Unless you’ve been living under a rock in an uncombed desert, you’ve probably heard that we’re getting a sequel to Mel Brooks’ classic Star Wars spoof Spaceballs. But that isn’t the only decades-old Brooks movie that’s being mined by Hollywood right now.
It was recently reported that the producers of What We Do in the Shadows are working on a spin-off of Young Frankenstein, which is to be called Very Young Frankenstein. And of course, just two years ago, the Hulu series History of the World: Part II belatedly sequelized Brooks’ beloved anthology film. It wasn’t great either.
This has prompted some critics to suggest that Brooks, who turns 99 years young this Saturday, is actively ruining his comedic legacy by allowing other filmmakers and comedians to fumble his brand. But this argument doesn’t really hold up – not just because Spaceballs 2 and Very Young Sheldon Frankenstein have yet to be released, but also because this is nothing new for the career of Mel Brooks.
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Anyone complaining about the “new” phenomenon of lame TV adaptations of Brooks films likely isn’t aware of Black Bart, the failed CBS pilot for a planned Blazing Saddles follow-up — although Brooks had no say over the creation of the project. It’s been rumored that he put a clause in his deal with Warner Bros. allowing for a TV sequel, purely because he thought such a thing was impossible since the movie was “too vulgar” for television.
Similarly, Brooks’ iconic sitcom Get Smart, which he co-created with Buck Henry, spawned a number of embarrassing attempts to continue the franchise, including the 1980 movie The Nude Bomb and the Andy Dick-starring ‘90s Fox series. Again, Brooks wasn’t involved, but clearly there was already a precedent for awkward adaptations of his work.
One show that Brooks was involved with was the 2008 Spaceballs animated series. While we don’t know how the new movie will turn out, there’s essentially a zero percent chance that it will be worse than this show. Did it feature a Harry Potter parody about a magical diaper? Yes, yes it did.
More importantly, Brooks’ interest in revisiting his old movies has occasionally paid off, the most obvious example being the time he decided to turn his Oscar-winning comedy The Producers into a Broadway musical.
And if it wasn’t for Brooks’ willingness to play around with past material, we would have only gotten one 2000 Year Old Man album. And his decision to once again team up with Carl Reiner for 1997’s The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 was a good one — it won a Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album, and enabled Brooks to eventually become a rare member of the EGOT club.
The point is, Brooks’ films have always been fair game to build on, and/or exploit, not sacrosanct works of art that need to be left alone. Most of them are parodies of pre-existing IP anyways. For Brooks to ruin his legacy at the age of 99, he’d probably have to team up with Harvey Weinstein to burn down a children’s hospital.
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