Why is This Not a Movie?: Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League

1984’s Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension was a fun, pulpy mess of a sci-fi adventure, which promised us a sequel… which we never got. Nearly 40 years later, screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch wrangled the rights to the character away from the studio and gave us a novelization of Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, the movie he never got to make. And it’s not very good.

So to wrap up Season 4, a brief meditation on the pitfalls of reviving a property by creating a watered-down version of the original instead of pushing forward with new ideas. As we coast to the end of the season, my voice is starting to go, so bear with me this week, as I talk about a movie I wanted and never got, the joy of throwing every crazy idea you can into a story, and the importance of keeping things moving forward.