Line #12 Film/SpaceTruckers


1	[[quoteright:265:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/spacetruckersposter.jpg]]
2	''Space Truckers'' is a 1996 film by Creator/StuartGordon starring Creator/DennisHopper, Stephen Dorff, Debi Mazar and Creator/CharlesDance.
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4	It is also a sci-fi comedy involving [[OnlyElectricSheepAreCheap Square Pigs]], [[SpaceTrucker Truckers]] InSpace, KillerRobot {{Cyborg}}s, SpacePirates and a CorruptCorporateExecutive upgrading to PresidentEvil.
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6	Not to be confused with ''Film/SpaceCowboys''.
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8	----
9	!!Tropes:
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11	* AlienBlood: There are a number of violent deaths throughout the movie (including but not limited to disintegrations, bisections, limbs coming off, and decapitations) but, likely in order to retain a PG-13 rating, everyone bleeds purple and yellow goop. It's never explained in-universe why this happens, but it's implied the raygun used by the BMW cyborg transforms biological residue as a side-effect of it's destructive power.
12	* ArtificialGravity: The Jacker pirate spaceship activates it after capturing the ''Pachyderm'' through the MegaMawManeuver and Canyon's group is violently slammed to the ground, but the film also includes an example of CentrifugalGravity for the space diner.
13	* ArtisticLicensePhysics: The ''Pachyderm'' has no artificial gravity, meaning the bottle of mustard seen near the beginning is weightless while the ship isn't accelerating, decelerating, or turning. However, when John Canyon hits the brakes, that bottle of mustard keeps hanging in the air in the same place; it doesn't preserve its momentum and slam into the front of the cabin.
14	* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Unless the cabin pressure of the diner is unreasonably high, the pressure differential shouldn't have been enough for Keller to be violently squeezed through a plate-sized hole.
15	* AssholeVictim: Keller gets the most memorably weird ThrownOutTheAirlock death of the film, but given that he's a FatBastard BadBoss, no one will feel too sorry about it.
16	* AsteroidThicket: The ''Pachyderm'' narrowly avoids going through a cluster of "black rocks", hard-to-see asteroids. At least, most of them.
17	* AstronomicZoom: The movie opens in Neptune's orbit and then zooms towards Triton, goes through its atmosphere, passes a frozen canyon in its barren icy wasteland before finally arriving at a military outpost where the VillainOpeningScene plays out.
18	* CantKillYouStillNeedYou: Subverted, the cyborg who confronts the heroes in the cockpit wants to kill them but can't use it's primary insta-kill weapon because they're standing in front of the controls it needs to get the ship to Earth, forcing it to rely on less practical close combat.
19	* CatchAndReturn: One of the {{Killer Robot}}s catches a grenade thrown at it, then starts spinning wildly and tosses the grenade right back. Partly justified, since it's a machine.
20	* CentrifugalGravity: The Inter Pork station has a spinning section that houses a diner that uses this system to provide gravity a la ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', complete with curved floors. However, unlike ''2001'', the section where freighters dock is stationary, meaning that matching the angular velocity for docking is not required.
21	* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: The BigBad funds a top secret military project involving an army of cyborgs that brutally massacres hundreds of soldiers during a test. He then immediately turns this creation on the scientist who created them, and plots to have them shipped to Earth in order to cause a crisis. When this plot is thwarted by the very crew that signed up for the job, he offers them hush money inside a briefcase and a brand new rig to keep them quiet, as he has just become President of Earth and doesn't want a scandal in his first days in office. Unbeknownst to the truckers, however, he's hidden a bomb in the briefcase that he plans to detonate from his car to get rid of potentially incriminating witnesses. This turns out to be his downfall when one of the truckers, refusing to accept what he realizes is very dirty money, throws the briefcase out the window onto the roof of the BigBad's limousine, causing him to blow himself up by accident.
22	* CigarChomper: Nabel, both before and after his cybernetic transformation, where he becomes a pirate captain named after a cigar brand, Macanudo.
23	* ClassicallyTrainedExtra: Creator/CharlesDance sacrificed his dignity to play a ColdHam cyborg space pirate with a chainsaw-like motorized penis (complete with rip cord).
