#buckaroo banzai

[unsupervised-meatsuit]

So I was dying my dad's hair in the kitchen earlier today when my brother came down to get some food, and he was wearing my dad's old shirt that said "LAUGH WHILE YOU CAN, MONKEY BOY!", which for those of you who don't know, is a reference to Buckaroo Banzai. This prompted my dad to start telling us the story about how when he first told our mom and several of their close friends about it, the absolutely did not believe that a movie that crazy could exist, and did not believe him whatsoever. Seeing as this was in the early days of the internet, he couldn't find anything online, and despite driving around for hours and hours trying to find a viewing in a movie theater, they had no luck.

Needless to say, I told him about Goncharov (1973)

#goncharov #buckaroo banzai #posts about me #I am a second generation nerd #My brother lost his damn mind over the fact there is a worm crossover fic with goncharov

[best-fictional-band-poll]

The top FOUR bands from this poll will go through! Good luck!

#preliminary round #star wars #Disney #we are little zombies #the simpsons #buckaroo banzai #steven universe #ensemble stars #phantom of the paradise #Vocaloid #Amici Miei

[sci-fi-gifs]

Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension 1984 | Dir: W.D. Richter

#buckaroo banzai #peter weller #the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the 8th dimension #moviegifs #filmedit #filmgifs #tvedit #chewieblog #userbbelcher #useroptional #cinemapix #tvandfilm #* #sfgsoph

[aenslem]

Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

#peter weller #buckaroo banzai #tvedit #chewieblog #userbbelcher #useroptional #cinemapix #tvandfilm #sd* #mine* #moviegifs #filmedit #filmgifs #the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the 8th dimension #userteri #usertom #underbetelgeuse #userkd #userdiana #yeah i have rewatched this absolute legend of a movie again so what #TEAM BANZAI #i guess i have already giffed most of the movie #but who's gonna stop me from giffing everything again askjhdajk #NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO THERE YOU ARE #god i love this movie so much

[cantsayidont]

August 1984. This won't change anyone's feelings about cult movie perennial THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION one way or the other, but if you're wondering what the hell the deal is supposed to be with Buckaroo Banzai and his team, the answer is, "It's an obvious pastiche of the pulp hero Doc Savage."

Launched in 1933, Doc Savage was one of the leading adventure heroes of the pulp magazines. Doc (whose full name was Clark Savage Jr.) was scientifically trained from childhood to the peak of human perfection, singularly adept in everything from mechanical engineering to medicine to martial arts. He had a secret headquarters called the Fortress of Solitude and a whole array of specially designed vehicles and equipment, but he was also a public figure, with offices in the Empire State Building. Doc had a team of eccentric, highly specialized aides — Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, Renny Renwick, Long Tom Roberts, and Johnny Littlejohn — who each had a particular skill and a couple of distinctive personality traits (for instance, Monk was a skilled industrial chemist, but also an "ape-like" brute with a ferocious temper). They were sometimes aided by Doc's cousin, Pat Savage, who was almost as capable as Doc, although he tried to keep her out of the fray because she was (gasp) a girl.

This was a fairly common pattern for pulp heroes. For instance, the pulp version of the Shadow (who was distinctly different from the radio incarnation) relied on a whole network of agents, some appearing only once or twice, some recurring across many of his published adventures. From a narrative standpoint, the agents and assistants had two principal purposes: The first was to offset the rather overpowered heroes — pulp heroes didn't necessarily have superhuman powers, but even those who didn't tended to be preternaturally skilled at nearly everything, so it was convenient to limit their direct involvement in an adventure to crucial moments, and let the assistants (who could be much more fallible) do much of the legwork. The second object was to beef up the characterization. Doc Savage was morally irreproachable as well as absurdly multi-talented, so there wasn't a lot to be done with him character-wise, while maintaining the mystique of a character like the Shadow required him to remain a fairly closed book.

Although the pulp heroes were a huge influence on early comic book superheroes like Superman and Batman, some of these conventions didn't translate well to other media: In a 13-page comic book story or half-hour radio episode, having too many characters was cumbersome (and expensive, where it meant hiring extra actors), and comic book readers normally expected to follow their four-color heroes quite closely, even before the breathless internal monologue became a genre staple. So, Superman inherited Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude, but not his "Fabulous Five" assistants, while heroes like Batman and Captain America generally stuck with a single sidekick rather than a team of aides. Even the late Doc Savage pulp adventures (which ended in 1949) de-emphasized the assistants to keep the focus more on Doc himself. Ultimately, the pulp heroes didn't really have the right narrative center of gravity for visual media, which is why they've become relatively obscure, despite repeated revival attempts. The 1975 Doc Savage movie with Ron Ely, for instance, was a notorious commercial flop, and elements like Doc's childishly bickering assistants seemed odd and dated, even taking into account the film's nostalgia-bait '30s period setting.

What BUCKAROO BANZAI tried to do was to bring that old pulp hero formula into the modern era with a big infusion of '80s style and humor. Like Doc Savage, Buckaroo is a wildly gifted polymath (in the opening scenes, he rushes from performing brain surgery to test-driving his Jet Car through a mountain), so famous and important a personage that he puts the president of the United States on hold, and he surrounds himself with an array of brilliant, eccentric aides with silly nicknames who play in his rock band when they're not fighting crime or doing advanced scientific experiments.

