Is Captain Marvel Just a Shot-for-Shot Remake of RedLetterMedia's Space Cop?

An enforcer from a high-tech future sent to the earth of the past...

...who is surly and speaks in nothing but poorly-written action-movie tough-guy lines and failed snark...

...is teamed up with a cop from the past...

... to hunt down shapeshifting green aliens who have infiltrated the earth.

Sound familiar?

A friend lent me Space Cop last night. That's RedLetterMedia's 2016 independent parody of action and sci-fi movies.

I haven't watched the whole thing yet. I stayed up late watching, but I had to go to sleep.

But, what I saw was hilarious. Literally laughing out loud at how stupid (in a clever yet stupid way) it was.

I can't say the whole movie is good because I haven't seen it. And it might be like Black Dynamite, where for 25 or 30 minutes it's the funniest thing you ever saw, and then they either run out of jokes or you get tired of the style of joke and it stops being funny.

I never even watched the last half hour of Black Dynamite -- but I'd still recommend it, for that first half hour.

Is Space Cop like that? I don't know yet.

But the half hour I saw was a scream.

In the movie, Rich Evans plays as Space Cop named Space Cop.

Reassigned to Space Traffic Patrol after he blows up most of the Moon's mining colony, Space Cop chases a speeding Space Car in his Space Cop Cruiser which then goes through... I think it's supposed to be a black hole but it just looks like a galaxy. He's thrown into the past, for some reason, and wakes up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

A title announces "Eight years later" and then, for reasons not explained at all, he's apparently been hired by the Milwaukee police and is annoying a new police chief with his deadly violent incompetence and his surly, arrogant attitude and his Tough Guy Put-Downs. But he's incompetent at that, too, and his lines are either just stupid, or actually make no sense at all (and leave people scratching their heads at how he might have intended to insult them).

I only knew Rich Evans, the actor, as the less impressive incarnation of Mr. Plinkett. But he's really funny as Space Cop. It took me a while but I finally figured out who he's imitating -- his whispery tough-guy voice is actually an imitation of Charlie Sheen's whispery tough-guy voice in Hot Shots Part Deux.

Not very original, but it's funny.

I wanted to tell you some of the lines and gags that made me howl but honestly I decided I couldn't spoil any of them.

I know that this whole line of parody -- the surly cop who won't listen to his superior officers and thinks he's hot shit but he's really a clumsy moron guilty of dozens of criminally negligent homicides -- has been done and done and done before, but the particular gags here are original. Even though they're walking a well-worn path, they're finding new bushes to beat.

Trailer below, but that undersells it. There's another trailer, called "Final Trailer," but I'd avoid that -- it spoils a couple of jokes that are much better sold in the movie, and it also has some pornographic images that aren't fuzzed out.

Even though I haven't finished watching, I think I still have to recommend it. Yes, it will probably stop being funny in another five minutes, just like Black Dynamite did. But just as with Black Dynamite, I still have to recommend it for the first half hour when it was actually really funny.

I think this would be a fun movie to watch with friends, but I watched it alone (well, a half hour of it), and I was having a great time.

And also -- seriously, am I taking crazy pills? CAPTAIN MARVEL IS POORLY-MADE RIP-OFF OF SPACE COP. I cannot get over the serendipity that I started watching this the night that Captain Marvel opened, and I saw it was just a better-written version of the gender-swapped Marvel ripoff with a sexier, more charismatic, fuller-assed actor (Rich Evans) in the lead role.

I can't wait to get a post or two ahead to fire up the rest of this gem, the crown jewel in the Pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe.

By the way: Hollywood is officially out of ideas. Because Space Cop is actually a remake/reboot of 2012's original Space Cop, a lower-budget production:

Unrelated: Vox is full of Soy.

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:10 PM

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