The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
Directed by W.D. Richter
Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension.
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What critics compared The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension to
More importantly, both NYSM films display the kind of largesse, swagger and originality that recall 1980s Hollywood, a riskier business place that once pitched the movies Back to the Future and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension against each other.
Oddly, the movie I kept thinking of was “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,’’ the 1984 cult film in which just as much happens and just as outrageously with just as little effect.
This is consistent with the kitschfests that inspired the Guardians aesthetic: 1980s science-fiction delights such as Flash Gordon , Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension .
The character of Buckaroo started as a sprig of an idea in the mind of W.D. Richter, who found a screenwriting hot hand in the late 1970s with reinventions of “Dracula” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” as well as the Robert Redford prison drama “Brubaker.”
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The character of Buckaroo started as a sprig of an idea in the mind of W.D. Richter, who found a screenwriting hot hand in the late 1970s with reinventions of “Dracula” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” as well as the Robert Redford prison drama “Brubaker.”
Guardians of the Galaxy plays less like a Marvel Studios commodity and more like a two-hundred-million-dollar version of 1980’s sci-fi cable staples like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension or The Ice Pirates.
Our fantasies are filled with lovable pseudoscience: flux capacitors, body snatchers and—a personal favorite of mine—the oscillation overthruster that allows a Ford pickup to drive through solid matter in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
The villain (James Hong) appears first as a smirky hobo, then resplendent in Ming the Merciless robes, then a pissy Methusela in a wheelchair, yearning to be made flesh following millenniums as an apparition; the heroes enter a warehouse and end up in the "Hell of Upside Down Souls" ("the Chinese have a lot of hells"), while Kim Cattrall breezes through to buttress Only Angels Have Wings in Carpenter's pop magpie foundations, which also include Year of the Dragon, Blood Alley, The Magic Blade, Hair-Raising Hare, etc. W.D. Richter worked on the screenplay, and Russell lovingly evokes the spirit of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension by firing his gun into the air before a showdown and getting knocked unconscious by falling debris; for the rest, Richter's loopy jokes receive Carpenter's unerring formalist elegance, the villain's lair has a cocktail lounge where the intrepid warriors mix magic potion and neon skulls adorn sinister subterranean ceremonies.
The great screenwriter W.D. Richter ( Invasion of the Body Snatchers , Big Trouble in Little China , Home for the Holidays ) made his directorial debut on this, though he did not write it.
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This can be a good thing: “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” say, or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” or, more recently, Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You.”