Thursday, May 24, 2018

Tan While You Can, Monkeyboy

Image result for darren madigan buckaroo banzai'TANJ'.  'There Ain't No Justice'.  A coinage come up with by Larry Niven, in his KNOWN SPACE universe, to state a basic and fundamental truth.

'TANJ' is almost certainly inspired by 'TANSTAAFL', the similar aphorism often expressed in Robert A. Heinlein's brilliant THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.  There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch is probably about as true as There Ain't No Justice.  Which is to say, it's very much true for the uncaring universe at large.  Where both justice and a free lunch exist, they do so because somebody decided to make it so, in defiance of a cold and brutal cosmos.

If there were justice in the world, Peter Weller would never had had to make LEVIATHAN.  Or SHAKEDOWN.  Or SCREAMERS.  Or ROBOCOP 2.  (He wouldn't have had to make ROBOCOP either, but I'm hoping he'd have chosen to on the basis of the awesome script.)  He would not have had to make any of these dismal pieces of drek, because BUCKAROO BANZAI would be bigger than Bond, bigger than STAR WARS, bigger than INDIANA JONES and all the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchises put together.

He would never have had to make any movies he didn't want to, because he'd have kept busy making:

BUCKAROO BANZAI VS THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE
BUCKAROO BANZAI:  FIND THE JET CAR SAID THE PRESIDENT
BUCKAROO BANZAI: THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. CIGARS
BUCKAROO BANZAI : LEPERS FROM SATURN
BUCKAROO BANZAI:  SUPERSIZE THOSE FRIES
BUCKAROO BANZAI:  RETURN OF THE SCREW

and they would all have been brilliant, and lucrative, and made him billions of dollars.

But There Ain't No Justice, so none of that ever happened.

No comments:

Post a Comment

truth