Paramount will be releasing "GALAXY QUEST" on 4K Ultra HD on December 3.
NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER! Celebrating 25 years, GALAXY QUEST comes to 4K Ultra-HD for the first time in spectacular HDR-10 and Dolby Vision and dynamic Dolby Atmos sound, a new Filmmaker Focus with director Dean Parisot, and hours of legacy special features. Years after cancellation, the stars of the television series Galaxy Quest cling to their careers. When a distressed interstellar race mistakes the show for “historical documents,” lead actor Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) and his crew of has-beens are unwittingly recruited to save the alien race from a genocidal warlord. Featuring an all-star ensemble, including Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Justin Long and Rainn Wilson, GALAXY QUEST is a hilarious adventure that boldly goes where no comedy has gone before.
I know it's a fun, goofy space comedy, but I cried the last time I saw it.
spoiler
So Alexander Dane plays Dr Lazarus on the show, and he hates that Grabthar line. Galaxy Quest was just supposed to be a stepping stone to a real acting career, only it never materialized. Instead, Alexander is only remember for his one role on an old show. Sure, it paid the bills, but Dr Lazarus is the millstone around Alexander's neck, the character he doesn't believe in. Now that he's washed up, every time he says the line he dies a little inside.
Sudddenly he runs into real aliens on a real spaceship who believe in a real Dr Lazarus. Then in the middle of this quirky meta action comedy tragedy strikes. One of those aliens is dying in his arms and tells him that he always thought of Dr Lazarus as his father.
So Alexander says the line. And he really means it. He swears on the memory of a fiction, and in that moment Dr Lazarus is real. It's a powerful message that drives home the theme of the whole movie - that escapism through fantasy is a way to touch what is human.
Except this isn't some art house movie. It's a blockbuster comedy. And the real beauty of it is that Alexander isn't Dr Lazarus - he's Alan Rickman.
He really gave it his all in his performance, and I like to think it's because he related to it. At the time he was probably best known as Hans Gruber from a movie he had made ten years earlier. He probably felt like Alexander. Soon he would become Professor Snape to the masses, his own Dr Lazarus.
But Alan Rickman never phoned it in. Not even for a goofy space comedy popcorn flick.
They could have went full nesting doll and had a documentary team that was filming the convention, and the rest of the movie shot like What We Do in the Shadows where occasionally a sound guy just doesn't make it.
I don't know if it would have been better, but it sounds cool
I so wish the R-Rated edit was a thing that could see the light of day. I don't know if it actually exists, or if it was just a concept. Hell, it might only be a myth as far as I know. Most of it is already implied
IIRC from the Never Surrender documentary, it didn’t sound like they ever made an R-rated edit, just shot the movie expecting an R-rating. By the time they made it to the edit suite the studio decided it should be a PG family film. Highly recommend the documentary if you like the movie; they ought to bundle it in with this release.
I'm glad this is getting a 4K re-release, should be a good watch. Although, is anyone else kind of disturbed by the facial Photoshop they do on all of these old movies? Like, they were fine when they were originally released, why are we doing smoothing and youthening and all of this other stuff on the faces of the actors on the covers and the photos that still exist on the internet for these movies? It seems like a huge waste.
If they use same process as the newest Aliens 4k remaster, it's amazing. A few moments where it looks off, but in general looks like it was filmed last year.
Kind of wish you could tell which method they used, like if each had names.