Ooooouuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Staaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Blllaaaaaaaazerrrrrrrrrrsssss!!!!! Um... ahem... Uh... Harry here, sorry about the flashback... I sat 5 people in my room once and forced them to watch the first DVD of STARBLAZERS so that the heathens would know the glory that is the quest to Iscandar... This has been an adaptation problem for a feature film property for a long time now... The problem... They're trying to tell too much of the story too fast. Did Rocky beat Apollo in the first fight? Did the rebels forever defeat the Empire in the first film? Did Sherlock Holmes instantly throw Moriarty down a Waterfall and tumble after him? Did Neo set all the coppertops free in the first Matrix? Anybody? Ummmm.... Right... Exactly! The first STARBLAZERS movie should be about destroying the localized Gamilon Forces endangering Earth... and the Space Cruiser Yamato shouldn't appear till at least the halfway mark... Before then it should be skirmishes and losing battles... THIS IS EASY!!! Sigh... Take at least 3 films to get to Iscandar folks... and 3 more to get back.... Folks claim they want franchises, but noone in charge seems to have vision past their hood ornaments... Yeesh, here's Reno with a look at the Tab Murphy script for the.... well... you know....
Hey Harry,
Reno here, with another report from the Cinema of Unmade films. This time it's a look at Tab Murphy's script for a live action adaptation of the classic animae series "Star Blazers" which is deservedly languishing in development hell over at Disney. Yes, I said deservedly. But more on that in a moment.
For the uninitiated (And shame on you for that), "Star Blazers" is a Japanese animated series originally titled "Space Cruiser Yamato". Its first season premiered in Japan in 1974 and made its way to the States in 1979. It told the story of a future earth under attack from the evil Gamilon Empire. (How do we know they're evil? Well, ummm, they turned from fleshtone to blue about a third of the way through the first season for no apparent reason.) The Gamilon's have just about nuked the hell out of Earth and radioactivity will render our planet lifeless in one year's time. Things look pretty hopeless until Earth receives an offer of help from the Princess Starsha of planet Iscandar. If the Earth can get a ship to Iscandar, Starsha will give them the Cosmo DNA, a device that will rid Earth of radioactivity and make it habitable again. She also supplies some technology to help the small band of adventurers make the perilous journey. Since most of the Earth's fleet has been wiped out, the sunken WW2 battleship "The Argo" (the Yamato in the original Japanese) is retrofitted for spaceflight. The crew, known as the Star Force, are led by the wise, fatherly Captain Avatar and include the impetuous hot fighter jockey/weapons officer Derek Wildstar, his best friend Mark Venture, hottie nurse Nova, the frequently drunk Dr. Sane (although it wasn't absolutely stated on the show, it was strongly implied. Hell I figured it out and I was only 10 at the time), the engineer Orion and the annoying (though not as annoying as the 'bot over on "Battle of the Planets") robot IQ-9.
(I've also recently heard that "Star Blazers" is rumored to be shown on
Cartoon Network's Toonami lineup sometime soon, but have not heard any
official confirmation. Keep your eyes peeled folks. . .)
Ten years old when the show premiered, I thought it was fantastic. Each day, my friends and I would barrel home from school and head to one of the two houses on the block that had cable. "Star Blazers" was a core part of our afternoon TV diet- along with "Speed Racer," "Ultraman," "The Space Giants" and "Battle of the Planets." (The only American cartoons we would watch were the classic Bugs Bunny and Daffy Ducks from the 40s.) "Star Blazers"'s mixture of outer space high adventure with a storyline firmly rooted in the mythic-quest tradition (The ship wasn't renamed the Argo by accident) made a potent brew for a group of kids who were hopped up on "Star Wars." (The series is currently being reissued on DVD. The first volume's picture is kind of Blah and washed out and the menu screen is as bare as it gets. Volume 1's poor presentation is what has kept me from picking up subsequent volumes, though reportedly they are a step up.)
Tab Murphy had the unenviable task of compressing the show's first season, the entire "Quest for Iscandar" storyline from 26 half hour episodes down to an entertaining 2 hour film that remains faithful to the original material. Unfortunately, his Sept. 10, 1997 draft doesn't manage to do it.
The first half of the script roughly follows the storyline of the series' first handful of episodes. Faced with annihilation, the Earth receives a visit from a mysterious alien woman with a message of hope and an offer of help. A battleship is retrofitted for spacetravel and crewed by a group of brash, young warriors. But unfortunately, the devil lies in the details, or in this case, the changes that Murphy has made.
