Premium Post: How I Would Have Done ICE PIRATES (1984)

If you're going to be goofy, at least be coherent about it...

For the film podcast Myopia Movies’ winter-themed month of January, we did the 1984 tongue-in-cheek space opera film Ice Pirates, a movie that apparently suffered from a massive budget cut and Executive Meddling. Here’s our episode, previewed here with a TikTok. Now for how I would have done it. The first act of (my version of) the film is free for all to read.

(Image courtesy of The Daily Grindhouse.)

Basically I’d keep the entertaining silliness but have some more coherent worldbuilding and overall plot. Keep going for more details…

Act One

*The entire concept of there being no planets with water other than Mithra, ruled by the tyrannical Templars, is scientifically asinine. Water is found in space in things like the rings of gas giants, ice on even dead worlds, etc. Worst-case scenario, a spacefaring society could crack water out of hydrogen and oxygen. Instead I would make it so that all that water is still there — it’s just the Templars’ vast military has occupied all planets, moons, asteroids, etc. with water and ruthlessly attacks independent water-mining operations, facilities that manufacture water from free oxygen and hydrogen, etc. To make it more plausible, I’d keep the story limited to one star system, perhaps an “open cluster” of multiple stars and even more planets in the vein of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica or Joss Whedon’s Firefly. This would allow multiple planets to be under the iron fist of a dictatorial regime without faster-than-light travel, something that would allow would-be rebels to find water elsewhere easily.

*The movie starts out with the pirates — the only threat to the Templars’ water monopoly — raiding a Templar ice convoy. I’d keep that roughly as-is except I’d explain why everybody is wearing medieval armor in a setting with space travel and guns. In space, firearms, especially powerful ones, risk damaging the ship and killing everybody, so swords and armor have made a comeback. Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater science fiction series uses this concept. Everybody carries guns, but they’d only use them if the situation, to quote the almighty TVTropes, reaches the Godzilla Threshold.

*In the canonical film, we meet Princess Karina (Mary Crosby) in some kind of suspended animation tube, but we never see that technology used again. I’d just have pirate captain Jason (Robert Urich) run into her while boarding the Templar ship and decide spontaneously to kidnap her for ransom and/or use her as a human shield to escape the Templars when they counterattack.

(Making her a princess also raises questions about how the political system functions. She doesn’t seem to have any sort of political role in the Templar regime and it’s never explained which of her parents is royal. It’s probably not her dad, given how he’s depicted as a space explorer. I’d make her a generic noblewoman of some kind — “Lady Karina” — which would allow for her maid and robotic butler to be included in the story as well.)

*Unfortunately for our “heroes,” that doesn’t work and their ship is stormed by Templar marines. Although most of the pirates escape like in the canonical film, Jason and his friend Roscoe’s (Michael D. Roberts) capture by the Templar nobleman Zorn (Jeremy West) still happens, as does their getting sold into slavery and nearly castrated as part of a “redesign” process intended to turn them into characters who looked like they escaped from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fortunately for them, this is interrupted by Karina herself, who specifically prevents them from being castrated by what looks like a bear trap on a robotic arm. She proceeds to buy them as her personal slaves. When Jason asks the obvious question about why — perhaps he fears she intends to abuse them in revenge for the kidnapping — she tells them to be quiet and she’ll explain later.

*At a party Karina is hosting where Jason and Roscoe are serving drinks, Templar forces arrive to arrest her and everybody has to make a break for her ship, including Killjoy (John Matuszak), a robust convict who’d been imprisoned with them earlier but managed to escape and is now working as party security. Various mishaps occur, including Jason getting dragged behind a motorcycle and an encounter with a jive-talking “PimpBot” (yes, it’s actually credited as “PimpBot”) who takes gold or water as currency.

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