpers ("those hard-rockin' scientists, the Hong Kong Cavaliers"), Buckaroo succeeds in his mission, destroying the Red Lectroids and saving Earth. During the end credits, the cast walks through an unusual white setting (the Sepulveda Dam) in time with the theme music. Included in the group are Rawhide, who died in the film, and John Parker, who left Earth. There is a screen title proclaiming the upcoming sequel Buckaroo Banzai versus the World Crime League (see below).

[edit] The Hong Kong Cavaliers

The Hong Kong Cavaliers are the assistants of Buckaroo Banzai in the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and are similar to Doc Savage's Fabulous Five.

They reside at the Banzai Institute, a think-tank located in Holland Township, New Jersey. They are experts in a variety of fields and also play in his rock and roll band. They are referred to by codenames and, except for New Jersey, their real names are unknown.

  • Rawhide (Clancy Brown) - Deceased. Killed by Red Lectroid venom. Played bass guitar. Arguably Buckaroo's lieutenant.
  • Reno Nevada (Pepe Serna) - Plays saxophone.
  • Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith) - Plays rhythm guitar.
  • New Jersey (Jeff Goldblum) Real name: Sidney Zweibel. A colleague of Dr. Banzai from Columbia. Plays piano.

In addition to the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Buckaroo Banzai is assisted by a network of supporters and fans.

The Radar Rangers are an amateur radar enthusiast group that helps Buckaroo track major threats. The Blue Blazer Irregulars are people from all walks of life and are similar to The Shadow's network. PINKY CARRUTHERS is a member.

[edit] Other versions

A substantially longer print was shown in test screening in Texas and in Washington State before general release, but the "restored" DVD print is still missing much of the test print material. It has been suggested that the large number of deletions is a partial explanation for the unusual pace of the film.

The novelization by Earl Mac Rauch is told through fake documents written and compiled by "Reno Nevada," and further expands on the backstory of the film, including the murder of Peggy Banzai by the minions of Asian crime lord Hanoi Xan, the deaths of Buckaroo's parents in an early Jet Car accident, and at least two other fictitious novels.

The 103 minute version released on DVD in January 2002 has a subtitle track that has director's commentary-style information that also has a fake documents feature. It also has elements of MST3k humour and provides more information.

[edit] Sequels

The credits mention a sequel, Buckaroo Banzai versus the World Crime League, which was never made. A fan script was written by Ernest Cline, posted on the Internet and subsequently bought, but the prospects of production seem slight considering the initial film's limited take at the box office. (The film Free Enterprise parodies this with its promised sequel, entitled William Shatner versus the World Crime League.)

Moonstone Books is publishing a mini-series of comic books that depict further adventures of the characters. The story, called Return of the Screw, was written by Buckaroo Banzai's creator, Mac Rauch. The black-and-white preview edition of the comic was released in February 2006, featuring an essay from W.D. Richter on the work involved in developing new Buckaroo Banzai stories for various media. The first monthly issue of the mini-series was released in late May 2006.[1]

The novelization of the first movie was reprinted to coincide with the release of the movie on DVD. In the foreword Mac Rauch mentioned that the Buckaroo Banzai series would be continued in a series of novels. None of those novels have been published, though Rauch does discuss writing them on the DVD commentary. He mentions one plot point from the first novel: Penny Priddy is killed by Hanoi Xan, who strangles her with her own hair.

Some sources claim John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China began as another sequel to this movie. This is incorrect. The original Big Trouble in Little China script was written by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein and was set in the Old West. Screenwriter W.D. Richter (who directed Buckaroo Banzai) was brought in to work on the script and bring the story into the present day.

[edit] Computer game

An early example of the computer industry licensing movie titles is "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai", a text adventure published by the now defunct software publisher Adventure International. Original unopened copies of this game are extremely rare. A copy of the game sold for $2300 on EBay in 2002. This game is a text based language parser and playable online reengineered versions of it exist on the net. [2]

[edit] References

  • It has been asserted that the oscillation overthruster prop was re-used as the flux capacitor in the Back to the Future trilogy. [3] This is unlikely, since the two props don't look anything alike. [4][5] (Possibly the original overthruster, used by Buckaroo's father, is meant.)
  • In the computer game World of Warcraft, there is an area consisting of flat desert with a mountain. Tire tracks lead up to the mountain and abruptly end just before the mountain wall, but the tracks then resume on the other side - a reference to the test of the oscillation overthruster.
  • The end credits to Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are inspired by the end credits to this film. Both feature their respective cast of characters walking together in a group to the beat of the music. Coincidentally, both movies feature Jeff Goldblum in bright clothes and silver horn-rimmed glasses. The diving group is called Team Zissou, in reference to Team Banzai.
  • The computer game "BZFlag" includes a game element named the "oscillation overthruster" which allows a player to travel through solid objects.
  • The phrase "No matter where you go, there you are" and variations thereon have been used in countless films, television shows, and books, both before Buckaroo Banzai and after, although it is particularly associated with this film among fans.
  • The expression 'monkey boy' is used in several movies. It was used in a different context prior to the Banzai movie, for example in The Great Locomotive Chase (1954). In the films Men in Black (1997) and My Favorite Martian (1999), however, it is used in the same context as used by Whorfin in Banzai, i.e. a space alien referring to human primate origins.
  • Star Trek uses countless references to Buckaroo Banzai in its series, ranging from devices in the nacelles of the starships to baseball players in historical records.
  • The computer game City of Heroes contains a reference to the oscillation overthruster. In the game, it is an item that can be used by Science and Technology based heroes to increase the intangibility duration of their powers.
  • The mercenary unit Team Banzai, led by the enigmatic Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, appears in the fictional Battletech Universe. Team Banzai first appeared in the House Davion Handbook (Published by FASA in 1988 ISBN1-55560-035-2) as an Elite mercenary Battlemech Regiment under contract to the Federated Suns. Further references appear throughout the Battletech Universe canon. Team Banzai is listed as comprising three Battalions: the Hong Kong Cavaliers, the Radar Rangers, and the Blue Blazers. Characters noted as belonging to Team Banzai, besides the unit's leader, Dr Banzai include Perfect Tommy, Reno Nevada, & Rawhide. The unit travels between planets on a Jumpship named "The Nth Dimension". It is rumored that this is due to FASA having the rights to a Buckaroo Banzai Role-Playing Game based on the movie, its proposed sequels, and a TV show that failed to materialize. With a lack of interest, the company decided to sneak the content into the Battletech backstory.
  • In the basic Battletech set, the back-to-back double-B's of the Team Banzai insignia was used as a generic unit insignia.
  • In the PC game Might and Magic 7, the final quest involved retrieving a powerful artifact called the oscillation overthruster.

[edit] External links

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