Alas, judging by the poor box office returns, general audiences were no more amenable to the '80s version of this formula than they had been to DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE nine years earlier, even with the 1984 film's extraordinary cast and memorably witty dialogue. Granted, even many of the movie's most diehard fans are baffled by the convoluted plot — a crucial expository scene where the leader of the Black Lectroids (Rosalind Cash) explains much of what's going on is nigh-incomprehensible without subtitles or closed captioning — but beyond that, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI is essentially an extended riff on a particular slice of pop culture that had long since dropped out of the public consciousness, which is both part of its charm and also its commercial undoing, at least as mainstream entertainment.

(Also, if you're wondering, yes, the TOM STRONG series by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse is also an obvious Doc Savage pastiche, although at least some of its plot and character concepts were probably retoolings of unused ideas from Moore's earlier Maximum Press/Awesome Comics SUPREME series, which was an extended pastiche of the pre-Crisis Superman.)

#movies #buckaroo banzai #the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the eighth dimension #w.d. richter #peter weller #jeff goldblum #clancy brown #doc savage #pulp heroes #street and smith #walter m baumhofer #the shadow #michael santoro #pepe serna #billy vera #lewis smith #one of the amusing things about the jeff goldblum character #is that his eccentricity clearly precedes his involvement with buckaroo banzai #he's just a brilliant neurosurgeon who's been looking for a chance #to wear his roy rogers outfit and fight crime

[victusinveritas]

Around this time of year some twenty six years ago I watched Buckaroo Banzai for the first time. It's such a good movie.

#buckaroo banzai #peter weller #movies

[illyanarasputinfan]

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

- Buckaroo Banzai

#Magik #Illyana Rasputina #X-Men #Marvel #Marvel Comics #Comics #Comic Books #Buckaroo Banzai #Illyana Rasputin #Uncanny X-Men

[gorrus]

#buckaroo banzai

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Arthouse Muppets

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension featuring Kermit And Link Hogthrob

Art by Bruce McCorkindale

#Comics #Muppets #Buckaroo Banzai #The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension #Science Fiction #Art #Muppet Show #Kermit The Frog #Kermit #Link Hogthrob #Bruce McCorkindale

[lies]

team banzai for life

#2359 #buckaroo banzai #seeing it without the credits text #is pretty wonderful #every character having their moment #in a space that is outside reality #i mean #outside even the film's reality #rawhide there with penny #new jersey still noticeably trying to fit in #john parker part of the team #or I guess you can imagine a scene #when they all could have been there #and how awesomely does that dovetail with the film's vibe? #just gonna do a quick rappel down the sepulveda dam #on the way to the jet car #before we roll out for yoyodyne #god I love this movie #it had no business being made #but the world is a better place #b/c it was

[thanos-the-dad-titan]

#buckaroo banzai #the adventures of buckaroo banzai #petter weller

[theimaginauts]

BUCKAROO BANZAI

Art by MATT GRIFFIN

#matt griffin #buckaroo banzai

[tomoleary]

Lon Levin - Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) Source, source

#Lon Levin #buckaroo banzai #movie poster

[ancylyns-veste]

I watched Buckaroo Banzai and thought Buckaroo and Perfect Tommy would make a great couple, of course New Jersey would work too! lol

Discovered there are exactly 3 stories with Buckaroo and Tommy in AO3, althought they are giving each other longing looks. ;-)

This falls now under very, very rare slash, althought I'm sure there were lots of privately written stories, because this was once a crazy cult movie.

Buckaroo and his Team

and the very BAD GUYS

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

#buckaroo banzai #rare slash

[foolsiwillshowthemall]

Had an elaborate dream last night where it was revealed that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai was officially confirmed to be part of the Start Trek canon. The whole incident with Buckaroo Banzai stopping the Red Lectroids happened, but was largely covered up at the time, and most of the historical records were lost in the Eugenics Wars. Starfleet probably assumes the entire incident was a hoax, at least until the Black Lectroids come out of hiding hundreds of years later needing help again.

I suppose it would make sense if a young Zefram Cochrane got his start working for Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, and based his later warp drive experiments off the Oscillation Overthruster concept. And we know that YPS is still around hundreds of years later, as their name came up repeatedly in background materials in the TNG era.

#buckaroo banzai #star trek #crossover #not that weird at all when you think about it #this might even already be canon

[endreal]

Okay first of all, that's fair.

But secondly @dee-the-red-witch my Dee-r friend, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension occupies an infuriating and hilariously unique place in the lexicon of movies for me. Buckaroo Banzai, along with The Shadow and (to a lesser extent) Buck Rogers/Duck Dodgers, Dick Tracy, and Pogo, was one of the 20th century pop culture heroes that my dad loved and introduced me to as a tyke. At some point he acquired the movie on dvd and one weekend, with nothing else to do and no reason not to, I decided to snag it off the shelf and watch it.

I remember nothing about that evening.

Over the following [mumble] years I've tried again several times - often on my own, but at least twice with dates (hi Urs! hi Bat!) - to watch it again, but for some reason literally everything between "rocket car test drive" and "whistle walk credits scene" is like trying to remember the details of a carp's scales through a screen of running water, only occassionally schooling close enough to kiss the surface of comprehension (there's a boyscout somewhere? And a joke about a bunch of guys being named John? Christopher Lloyd is there!)

I desperately need you to understand that I've watched this film more times than almost any other movie I've ever seen. I know less about it than several movies I've never even seen once. I refuse, on principle, to look up movie details online because as perplexing as all this is it also suggests something special and weird.

And I kinda dig that.

(but yeah also I'd have no objections to putting it on in the background and making out for two hours. I mean, c'mon. Right?)

#Buckaroo Banzai #Endreal in real life