Rick Moranis said no to Ghostbusters (remake, Afterlife and Frozen Empire) but said yes to Spaceballs. I’d like to think that means there is something about Spaceballs 2 that made him want to return for that project specifically.
Spaceballs 2 is a legacy sequel, but I assume it will also function as a commentary on legacy sequels. Also, at its core, it was a parody of Star Wars, which has no shortage of new material which is ripe for parody.
Gotta admit: I never found SPACEBALLS that funny. What will a sequel make fun of? Star Wars, the main target, is not in the converation anymore, and even the first SPACEBALLS actually came too late and felt forced (hey, great pun!).
Staying away from Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but doing Spaceballs, would indicate to me that Moranis has confidence in the material. The material was pretty strong for Ghostbusters: Afterlife (the other two were, quite frankly, terrible and he was wise for staying away), and it had the added bonus of being essentially a feature-length tribute to Harold Ramis, yet he was the only member of the principle cast that did not participate.
Regardless of the reason he’s back or the eventual quality of Spaceballs 2, I’m happy that we’ll get to see him on screen one more time. Even, in the unlikely event, he’s terrible and the movie is a complete and total disaster, it’ll at least have the fact that it was the project that got Rick Moranis back on screen after however long it’s been going for it, which enough for me to think of it as a worthwhile endeavor.
There’s that factor as well. Regardless, I’m glad he’s back.
And, also, if I remember correctly, a big part of the original film was them making fun of the merchandising surrounding Star Wars. I bet they could have a field day with how out of control that type of stuff has gotten in the decades since.
Yeah, agreed. I disliked both Afterlife and Frozen Empire, so Rick made a good call skipping those. I was excited about Michael Keaton returning for The Flash no matter what at the time, but the more time passes I wish he didn’t do it.
The Flash still remains one of the worst films I’ve seen, but I’m still glad that Keaton returned for it. He was great in it, and proved just how great he was by carrying that film (along with Sasha Calle) across the finish line, and it was cool to see him as Batman one more time.
Deadline: Illumination and Universal’s Super Mario Galaxy Movie at $372.5M worldwide is the second highest grossing movie in the Nintendo videogame plumbers big screen franchise behind 2023’s Super Mario Bros‘ $387.8M
This made me laugh. It’s the second-highest grossing film in the franchise. There’s only three films in the franchise, the one from a couple of years ago and then the one from 1993, that was essentially Mario meets Blade Runner and had so little to do with the actual video game and was so reviled by critics and audiences alike (even if I actually like it, but that’s another story) that it caused Nintendo to not make another movie for about 30 years.
