Laughs and an appreciation of Rick Moranis were plentiful as Amazon MGM’s Spaceballs: The New One, a sequel to the 1987 Mel Brooks Star Wars parody, flew into San Diego Comic-Con’s cavernous Hall H Friday afternoon.
One of the panel’s biggest attractions was seeing Moranis, the comedian who appeared in seminal 1980s films such as Ghostbusters andHoney, I Shrunk the Kid, make his first ever appearance. The actor played villain Dark Helmet in the original 1987 movie but has been largely absent from movies and television for most of this century, so his return with the Spaceballs sequel is headline making.
After a “comb the audience” joke, a callback to a line in the original movie that revealed the comedian to be in the audience wearing an oversized Darth Vader-style helmer, Moranis hopped up the stage to a standing ovation and chants of “Rick! Rick! Rick!”
“You made our childhoods better,” said Kevin Smith, who ably moderated the panel.
Moranis sat between Josh Gad, one of the creative forces behind the sequel, and Daphne Zuniga, who played Princess Vespa in the original and returns for the sequel. Also on stage were director Josh Greenbaum, actors Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman, and writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit.
Gad described the origins of the sequel, recounting how he had been working on a Honey I Shrunk the Kids sequel with Moranis that ultimately fell apart, but did end up watching Moranis movies with his daughter.
“We finished it and she goes, ‘Can we watch part 2?’” he said. “And I said, ‘There is no part 2.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, the weird little alien guy said there was going to be a part 2.’”
When he replied, “Oh sweetie, that is called a joke,” she countered, “Well, why isn’t there a part 2?”
That night, Gad said, he had a dream about the sequel and soon after was pitching Brooks and his producing partner. He threw in ideas refencing new Star Wars movies and characters such as The Force Awakens and Kylo Ren.
Imitating Brooks, Gad summed up his reaction: “Josh, it sounds like you’ve really got your finger on the pulse. I don’t know half of what you’re talking about, but I really like it.”
The comedic presence of Brooks, who appeared only by a recorded video early on in the panel where he thanked the nerds for keeping his movie alive close to 40 years, loomed large over Hall H. Amazon MGM bucked the Comic-Con trend by not having a trailer debut or showing any clips from the movie, but it did show videos of Brooks reuniting with Moranis, reuniting with original star Bill Pullman and Zuniga, and recording lines in a booth while praising — or not — the script.
Greenbaum recounted meeting the comedy legend early on in the movie’s development, and when it was approaching time to being principal photography, he asked if the man had any words of advice.
Brooks paused, and said yes. Greenbaum was thrilled. He leaned in.
“Don’t say ‘Cut!’ first. It’s ‘Action!,’ and then ‘Cut!’” Brooks told him.
The young director’s takeaway? “It was, don’t take this too seriously and go out there and have fun,” Greenbaum summed up.
The new movie, Gad said, takes a look at the state of movies and nostalgia.
“The industry it was parodying is a very different industry than this one 40 years later,” said Gad. “We all sort of talked thematically about this word ‘nostalgia.’ And we love movies that look back. We love sequels. We love continuing these stories we grew up with. We analyzed why that is and we thought Spaceballs was the perfect vehicle to catch us up with everything that’s happened in filmdom and in fan filmdom.
Interjected Smith, “When they made the first one, there was a trilogy to make fun of. Now there’s a never-ending fount.”
“We really wanted to dive into that,” Gad replied.
The panel also featured a funny bit where Lewis Pullman read out a letter purportedly written by his father, Bill Pullman, about how great it was to be part of a family, while ignoring his own father-son relationship. And it also showed, on multiple screens, the purported plans of a Spaceballs cinematic universe, sketched out in decade-spanning movie “phases,” a shot at how Marvel Studios has unveiled timeline of its various movie plans.