Ryan Shoots First: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
I really don’t know where to begin with this movie. I have been on this earth for 31 years and never knew this was a thing. This film is an achievement in lunacy, things happen and make no sense, there is zero explanation and things just are… and it is positively fantastic. To begin I’ll simply quote the description of the movie.
“Adventurer, brain surgeon, rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his crime-fighting team, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, must stop evil alien invaders from the eighth dimension who are planning to conquer Earth.”
I mean come on, tell me that doesn’t sound amazing, and that doesn’t even begin to describe the film. The titular character Buckaroo Banzai is “The most interesting man in the world” personified. He has a wide range of characters in his inner circle, a combination of scientist, doctors, musicians, a pretty boy named Perfect Tommy, sofa salesman and a child. And there is zero context or reason explained for any of it. If this was made in the year 2018 we would need 6 standalone films for every member of the team with full back stories culminating in the ensemble film. Oh did I mention he just comes across a woman who is the long lost identical twin of his wife? a completely unnecessary plot device that is given in passing and never really goes anywhere it couldn’t if it wasn’t his ex-wife’s long lost twin.
The best part is the cast in this film, not a scene goes by without seeing someone you recognize or know of from other films and as the movie is from 1984 many of them are at the early stages of their careers and by god are giving it their all. The main character Banzai is played by Robocop himself Peter Weller, he is joined by Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum and other character actors like Christopher Lloyd, Clancy Brown, Carl Lumbly, Dan Hedaya and Vincent Schiavelli. An absolute stellar cast, on one of the DVD releases for the film there is a documentary and I absolutely must see it if nothing else than to find out what all these actors thought day in and day out during production.
The plot revolves around Banzai engaging in a high speed rocket car test that opens a gateway to the parallel 8th dimension (we skipped straight over 4-7 apparently). Due to this we are now being invaded by wait for it… Aliens from Planet 10 through the 8th dimension. But wait there’s more, this rogue group is lead by a evil alien the “good aliens” described in the film as “just like your Hitler”. So Banzai and his team defeat the bad aliens and he gets the long lost twin of his ex-wife and everyone wins.
The movie is best in the moment to moment because there is truly no explanation for any of it, at one point Jeff Goldblum’s character (who spends majority of the movie in a cowboy getup) walks past a watermelon in a hydraulic press at the Banzai compound. New to the team he asks what that is about. He is told “I’ll tell ya later” and that is it, that one interaction encapsulates this achievement in cinema. I’ve compiled a list below that I think says more about the film than any of the sentences above…
- The President of the US is in the hospital the whole film and strapped up in a contraption because he broke his back. This has no bearing on the plot.
- All of the Aliens first names are John and the last names include, Yaya, Small Berries, and Big Booty (pronounced Boo-Tay)
- A man runs a velvet sofa store and also has a helicopter that has the logo of the shop on the side, I can only assume for fast delivery. The good aliens all have Jamaican accents.
- The good Aliens plan to shoot a laser at the USSR instead of America to add a “Cold War” angle.
- They bring a 8 year old named Scooter to an alien shoot out and give him a rifle, he then tells the Secretary of State he will “drink your blood”.
I’ll save some moments for your viewing but I assure you it is worth the watch. Perhaps the most depressing part is at the end of the film the screen flashes that the Hong Kong Cavaliers will return in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League which sadly never came. The story of which could be a whole other documentary. I know Hollywood has no original ideas and everything is a remake but in this climate how this premise has not been rebooted is baffling. Beyond that is how this movie has managed to stay relatively obscure. With so many entities mining the nostalgia of the 80’s how deep cut references of Buckaroo Banzai have not made it into more media is a shame.
My crusade to change this starts today… maybe, I’ll tell ya later.
“Buckaroo, the White House wants to know if everything is alright with the alien spacecraft from Planet 10 or should we go ahead & destroy Russia?”
“Tell them yes on 1 & no on 2.”
“Which one was yes; destroy Russia, or #2?
Do you really not understand why the President is in a traction device in Buckaroo Banzai?
There is some truth to your comment that “things happen and make no sense”. (And you clearly don’t mean that as a criticism.) I just want to say that a lot more makes sense than you might think on first viewing. Certainly, the first time I saw this movie–in the theater. In 1984. Eat your heart out, buddy–I enjoyed it for its unique camp-ness without even beginning to understand the intricacies of the plot. But I kept coming back to it, seeing it again with different people. By the 6th or 7th time, the movie made sense. Really. I remember my 8th viewing with a bunch of friends, most of whom hadn’t seen it before. I was able to pause the film at crucial points, explain what had happened and why, and get them caught up so they could kind of understand how what happened next was developing logically out of that. So if the movie hasn’t clicked for you like that, keep at it. You will reach Buckaroo-nature and achieve enlightenment. Pay special attention to the scene with the Orson Welles War of the Worlds explanation, the one that ends with Goldblum saying, “So… maybe it wasn’t a hoax; I mean, maybe it isn’t a hoax.” Once every word in that explanation makes sense to you, you have what you need to crack the rest of the film.
One great memory I have of this movie was seeing it at UCLA in 1986. There was a rowdy college crowd with at least one guy dressed as Banzai–a lot of people more obsessed than I was. They came prepared to Rocky Horror the movie. My favorite moment is when this man (I forget which actor) is working in the garage and the bad aliens are sneaking up and they send a barrel rolling past him to distract him and it crashes into something. He looks up and says, “All right. Who’s the wise guy?”
The guy in front of me–the one dressed like Banzai–yells “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!”
And the guy on the screen says, “I SAID, ‘WHO’S THE WISE GUY?'” It was a beautiful moment.
I remember seeing this in ’87. A singular wit through and through. Also, remember the “Declaration of War – The Short Form”? (“Just ‘John Hancock’ these and…..’Hail Mary.'”)