Buckaroo Banzai (tv series)

The problem with a straight sequel is the actors are all thirty-odd years older. Either you pick up after the first film with the characters recast, or you go ahead with a bunch of actors in their 50s/60s/70s and try to find a suitably Buckaroo way to handwave the intervening time. They were all raring to do a sequel back in the '80s, and even the '90s, but I think even they'd be a bit iffy on it now. He's dead, but I'll never forgive Sidney Bekerman for his shady approach to finances that saw him never let anyone in for a sequel, or Fox for getting the rights after Beckerman killed himself and not letting any of the interested parties do anything with the IP (not surprising, I suppose, given what they did with Firefly around the same time...). As with so many other fun universes, we the fans suffer because the suits who own them are talentless morons who don't know what to do with what they have (with far too rare exceptions).

--Jonah
 
I must admit that I think I have to re-watch it. My "emotional movie memory" tells me that the movie was not as good as I expected it to be, despite its interesting premise and comic book characters. Speaking of comic books, wasn´t there a comics adaption?!

Comic continuations, as with Big Trouble.

There was both actually. Marvel Comics did an adaptation of the film that can be found as a two-parter individual issues or a collective Marvel magazine style comic, released in 1984. Following that, there was a series that continued on the Buckaroo Banzai story by Moonstone Books, from 2006 to 2009, which covers some of the adventures of Buckaroo and the Hong King Cavilers before and after the events in the film.

The problem with a straight sequel is the actors are all thirty-odd years older. Either you pick up after the first film with the characters recast, or you go ahead with a bunch of actors in their 50s/60s/70s and try to find a suitably Buckaroo way to handwave the intervening time.

Or having a story involve Buckaroo and Penny's son, who also happens to be named Buckaroo Banzai (only difference between his father's name and his is the middle name), and he happens to be just as brilliant as his dad. But then again, that'd probably be like "Really? Isn't that kinda like The Son of Dracula, or Donkey Kong Jr.?" I didn't say it was a good idea. XD
 
Last edited:
Comic continuations, as with Big Trouble.

The big difference, to me, between those two, for instance... In Big Trouble, Jack is an ordinary guy trying to deal with really weird stuff going on. In Buckaroo, they treat the absurd as commonplace. Jeff Goldblum's character is the audience's perspective into the film -- the only one who really looks around and wonders at the things he sees (teams searching the Institute for the bad guy, Reno and New Jersey pass a watermelon in a hydraulic press; New Jersey: "Why is there a watermelon there?"; Reno (waving it off): "I'll tell ya later..." Never seen or mentioned again in the film), but for just about everyone else, they're wonderfully blase about it ("President's on the line. He wants to know is everything okay with the alien spaceship or should he just go ahead and destroy Russia?" "Tell him yes on one and no on two.") It's the same thing I love about the Hitchhiker's series. Ford's out of his depth, but "responding like an Englishman ("This must be a Thursday -- I never could get the hang of Thursdays..."). For everyone else, it's business as usual. Including the narrator. If having the absurd treated as commonplace isn't your thing, it won't land. If you like that sort of thing, it will.

--Jonah
The water melon thing was to screw with one of the studio execs.

Sent from my Motorola StarTAC
 
Back
Top