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How can I not rent a movie called Space Truckers? I don't need a blurb on the back of the box, I don't need to know who's in it, it is impossible to have that title and not be satisfying on SOME level. Surprisingly enough though, this seems to be.... a recent move with a decent budget? The hell? We start off with some space marines being space marines. Here's some guy who works for The Company wearing a ridiculous silver trench coat. Here's some bridge crew people staring at 80s looking computer readouts. Space Truckers, you are making a GREAT first impression. Now just give me a silly muppet. Come on. You know you want to. Come on. Muppet... muppet... Big Practical prop goofy Geth looking robot? OK I'll accept that. It kills people in hilarious fashion for a while, then after slaughtering everyone but Evil Corporate Guy and Evil Scientist, Evil Scientist shuts it off. "With a hundred of these, we could take over the world!" "Which world?" "Earth. The government's pretty tenuous over there right now." To reward his awesomeness, Evil Scientist is, naturally, killed.
Now here's a bear can still in the plastic holder drifting through space, some cheesy country music, and a snazzy logo. And here is out Space Truck, piloted by out Space Trucker... played by DENNIS HOPPER? Is it CHRISTMAS? And he's delivering genetically engineered "square pigs" to GEORGE WENDT!?! How have I not seen this movie before? This is ALREADY the best cheesy movie I've seen in MONTHS! Oh, and it even DOESN'T have artificial gravity! He's eating a hot dog and leaving the mustard floating around in mid-air, and strapping on magnetic boots to unload the cargo, and we actually get to see the Square Pigs! And YES! THEY ARE MUPPETS! I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW! Now here's a zero G brawl breaking out. So yeah, Dennis Hopper was late delivering his cube shaped pigs to George Wendt, so they fight for a while and after fighting about it a while, he stops off at a fast food restaurant with a ridiculous cowboy theme... which is wheel shaped and rotated for gravity. This movie cares about nerdy gravity issues in addition to being ridiculous. How did I not hear about this when it first came out in... 1997? Or since? I could have spent the last 13 years rambling about the glorious silliness I see before me it seems!
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Now here's George Wendt's goons stealing Dennis Hopper's truck with a "sonic pick" and... holy cow, this movie has like, every single amusing character actor whose name I don't know in it. It's amazing. Anyway, George Wendt is now hiring this young idyllic kid who just graduated from "space truck school" to drive the stolen pork load to it's final destination. He is forced to don the embarrassing pink trainee overalls. And... we pretty much proceed immediately to a bar fight between Hopper and Wendt. Inside a Space Arby's. Someone pulls a gun, misses, and breeches the hull by shooting out a window. The whole is plugged, temporarily, by George Wendt, but eventually he slips through. Dennis Hopper, new trucker, and convenient love interest, escape the disaster by taking a hidden exit Hopper knows to exist within the women's west room, disguised by a stall occupied by a robotic recreation of the Where's the Beef Lady whose head opens up to reveal controls. It leads to the office of some secretive weirdo, who needs someone to deliver a fishy shipment of what's claimed to be sex robots to earth. One assumes this is actually all those wacky death ray spamming geth from earlier. And hey, here's more fun with gravity. And big carnival ride style safety bars when pulling the truck out of port. And the onboard computer has a twang in its voice. "... within accayptable raynges!"
On their way out though, they get pulled over by the cops, at which poin Dennis Hopper fishtails the rig, knocking the markers of the official shipping lain aside, and generally causing a ton of chaos. So now it's time for more zero G fun, and microwaved astronaut tube food. Anyway, we're cutting through an asteroid field o save time, but these particular asteroids are made of... I don't know, carbon or something, so they don't quite notice one in time, and it temporarily knocks out their heat management system. Because again, SPACE TRUCKERS ADDRESSES PROPER HARD SCI-FI ISSUES LIKE THAT. So Dennis Hopper goes out to fix it, while the two characters I totally don't care about talk for a while. This leads to some degree of stripping, which in turn leads to cheesy music. But on the plus side, shirts and shoes randomly drifting about the room. Unlike most Consciousness Stream fodder though, this is PG-13, so we don't so much get into the sex having. We cut outside where the cargo containers are sprouting lasers and shooting as Dennis Hopper as he tries to cut them loose to get to a less-exposed-to-the-sun position at the very least. We have a bit of discussion about how, OK, if we're going to be stuck here and roasting to death, let's at least go all Star Trek and reroute cooling from the Fridge. Turns out they don't have a fridge though, just a cooler full of beer.