Some of these changes are cosmetic. Derek Wildstar is now Derrick Wilder,
Nova is now Jo and the Princess Starsha character is now called Nova. But
the most glaring name change is the renaming of the Yamato/Argo to the
Arizona. Yes, the same Arizona that was sunk at Pearl Harbor. While some
might like the Nationalistic imagery of such a change (Just imagine what
director Michael Bey would do with this!) it does subtract from the mythic
underpinnings of the story. I know that the Yamato was also a WWII
battlecruiser, but when the American cartoon producers changed the name to
The Argo, they new it would create a link to the Classic Greek tale of Jason
and the Argonauts. Renaming the ship to the Arizona subtly refocuses the
story from the desperate race to save the planet to the United States saves
the world (Again. See Independence Day.)
But there are also changes that are far less subtle- The most glaring being the elimination of Captain Avatar. Avatar was the weathered and seasoned space captain who served as a mentor figure to the crew of the Argo, especially developing a fatherly role towards Derek over the course of the show's first season. This elimination, again, undermines the mythic structure of the story. (I know this sounds like I just finished reading a load of Joseph Campbell.) Avatar was the teacher figure in the tradition of Merlin, Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was his character that helps Derek grow over the first season. With his elimination, Wilder comes off as a brash hotshot who doesn't really develop any further over the course of the film. Another change to the character of Wildstar/Wilder, is the addition of a kid sister, Erika. Once she is introduced, you know that it's only a matter of time before she stows away aboard the Arizona. Not that her stowingaway carries any major plot significance. She's just there to have a kid aboard. Hey, it worked so well in Jurassic Park II. . .
Unfortunately, the crew of the Arizona doesn't rate much better. Rather than being the best Earth had to offer, they're now a group who had mutinied aboard their own vessel two years earlier and have been lanquishing in the stockade ever since. Why is Wilder forced to use these men as crew? I couldn't really tell you, because the main reason no regular soldiers would volunteer for the Iscandar mission ("I was born on Earth, I'm gonna die on Earth," - incidental character referred to as Fat Mechanic.) doesn't make much sense to me. Since we only have about two hours for this story and the rest of the crew are introduced about a third of the way into the movie we don't get to find out much about them as characters.
Once the Star Force is on their way to Iscandar, Murphy takes a radical left turn from the source material. Since in the film version, Nova has personally delivered the offer of the Cosmo DNA she joins the crew for the trip back. With the ship damaged during their escape from Earth, the Arizona makes a stop over for supplies at the planet Sega. (No doubt named in a triumph of product placement over good taste!) The crew gets the supplies but not without a deadly run in with the local insectoid population.
Returning to the Arizona, Wilder and company manage to head off a boarding attempt by some Gamilon soldiers. It's also around this point that Murphy realizes that he has to wrap things up fairly quickly. Nova reveals herself to be the half-Gamilon daughter of Leader Desslock, the Gamilon's leader. She is actually taking the Star Force to Gamilon to retrieve the Cosmo DNA. SOMEHOW, the Arizona makes it to the Gamilon system undetected and members of the Star Force are able to infiltrate Desslock's headquarters and steal the Cosmo DNA while Derrick has a face to face meeting with Desslock while disguised as a Gamilon officer. A race back to Earth ensues, followed by a battle in which Nova sacrifices herself to ensure victory, the discovery that someone in Earth's High Command is a traitor and the activation of the Cosmo DNA and restoration of Earth wrap the story up. If anyone thinks that I'm glossing over the final act of the script, I apologize. It was from around the stopover at the planet Sega that I went from having my doubts about the script to actively hating the thing.
The basic failing of the second half of the script is that with all the set up of the first hour, Murphy is under pressure to reach a speedy conclusion. Thus we have the cheat of never getting to Iscandar and having our heroes fight their way back to Earth. Once again, (you guessed it) the mythic structure of the original is shot to pieces. The changed ending also invalidates the entire set up of the film promising us one thing and than telling us "Just kidding!" There's a difference between plot twists and just plain bad plotting and this definitely falls into the latter category.
Ultimately, the idea of turning Star Blazers into a live action film may sound fun at first, but the two hour format doesn't contain enough room to do the concept justice. Disney would be better of developing the material as a six to ten hour miniseries for television. If the House of Mouse got cracking, they could have this ready in time for the series 30th anniversary in 2004. (And we could end each evening with that great "Can the Star Force do it? Earth has only X days left!" voiceover.)
Reno out.
