Just like the beginning of the original Spaceballs, which went really big in that long opening spaceship take that made fun of Star Wars, so did Amazon MGM Studios in its Hall H presentation Friday of Spaceballs: The New One.
A la the studio’s presentation of Project Hail Mary last year, they blew open the 180-degree wrap-around screens for the new Mel Brooks movie in what was the ultimate Comic-Con parody: A hysterical send-up of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s phase timeline from their 2019 and 2022 presentations.
The screens displayed several iternations of Spaceballs through 11 phases including musicals and unidentified release dates. Genius.
“We’d make a really weird Blade,” the sequel’s writer, producer and star Josh Gad joked later on during the panel in response to an audience’s question. “But maybe it would finally get made.”
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At first, returning star Rick Moranis, aka Dark Helmet, could not be found in the room, until the camera discovered him disguised in a group of fans wearing the character’s helmet. The former McKenzie Brother stood up and received a standing ovation.
“Rick is underselling it,” Gad joked. “They’re announcing him as part of the X-Men cast tomorrow.”
Gad shouted out Moranis as “one of the four men on my comedy Mount Rushmore. Another one of them is John Candy. This movie is really a love letter to him. I am not playing Barf in this movie. I am playing a new mog in our movie. John is at the beating heart of this film and the reason why this movie has so much heart. I hope when you see it you will agree.”
The 100-year old Brooks beamed in with a message, “Sorry I can’t be with you. I’m on the convention floor trying to buy a rare Charizard card. When I was your age, on a Friday, I would go to something called work,” he joked. “From the bottom of my heart I wanna say, thank you, nerds.” Brooks returns as the almighty Yogurt in the sequel.
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Bill Pullman (aka Lone Starr in the film, the Han Solo cut-up) also beamed in this evening, saying he was “tracking down a rare Charizard card in the UK.” However, Pullman’s son Lewis, who plays his on-screen son Starburst in the movie, was on the panel and called his dad’s work “unfillable.”
Lewis Pullman shared his least favorite scene in the original Spaceballs, “When Barf knocks my dad’s cowboy hat off. I remember being too young to understand that the hat didn’t just fall into the abyss of space. This whole movie’s about him trying to get his damn hat back.”
“For a while I had real beef with Barf,” added the young Pullman.
Brooks’ sense of humor is historically politically incorrect (read Blazing Saddles), so how does that get by in this fierce Trumpian era? Will Spaceballs 2 avoid controversy? “It’s all about the laughs, Mel always said,” according to the sequel’s director Josh Greenbaum.
Added Moranis, “There’s room in a Mel Brooks movie for the smartest joke you’ve ever thought of and the dumbest one.”
The clip shown in the room today was longer than one at CinemaCon, which showed Brooks as Yogurt, Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman’s characters on the adventure, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, and culminating with an Avatar Na’vi entering the men’s room and taking to the urinal. (The trailer won’t be releasing today, we understand.)
Spaceballs: The New One blasts off in theatres on April 23.
