Summary
Spaceballs 2 could hilariously spoof modern sci-fi films like Avatar, Nope, and Rebel Moon, offering plenty of comedic potential.
The Star Wars sequel trilogy, Avatar, and Interstellar all provide ripe material for Spaceballs 2 to satirize, creating a fun legacy sequel.
Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and The Matrix Resurrections offer unique concepts that could be cleverly parodied in Spaceballs 2.
Mel Brooks is working on Spaceballs 2 at Amazon, and from Avatar to Interstellar to Everything Everywhere All at Once, there are plenty of recent sci-fi movies that the sequel could spoof. Brooks’ classic original Spaceballs movie from 1987 was primarily a parody of the original Star Wars trilogy. But it also took a few opportunities to poke fun at the other sci-fi behemoth, Star Trek, and there’s a great nod to Alien’s iconic chestburster scene (featuring John Hurt himself, no less) at the end of the movie.
It was recently confirmed that Spaceballs 2 is in development with Brooks attached as a producer and Josh Gad attached to star. The sequel will be directed by Josh Greenbaum, working from a screenplay written by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez, and Gad. It’s unclear if the sequel will be a direct continuation of the original or more of a spiritual follow-up, but there are a ton of modern classics of the sci-fi genre that Spaceballs 2 could satirize.
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10 The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
The most obvious satirical target for Spaceballs 2 would be the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Spaceballs 2 is a long-awaited legacy sequel arriving decades after the original, and that’s exactly what the Star Wars sequel trilogy was. They could even call the sequel The Schwartz Awakens. The Star Wars sequels revolve around an older Luke, an older Han, and an older Leia as they reckon with history repeating itself and a new empire rising up – there’s plenty of comedic potential in spoofing that rehashed storyline.
There are plenty of things in the Star Wars sequel trilogy to make fun of. The bigger Death Star of The Force Awakens is practically a self-parody. From Maz Kanata’s broken promise about “another time” to Rey randomly hijacking the Skywalker name, there are a ton of potential gags in the Star Wars sequels’ worst moments.
9 Avatar
The biggest sci-fi franchise to come along since Spaceballs lampooned the original Star Wars trilogy is James Cameron’s Avatar saga. Cameron has only made two Avatar movies so far, but they both rank among the highest-grossing movies ever made, and despite what the cynics say, they’ve had a huge cultural impact. The underlying premise of humans transferring their consciousness into alien bodies is ripe for parody. It could be used to lampoon self-image or simply for some silly slapstick gags.
As great as Avatar is, it opens itself up to parody. The on-the-nose environmentalist messaging of the Avatar movies could be satirized in a great running gag in Spaceballs 2. The annoying kid with the dreadlocks in Avatar: The Way of Water could be parodied with a similarly insufferable supporting character in the Spaceballs sequel.
8 Moonfall
One of the most ridiculous sci-fi movies in recent years is Roland Emmerich’s Moonfall. The disaster movie master behind the alien invasion of Independence Day and the Mayan prophecy unfolding in 2012 took a goofy conspiracy theory a little too seriously in Moonfall. The movie presupposes that the Moon is an artificial megastructure. When it’s knocked out of its orbit, the Moon starts crashing down to Earth.
Moonfall is exactly as ludicrous as it sounds, and it’s perfect for a parody because it’s almost a parody of itself. The transformation of Spaceball I into the Mega-Maid – a giant robotic maid with a vacuum cleaner – is easier to take seriously than the premise of Moonfall. A moon falling out of orbit into a planet is just stupid enough to work as the main conflict of a Spaceballs sequel.
7 Nope
Jordan Peele put his own unique stamp on the science fiction genre with his blockbuster epic Nope. Nope revolves around a floating alien entity nicknamed “Jean Jacket” that hides behind clouds and sucks spectators up into its voracious black hole. Although it plays as a straightforward sci-fi thriller, on paper, it almost sounds like it could be a comedy.
While the surreal elements of Nope work well enough within the context of the movie itself, some of those elements could be taken out of context to work as gags in Spaceballs 2. For starters, a terrifying alien killer with the name “Jean Jacket” sounds inherently absurd. The notion of this terrifying alien killer hiding behind a cloud to avoid detection sounds inherently absurd. There’s a lot of comedy gold hidden behind Peele’s breathtaking cinematic vision in Nope.
