Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League Script [Review]

This post was written by my brother Nigel, and he asked me to post it for him.

In the eighties, the cult sci-fi movie Buckaroo Banzai: Across the
Eighth Dimension ended with tantalizing words that captured the
imagination of fans when it said to stay tuned for “Buckaroo Banzai
Against the World Crime League.” Who is the World Crime League? What
adventures would Buckaroo get into next? Unfortunately, due to
deliberate mismanagement of the license, the sequel never materialized.

In the nineties, Ernest Cline (who later wrote the acclaimed sci-fi
novel Ready Player One), created his own script for the proposed sequel.
It’s available online, and is hugely popular among Banzai fans. I
finally got a chance to read the Buckaroo Bonzai script, and found it a potent blend of
craziness, action, and fun.

The story involves Buckaroo’s discovery that he can use his Oscillation
Overthruster to teleport from one place on Earth to another. His
technology is stolen by his mortal enemy, Hanoi Xan and his World Crime
League. Xan has used the Overthruster and a network of secret brain
implants to control world leaders. When Xan threatens to take over the
world, Buckaroo enlists the help of his Blue Blaze Irregulars around the
world to battle Xan and his evil army.

The script does a great job of bringing back all the things we know and
love about Banzai (the Jet Car, the Lectroids, the Hong Kong Cavaliers,
and even Rawhide) while introducing new elements like Xan’s elite army
of Bravos who must cut off their own ear to prove their loyalty. The
characters are spot-on. Buckaroo delivers his trademark wit and wisdom,
Perfect Tommy is perfectly vain, and I could easily imagine the whole
crew back on the screen.

WCL doesn’t achieve a level of insanity as deep as the original movie,
even though it does get pretty crazy. What WCL does give is a deeper and
bigger view of the Banzai mythos. We meet dozens of new Banzai agents, a
secret government agency charged with spying on Banzai, a full rock
concert of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, and an oceanic version of World
Watch One called the Leviathan. The real triumph is Hanoi Xan, an Asian
criminal mastermind responsible for killing Buckaroo’s parents and
Peggy, Buckaroo’s true love.

Ultimately, the script is unfilmable and knows it, which allows it to go
big and never stop. The script delivers a lot of great action
set-pieces like an attack on the president at a college graduation, a
journey through the eighth dimension in the World Watch One bus, and a
climactic air, land, and sea battle at Xan’s Burmese fortress. There are
cameos to other like-minded movies like Big Trouble in Little China,
and even Jay and Silent Bob. It’s also a love letter to fans, literally
incorporating some real online fans as members of the Blue Blaze
Irregulars.

Since WCL’s release, the original screenwriter of Banzai has been
co-writing a comic book series continuing the adventures of Buckaroo
Banzai. It’s way more imaginative and wilder than WCL (the first series
involved John Whorfen using fields of potatoes to move the Earth out of
orbit),  but I can see why this screenplay took fans by storm. World
Crime League feels like a satisfying continuation of the story, and lets
us all dream of seeing Banzai back on the big screen.

What do you think of the Buckaroo Bonzai sacript. Would you like to see a sequel?

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