Star Wars vs. SpaceBalls
Opening Scenes

In a Si-fi film I would expect to find: Robots, Lazers, Spaceships and Advanced Technology. I would Also expect it to be set somewhere in space, another galaxy/dimension or another planet. They normally have a simple story line which keeps to the fairytale story line of ‘Good vs. Evil’ this normally consists of basic main characters such as: Hero(s), Princess and a Evil Monster or person.

Star Wars fills this genre perfectly and has become one of the best and most watched films of all time. Star Wars has maed $797,900,000 since its release date and it only cost $11,000,000 to make and produce.

Si-fi films such as Star Wars fascinate people as it’s so different, so unreal, and so abnormal to the ‘Real World’. It is targeted more for the male audience from ages starting at 5 to 40.

It appeals to kids as when you are young you haven’t really seen anything like this before; they’re fascinated by the lazers, the fighting with light sabers and how it puts them and older people into a completely different world.

Star Wars starts with a piece of text. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …” this is following the basic fairy tale structure but also straight away gets the viewers on edge, it puts you into another world already! It follows the traditional fairy tale structure because most old fairy tales start with “Once upon a time, in a land far away”.

Then in huge bold, bright yellow text STAR WARS appears on your screen. Background music is followed by this which gets you in the mood for action, it gets you ‘hyped’ and really excited. It makes you feel that the film is going to be action packed and eventful.

While the music is playing a script starts from the bottom of the screen in bigger bold text and starts to travel at a quick pace to the top of the screen getting smaller ever second until the script is finished and the film begins. The script features some of these words that stood about above the rest:
Galactic, DEATH STAR, Empire, Civil War, Galaxy, Princess Leia; these words symbolise that the film is set in a completely different world. There is also the mention of a evil villain called Darth Vadar.

The film starts; the first scene features 3 plants and a huge planet at the bottom of the screen again this shows we are defiantly not on earth. It makes this very clear. Then when everything seems quiet the sound of a huge engine fires up and then a reasonably large spaceship is blasted infront of you, it is also firing lazers out of the back!

A few seconds later a Monstrous spaceship comes into view making lots of noise, it must be atleast 50 times the size of the previous spaceship. The angle changes, you can now really see how much bigger this spaceship is compared to the pervious. You can see the smaller spaceship as we guess is getting chased by the larger one, we also guess that the smaller spaceship is full of the heroes and the larger is full of the villains. After a small battle of lazers being fired from each ship the smaller spaceship seems to be getting swallowed by the monster (bigger spaceship).

The scene changes and we are onboard the smaller spaceship, our first characters are 3 robots, 2 human looking and the other looks like a dustbin. We then hear one of the human looking robots mention something about the main defensive system has been damaged; this again puts you into another world.

More characters come onto the scene, these are defiantly human. They have minimum armour but because they are wearing armour we guess that they are soldiers. They also have small little lazer guns.

The scene changes again, the soldiers from the heroes spaceship are trying to make some kind of resistance against the villains, they are all stationed infront of the door which leads to there spaceship. There is a noise from above them, bright flashes of light and the door is blasted open to reveal lots of villains who have maximum armour and large guns.

The hero’s resistance is destroyed within seconds leaving nothing but a pile of dead bodies. Then the music changes, all the villain soldiers stand against the walls to attention. The camera angle changes and we see for the first time Darth Vadar. He is tall looking, his mask or helmet looks almost savage, he looks around at the heroes dead bodies and gives something like a significant nod.

SpaceBalls

The purpose of a spoof is to lampoon a certain film, SpaceBalls lampoon’s Star Wars directly, meaning it only takes the lampoon out of Star Wars and not every Si-Fi film out to date.

It appeals to a wider range of audience this time possibly the female audience as well as people who like the film will want to watch this to see which bits they have lampooned, and people who dislike the film fill also want to see this just to have a cheap laugh and boast about how stupid the film really is. This is clever has the creator will make twice the amount of money.

It appeals to the older audience as they will get the jokes more and also some of the language isn’t really suitable for children under the age of 12.

The film starts like Star Wars it has a piece of text “Once Upon a Time Warp in a galaxy far, far, far, far, far, far away”. They really mean to exaggerate this for certain effect. The script also consists of the same as Star Wars but the background music is different, it’s more childish with the occasional lazer sound. At the end of the script there is a joke “If you can read this you don’t need glasses” This is because the script is going up the screen and getting smaller and smaller.

They use some of the same ‘ingredients’ as Star Wars. Ion the opening scene the first shot is the villain spaceship which seems to go on forever. It takes 1minute and 40seconds for this monstrosity to pass by. They really mean to exaggerate this particular part of the movie and at the end of the spaceship there is a joke “We break for nobody”

The scene changes and we are now inside the villain’s spaceship. The first character is a man called Colonel Sanders. (The guy who invented KFC) he is dressed in a shiny leather jacket and shiny leather, skin tight pants.

The entrance of “Dark Helmet” is similar to the entrance of Darth Vader, there is a door that is rising upwards so you get to see little bits of him every few seconds and every bit of the door that rises he looks more ridiculous. He is wearing some kind of blouse a ridiculously sized helmet and some kind of weird cross on his top of his blouse.

As he appears all the villains stand to attention looking not scared but terrified, one of them is even mumbling a prayer. As he walks forward, every footstep there is a change in the music, a drum being hit. As he reaches Colonel Sanders you get a huge close up of his helmet which is abnormally fly-like. The breathing is exaggerated heavily then finally he flips the front of the helmet off to reveal a puny man with glasses.