6 Rebel Moon
Zack Snyder’s two-part sci-fi epic Rebel Moon is crying out for a parody. The first part plays like an elongated montage of the hero putting together a band of gunslingers to protect a wheat planet from the evil forces of the Imperium. All of these gunslingers are interchangeable, with a badass attitude, a cool signature weapon, and a contrived tragic backstory. There’s nothing that distinguishes them from one another, and Spaceballs 2 could get a great gag out of that.
The second part of Rebel Moon is a bit more tolerable, since it dives into the high-octane battle sequences promised by the first part, but it’s still impossible to care about these characters. The one-note characterization, overuse of slow-motion, and blatant plagiarization of sci-fi masterworks make Rebel Moon ripe for parody. Maybe some good can come of Snyder’s sci-fi slog after all.
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5 Spaceman
Earlier this year, Netflix released a sci-fi drama that initially plays like Moon or Silent Running, with Adam Sandler playing a lonely astronaut grappling with his troubled marriage while drifting through the isolation of space. But Spaceman takes a truly bizarre turn when Sandler’s astronaut is greeted by a giant telepathic spider that somehow made its way onto his ship. As the movie goes on, this spider essentially becomes Sandler’s therapist, helping him work through his emotional issues.
Maybe Spaceballs 2 can feature a giant spider as Princess Vespa’s therapist. Or it could have Lone Starr and Barf encounter a giant spider while soaring through space in Eagle 5, and the spider tries to pry into their feelings. There’s a lot of potential for a spoof pointing out the absurdity of Spaceman’s spider therapy premise.
4 Everything Everywhere All At Once
It’s rare that the Academy recognizes sci-fi movies, but Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Oscars in 2023. The Michelle Yeoh-starring multiversal epic has become a staple of pop culture – especially with its oft-quoted “laundry and taxes” line – and, as such, would be a great satirical target for Spaceballs 2 to take aim at. The movie uses an action-packed adventure across the multiverse to explore a financially unstable family on an intimate personal level.
The genius of Everything Everywhere All at Once is that it uses ridiculous visuals like a raccoon-centric parody of Ratatouille and a universe where people have hot dogs for fingers to serve a poignant human story. It’s all about a mother and daughter struggling to connect with each other. It would be easy to incorporate some of those sillier concepts, taken out of context, into a parody.
3 Interstellar
Christopher Nolan has made a few sci-fi movies that would make a great parody. The dream-within-a-dream nonsense of Inception was brilliantly satirized in South Park, and the time-traveling bullets of Tenet would probably be better-suited to an absurdist comedy than a straightforward spy-fi thriller. But the Nolan movie that’s most ripe for parody is Interstellar, because it’s Nolan’s most sincere movie and crosses the line into saccharin a few times too many.
There are plenty of moments in Interstellar that are easy to make fun of. Anne Hathaway has an oft-mocked monologue about how love is the only thing that can’t be quantified by scientific theory. Matthew McConaughey goes through a black hole and ends up going back in time to poke books out of his daughter’s bookcase. Interstellar could form the basis for a hilarious Spaceballs sequel.
2 The Matrix Resurrections
If the Spaceballs sequel is going to get meta about being a sequel, then it could look to The Matrix Resurrections for inspiration. The fourth Matrix movie opens with the shocking revelation that the entire original trilogy never actually happened. It was just a video game designed by Thomas Anderson. The movie eventually reveals that Anderson is back in the Matrix and the original trilogy did really happen, but it sticks with its initial conceit for a while.
Anderson is told that Warner Bros. wants to make a sequel to The Matrix trilogy with or without him. He reluctantly steps into the writers’ room to figure out what a fourth Matrix story could possibly be. The audacity of this self-awareness could be used as a springboard to satirize the franchise model even further in the Spaceballs sequel.
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1 Dune
One of the biggest influences on the Star Wars saga was Frank Herbert’s Dune, and now, thanks to Denis Villeneuve, Dune has become a widely celebrated movie franchise of its own. Villeneuve’s mind-blowing two-part adaptation has not only brought Herbert’s vision to the screen, but brought this weird sci-fi allegory into the mainstream. The power struggles on Arrakis would form the basis for a great spoof storyline in Spaceballs 2.
There are a bunch of concepts in Dune that would serve Spaceballs 2 with ready-made gags. The characters all wear suits that convert their bodily fluids into drinking water. They tame gigantic sandworms and ride them into battle. There are space witches who spread lies across the galaxy and the deserts are filled with psychedelic drugs – at one point, Paul accidentally trips on spice. Spaceballs 2 could just be a full-blown Dune parody.