By the time Spaceballs hit theaters in 1987, George Lucas had built an empire. Mel Brooks? He brought a whoopee cushion to the throne room and popped it with pride.
Back then, Spaceballs wasn’t just a parody; it was a laser-focused, fourth-wall-breaking, merch-mocking comedy blitz that somehow felt smarter than the source material it spoofed. And now, nearly four decades later, we’re getting Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.
Which begs the question: As fans, do we really want this? Or are we just looking to capitalize on nostalgia once again?
Spaceballs didn’t just land, it crash-landed onto a movie scene just beginning to drown in blockbuster seriousness. Brooks skewered Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien, and even Planet of the Apes before it was cool to be “meta.” It wasn’t just slapstick, it was smart slapstick. And in a world without TikTok, memes, or Twitter threads, that made it revolutionary.
Also: zero merch. That was the deal. Lucas allegedly let Brooks spoof Star Wars so long as Spaceballs never sold a single action figure. It’s the ultimate irony that Spaceballs mocked merchandising while becoming a cult classic that never got its own Yogurt Funko Pop. Punk rock.
Spaceballs 2 is happening ya’ll! Mel Brooks (98 and still sharper than most comedy writers today) is returning as Yogurt. Rick Moranis is back. Bill Pullman is reprising Lone Starr. Keke Palmer, genre-flexing queen of Nope, Hustlers, and daytime TV, joins the party. And Josh Gad is co-writing and co-starring, hopefully as Barf’s long-lost younger brother (RIP John Candy).
Production kicks off this year. If done right, Spaceballs 2 could be a glorious roast of our IP-obsessed, franchise-bloated streaming landscape. If done wrong, it’ll be the Space Jam: A New Legacy of parody films.
As the teaser implies, the cultural landscape is primed. Star Wars has become a franchise so driven to mediocrity with bad sequels and even worse TV shows (Andor aside). Marvel is knee-deep in multiverses and fatigue. Every streamer wants their own space epic. Rebel Moon was great, right? A well-aimed spoof could clean house like Mega-Maid on a Red Bull.
If they nail it, this could be the antidote to Marvel burnout and IP fatigue. Imagine a Spaceballs 2 that targets everything from Disney+ spinoffs to multiverse madness to Snyder cultists. Picture a scene where Yogurt now runs a streaming empire churning out algorithm-approved garbage like The Helmet Diaries and Lone Star: A Spaceballs Story.
That kind of cultural punch is what we need. History of the World, Part II on Hulu proved Mel Brooks’ humor can still land, if you lean into the absurd and don’t hold back. Gad and Brooks say they’re channeling the tone of The Producers and Young Frankenstein, which, if true, gives me hope. If that same fire powers Spaceballs 2, we might just get the first legacy sequel that satirizes the concept of legacy sequels while being one.
We need the kind of unhinged, modern absurdity that could actually feel fresh in a sequel. But I suppose a Michael Winslow call-back cameo wouldn’t hurt.
Nostalgia is a great spice, but a terrible main course. If this movie leans too hard into rehashing old gags (comb the desert again?), we risk a parody that’s parodying itself.
And let’s be honest, most late-arriving comedy sequels? Rough. We saw it with Zoolander 2. Even Anchorman 2 tripped on its own glass case of emotion. Coming 2 America? Unnecessary. When the joke is “remember this joke?” it stops being funny real fast.
For this sequel to matter, it can’t just spoof. It has to say something. If Yogurt returns just to say “we’ve gone to streaming,” but doesn’t mean anything with that line? That’s not parody. That’s product.
This isn’t just about a sequel, it’s about whether comedy has the guts to punch up anymore.
Mel Brooks wasn’t afraid to go after the powerful. Today’s Hollywood? It loves to punch sideways. But if Spaceballs 2 can hit the soft spots of content culture, streaming sprawl, multiverse fatigue, trailer-over-substance hype, it might not just be a worthy sequel. It might be a necessary one.
Daniel Kahneman (the psychologist, not a droid) says our memory is shaped by how things end. If Spaceballs 2 fails, it doesn’t just add a bad chapter; it rewrites the whole book.
And let’s not forget: Brooks’s comedies often hid biting critiques in fart jokes. The Producers tackled fascism. Blazing Saddles tackled racism. Spaceballs? It tackled corporate greed before it was trending. A new installment has a chance to aim that same satire cannon at today’s gatekeepers: streaming giants, cinematic monopolies, and franchise fatigue.
Spaceballs 2 should only exist if it’s smart enough to know it shouldn’t. If it lampoons Hollywood’s obsession with squeezing every drop of Schwartz from its franchises, then fire up the Winnebago.
But if it’s just a merch-scented cash grab with zero bite, we’ll all be left staring into the void of Yogurt NFTs, wondering what went wrong.
And if they don’t end the movie with “Spaceballs: The Last Schwartz, coming soon,” I’m not sure what we’re doing anymore.
We’ll take Spaceballs 2—but only if it brings the funny and the fury.
