Dark Star Equals "Dork Star?"

When do you get when you have a pre-Thing and Escape from New York John Carpenter, intentionally(?) low production values, a bunch of hippies in space suits, a beach ball that's actually an alien and a bomb that can get philisophical? Ladies and gentlemen, you get Dark Star. This movie is so ridiculously corny that even the name of the movie is painted on the hull of the ship!

Part of me could not decide whether this movie was mildly funny or completely stupid but when the movie ended, I could not end up shaking my head in disbelief of well, the crazy things that happened in a movie where the crew is distressed because their entire supply of toilet paper went with a bomb they used to blow up a planet with.

The whole "blowing up planets" concept baffled me at first; why would a ship blow up random worlds? The movie could be a satire of how countries can casually bomb each other, and the people responsible for the bombs aren't highly trained professionals. They are clueless followers of the Beatles, or clueless impersonaters of the Beatles, whatever the viewer wanted to make out. Dark Star is, clearly enough, a spoof of the space opera because its crew is not valiant; all they want to do is sit around, read romance magazines, play target practice with laser guns and not have to deal with the "beach ball" alien who loves to bash the crew with a broom back and strand them in an elevator shaft (One of the crew members, Pinback, is one of the more disgruntled of the crewmembers that has to contend with a diary system that edits "obscene" words and gestures.).

Possibly the most interesting and funniest scenes involves one of the crew members, Doolittle, trying to talk to a bomb about not exploding. Doolittle tries to talk to the bomb about not exploding using existential philosophy; why should the bomb explode? Why should it not explode? The bomb is "spaced out" as it contemplates why it should exist and why it should not detonate. Could the same philosophy be applied to today's nuclear weaponry? I know we are a long way's off from the "apocalyptic scenario" discussed earlier in class but the space bomb may be a satire of the nuclear bomb. Humans do not usually "talk" to bombs but rather take them for granted and used them to blow up for pleasure and practicality.

The same philosophy used on the bomb could be used on the people responsible for pressing the red button for a nuclear weapon, a set of cluster bombs or a "bunker buster." Why do we explode? Why do we blow stuff up? The movie implies we just do to see something burst into a watercolor painting of napalm and charred chunks flying (or floating) all over the place.

Coming to think of it, people usually say violence in real life is not a good idea but then we enjoy movies like The Terminator, anime and manga like Hellsing that glorifies itself in dark humor and bloodshed and video games like Devil May Cry that congratulates the player on killing monsters in a fantastic fashion. Is Dark Star a satire of destruction, or does it just poke fun as "space opera" elements without regarding to deeper meanings?

Considering how "spaced out" the movie is (According to the poster at the beginning of this post), I would say we should not care what the movie is trying to tell us. Beach ball aliens and talking bombs just do not make any sense. Till then, surf's up!

- Kristopher