24	* CombatTentacles: A BMW robot that gets stuck to a door by Cindy proceeds to attack her by opening its belly and releasing a multitude of metallic tendrils that constrict her. Mike intervenes by freezing them with a fire extinguisher, allowing Cindy to break free [[LiterallyShatteredLives shattering]] them.
25	* ContrivedCoincidence:
26	** Canyon unknowlingly carries the cargo of BMW cyborgs to Earth, and he gets captured by Captain Macanudo, who of all people turns out to be Dr. Nabel, the creator of the killer robots.
27	** Cindy's mother just so happens to be the woman Canyon kept a PreciousPhoto of.
28	** As luck would have it, the explosive money briefcase Mike tosses out of the hospital room lands on Saggs' limo killing him instead.
29	* CoolStarship: The space trucks, especially Canyon's ''Pachyderm'', literally resemble regular trucks, but tweaked to function [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]. On paper this sounds lazy, but it's actually pulled off well and they look cool. Captain Macanudo's [[Anime/CaptainHarlock Deathshadow]]-looking pirate cruiser is also pretty rad.
30	* {{Cyborg}}: The Jacker captain is more machine than man, and claims to have rebuilt himself and replaced every organ with machinery. The bits that remain resemble Creator/CharlesDance.
31	* DangerRoomColdOpen: With a very dark twist: The attack on the [[ColonizedSolarSystem Triton base]] with the BigBad and MadScientist in it at the start was just a demonstration of the Cyborg's combat power. But it wasn't a simulation. They really did let the Cyborg slaughter dozens of their own {{Mook}}s, in highly gruesome ways, as part of the test.
32	* DiagonalCut: The BMW Robot vertically slashes a pirate in half during its rampage.
33	* DinerBrawl: Takes place in the greasy spoon below.
34	* DisneyDeath: Mike and Cindy get sorrowful when they think that Canyon didn't make it out of the ''Pachyderm'' before it exploded on reentry, before Canyon arrives revealing to have parachuted himself out in time.
35	* DrowningMySorrows: Canyon has clearly had a few drinks after realizing he got fired upon seeing Keller's men unhooking his load without receiving any payment.
36	* DudeLooksLikeALady: Mr. Zesty, a black market trader, dresses in loose fitting robes, wears lipstick, and big hoop earrings. Several viewers have mistaken him for an old lady.
37	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: It certainly is.
38	* ExtyYearsFromPublication: This 1996 movie has a story that takes place two hundred years later, in 2196.
39	* FanDisservice: Captain Macanudo's translucent cybernetic butt cheeks, with the organic anus between them.
40	* FingerInTheMail: At the space diner, Canyon talks to some fellow space truckers about a fallen trucker, Kev, who got captured by Captain Macanudo after getting into a scum cluster, and the only thing the pirates sent back was a tennis ball can containing Kev's penis.
41	* FoodPills: Zig Zagged. Canyon is introduced eating a normal looking hotdog on a bun with mustard, but later he microwaves some breakfast food paste tubes, which Cindy doesn't enjoy consuming too much.
42	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
43	** Keller stops his goon from firing a gun inside Canyon's rig because they'd all get sucked into space. When later a fight breaks out in the Diner, the same guy pulls out a gun again and guess what happens.
44	** The truckers talking about the space pirates sending Kev's penis sets up Captain Macanudo threatening to subject Canyon and Mike to the same fate.
45	** The police stops pursuing Canyon's truck after a voice orders them to let him go, a voice belonging to Saggs, who's pulling the strings to have his killer cyborg army transported to Earth in secret.
46	* TheFuture: The film takes place in the year 2196.
47	* GreasySpoon: That floats in the middle of a space station with a spinning donut shape to keep gravity going, a la ''[[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey 2001]]''. Keeping with the trend of mixing truckers and trucker culture with sci-fi.
48	* GreenEyedMonster: Downplayed, but Canyon still gets pretty cranky towards Mike upon returning from an extravehicular operation and finding him and Cindy nearly naked together.
49	* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: The first KillerRobot that activates in the Jacker ship frags the captain, and three other pirates in the hold. The captain is the only one to survive this blast, though he's missing his bottom half. It helps he was mostly machine to begin with.