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Fortunately, the day is saved as they are scooped up by space pirates who have apparently commandeered the frelling Yamato. Not enough movies have space pirates. Especially space pirates with earrings and ponytails and random aviator goggles. That's proper space piracy there. New kid wants to go out guns blazing, but Dennis Hopper is all "Dude, they probably outnumber us like 3000 to 1 and OH MAN THEIR CAPTAIN HAS A PEGLEG AND A METAL CLAW ARM. Anyway, yeah, resisting is really stupid, so they pretty much just give themselves up. Anyway, yeah, the pirate captain is awesome. He's like if Drachma from Skies of Arcadia dressed like a nazi or something. Oh and half his face is burned off. And he talks all weird and British and nerdy. Actually he KINDA sounds like Phantom Limb... and wait, did he just say he was actually the Evil Scientist from the beginning, having fixed himself up after the evil corporate dude had him executed? "He didn't mean that, he respects the brave way you confront your disability!" Anyway, Token Girl offers to sleep with him if he doesn't mutilate and/or kill everyone. Annoying Rookie is all indignant about this, but Dennis Hopper reminds him that you know, she's HIS fiancee, not his, so he's not allowed to take the moral high ground there. OH AND WHEN HE TAKES HIS HAT OFF HE HAS A CLEAR PLASTIC DOME WITH FLASHING LIGHTS IN IT! This movie knows so well how to pander o me. And as he continues stripping in private he's actually a really awesome looking cyborg, mainly with a clear plastic casing, and apparently a glowing blue rip-cord activated robo-penis. He can't get it started though.
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Meanwhile the other pirates are trying to get the high security shipping container with a ridiculously huge tool of awesome. Lasers ensue. Lasers which are taken out eventually with a rocket launcher. Meanwhile upstairs the captain is all "Close your eyes and think of Brooklyn" but Girl yanks some tubes free and largely dismantles him. Stealing his cool nazi clothes and cigar, she fakes a limb and tricks a VERY stupid guard into letting the others go. Again, this is totally reminding me of Glistening Chests skill usage. This doesn't get them too far though, and they're more or less immediately recaptured. Dennis Hopper points out that they really should check out the cargo before killing them though, because it's probably going to turn out to be dangerous enough that having extra people around will help. Not his exact words, but point is they're both genre savvy enough to generally agree on that. And... yeah. The captain is totally the Evil Scientist from the beginning. He's totally prepared to reprogram the geth here and take over. Except, oh, one of them was apparently left active for security's sake. And seriously, this thing is SO a geth. This movie BLATANTLY inspired the look of the robots you spend the bulk of Mass Effect fighting. Not quite as slick looking here of course, but still. So yeah, robot kill pirates lots. In cool ways. It's going all ninja-ish and catching and returning grenades and slicing people up and using it's crazy plasma cannon. Out protagonists take this chance to, you know, open the cargo bay door, run back to their truck and get the heck out... interestingly enough, with the trailer still attached.
Dennis Hopper is all "oh yeah, you always feel great when you narrowly escape death like that, but you get over it after a while." Unfortunately, there's some banging behind them, indicating that they still have a pirate and/or active death robot let to deal with. Naturally, they discover the top half of the captain, badly wanting a lighter for his cigar. Kid says "maybe I should get a first aid kit." He's dying, but explains that they're hauling kill bots. "If I still had an anus, I'd probably be soiling myself." Also, unfortunately, it seems the whole lot has activated, but, on the plus side, he still has the remote to shut them off with him. So now it's just a question of getting close enough to them to turn them all off, as they uh.... take over the truck I guess. They look really weird when deactivated too. All wadded up and such. Sadly, much like a computer, they have to fully power up before you're allowed to shut them down, so... oh no! Death Bots! Off. Repeat. But doh, a few decided not to come out through the standard exit, cut a whole through the side, and are headed towards the cab. So now we have everyone wearing big bulky space suits to deal with that and... someone drops the remote, which drives out the hole they ripped coming back in.
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So, do they say heck with it, and redirect the truck to drift into the sun? Well no, re-entry to earth's atmosphere will trash'em just as well, they'll just do that. Dennis Hopper's going all noble I'll go down with the ship with this plan, rigging things to get the other two to safety. So they leave in the only escape pod, he stays behind rigging some explosives, and, oh right there's still geth. He attempts to fend them off with his only gun, which, more style points for this movie, fires frelling bullets, not stupid ol' lasers. Firing the engines on the escape pod takes this batch out pretty nicely though... and really, I just cannot get over how clearly these are geth. So yeah, the plan works exactly as advertise, and the entire ship explodes... with Dennis Hopper using an emergency parachute of all things to leap free before the ship burns up. So everyone lives, and they go to see Girl's mom in the hospital, who apparently used to be an old flame of Dennis Hopper or something but had Space Cancer or something. She ended up having herself frozen though, so she's actually still young and hot and can safely resolve our love triangle situation here. Great.
Now comes the weird twisty ending. To reward them for saving the earth from kill bots, the President of Earth stops by... and turns out to be the Evil Corporate Guy with the death bots. Yeah, apparently that was just his backup plan in case buying the next election didn't pan out for him, but it did. So he offers them a new ship and a huge cash bribe to keep quiet about the whole thing. They all have dignity though, and toss the suitcase full of cash out the window when he leaves, which lands on his car, right before he detonates the bomb hidden within. New ship's legitimate though, so everyone piles in and gets the heck off earth to go to some place more civilized and setup a sequel I'm pretty sure never happened. Which is a shame because seriously, this was an awesome movie. Cliche-filled and cheesy, sure, but this is FIRST CLASS CHEESE here.