50	* HandyRemoteControl: This turns off the killer robots. But only once they've finished assembling themselves.
51	* HoistByHisOwnPetard:
52	** Keller brings his goons at the space diner as backup to coerce Canyon into leaving the station, all because he wants to weasel out of paying in full for Canyon's late shipment, but when one of the goons attempts to shoot Canyon, Cindy shoves his hand making him fire at a porthole which causes Keller himself to die when he's sucked outside.
53	** Nabel is ultimately mortally wounded when one of his own creations disintegrates a large portion of what's left of his reconstructed body.
54	** Newly appointed President Saggs ''could'' have gotten away with everything scott-free, if he hadn't tried to blow up the heroes with, well, see the entry for KarmicJackpot.
55	* KarmicJackpot?: The BigBad gives the heroes a BriefcaseFullOfMoney and the paperwork for a new rig (on the launch pad and ready to go). Of course, this is the same guy who turned the creations of the MadScientist against him, so the audience knows something is up. The heroes fight about keeping '''really''' dirty money for a job they didn't actually do...
56	-->'''John Canyon''': ''You two don't get it do you? If you don't take this money and shut up about what happened, they're gonna come after you and you'll disappear! Now, you got to take it!''\
57	'''Mike Pucci''': ''We "got" to take the money. We "got" to take this, and become company butt boys for the rest of our lives.''\
58	'''John Canyon''': ''I want to make sure that you understand the facts.''\
59	'''Mike Pucci''': ''You're gonna take it, John? Are you going to take it?''\
60	'''John Canyon''': ''No! But I don't want you to end up like me!''\
61	'''Mike Pucci''': ''God forbid.'' (throws case out window)\
62	'''Saggs''': (presses button to detonate case just as case hits limo)\
63	'''Briefcase''': '''''[[HoistByHisOwnPetard BOOM]]'''''\
64	'''Heroes''': (look out window)\
65	'''Mike Pucci''': ''Somebody fragged Saggs.''\
66	'''John Canyon''': ''You know, I think it was us!''
67	* KillerRobot: The BMW "[[AMechByAnyOtherName cyborgs]]" with {{Energy Weapon}}s for [[UnusualWeaponMounting heads]], BladeBelowTheShoulder (in sword, claw, and scissor configurations), and AbnormalLimbRotationRange allowing them to rotate their neck and compress into a disturbing travel form.
68	* MadeOfIron: Nabel manages to be the only person to survive a direct upclose attack by a BMV cyborg, and while fatally wounded in a later second attack, still lived long enough to tell John about them.
69	* MadScientist: Dr. Nabel. Even before he became a perverse pirate captain with a CripplingCastration obsession, he only manages to be the lesser of two evils compared to Saggs, as he's the man behind the creation of the NighInvulnerable killer robots and doesn't show remorse for the deaths of all the people in the Triton base, soldiers and fellow scientists alike.
70	* MechaMooks: Saggs has Nabel build him an army of {{Killer Robot}}s as a backup plan, in case his negotiations to buy out the Earth government break down. According to Nabel, the robots are activated in waves: 1, 2, 4, 8... Considering what even one of those things can do, it's pretty clear that an army of these things is unstoppable.
71	* MegaCorp: Saggs has enough money and influence to ''buy out the entire Earth government''.
72	* MegaMawManeuver: The pirate spaceship has a giant maw that swallows smaller ships.
73	* MicrowaveMisuse: Canyon takes care of a BMW robot by smashing a microwave on its head and turning it on causing its head to get fried before being pushed into the vacuum of space.
74	* MrFanservice / MsFanservice: Mike and Cindy respectively when the heightened heating of the damaged ''Pachyderm'' forces them to get nearly naked.
75	* MayDecemberRomance: Canyon (played by an at the time 60 year old actor) is attracted to Cindy (played by a 32 year old) and gives her a ride to Earth with the promise of getting married, until his CharacterDevelopment makes him accept that it's not fair and that she and Mike are more in love... but luckily he grows quickly interested in Cindy's mother, who's still a 38 year old Creator/BarbaraCrampton thanks to her medical HumanPopsicle-conservation.
76	* NoOSHACompliance: If the glass of the portholes in the Space Diner can be shattered with a simple bullet shot, that place is bound for disaster if micrometeorites come by. Not to mention the complete lack of some automatic sealing that can shut off damaged windows stopping the dangerous explosive decompression.
77	* OneLastSmoke:
78	--> Nabel: Light me.
79	* OneManArmy: In the opening, a single BMW cyborg in successive order takes down an armoured vehicle, an outpost, a gunship and at such rapid rate that the scientists believe it merely to be communication problems only for it to stand outside the room and massacre it's way through a heavily-armed security force without so much being slowed.
80	* OneNationUnderCopyright: The BigBad ends up buying out the Earth government and privatizing it with him as the new President of Earth.
81	* PaperThinDisguise: Cindy briefly manages to fool a few space pirates into thinking she's their captain by just wearing his jacket, hat, sunglasses and cigar... even though she's shorter and lacking his [[SeadogPegLeg metal peg leg]].
82	* PreAsskickingOneLiner: after one of Keller's goons tries to punch Canyon in the face and he dodges it easily:
83	-->'''John Canyon:''' No, no, no, no no, Jackie, that's not - that's not the way to throw a punch in zero gravity. See, ''this'' is the recommended technique! [Proceeds to punch Jackie [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom causing him to fly across the load]] into the opposite wall and [[TeethFlying knocking one of his teeth out]]].
84	* RealMenWearPink: Mike is puzzled at the request of having to wear a pink outfit while working for Inter Pork, and Keller simply explains that's the color of the pigs.
85	* ReEntryScare: Canyon decides to sacrifice the ''Pachyderm'' by dangerously guiding it to plummet into the Earth's atmosphere, roasting all the remaining [=BMWs=] with the violent friction.
86	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: In the ending the heroes end up causing the Earth's PresidentEvil's death, presumably leaving a giant power vacuum, and decide to just get away on their brand new space truck.
87	* SingleTaskRobot: Mr. Zesty uses an android that looks like an old woman as the keypad to get to his lair. The robot is designed to sit in a bathroom stall and scream and rant at whoever tries to get in the stall until they either leave, or stick their fingers in her mouth and enter the code to activate an elevator to take them to Zesty's lair. This serves as an effective deterrent for both civilians and law enforcement, as anyone who barges in on her is too mortified to suspect the ruse.
88	* SpaceIsNoisy: Despite the film's use of hard sci-fi tropes, everything in space still makes sound.
89	* SpacePirate: The protagonists go "off-road" in order to avoid being stopped by the authorities, but end up getting captured by a giant pirate ship which literally swallows them. These pirates were complete with cybernetic false limbs and a skull-and-crossbones flag.
90	* SpacePolice: Police cruisers InSpace, complete with sirens and flashing lights, pursue Canyon's rig until they are called off by the BigBad.
91	* SpaceTrucker: Since it's the damn ''title,'' you can sure bet that it's invoking this trope.
92	* StickyShoes: Inverted. When walking inside Canyon's rig or trailer, Canyon will have the floor magnetized so that he can walk using steel boots.
93	* SupernaturallyYoungParent: Cindy's mother turns out to look Cindy's age because she spent the last few decades as a HumanPopsicle due to being terminally ill. Cindy's main goal in the movie is to make enough money to cure her mother. John is instantly smitten with her and forgets all about Cindy (who's fallen for Mike anyway).
94	* ThrownOutTheAirlock: Keller in the Space Diner. At first it seems like his butt plugged up the hole in comedic fashion (He's played by Creator/GeorgeWendt after all) but then he ''[[FoldSpindleMutilation folds in half]]''.
95	** The surviving space pirates get sucked out into the void when the heroes open the vessel's "maw" to escape.
96	* TooDumbToLive:
97	** Nabel. He tells Saggs how the BMW cyborg who just murdered hundreds of employees is only loyal to Saggs who plans to use and a whole army of them to invade Earth, and doesn't expect to be made ''deniable''. Subverted in that Nabel survived the BMW's attack, using cybernetics to heal himself and becomes a pirate.
98	** The RecklessGunUsage of Keller's goons while they're inside pressurized habitats protecting them from the void. The first time the disaster is avoided, but the brawl at the space diner ends in chaos when a bullet shatters a window causing an explosive decompression that gets Keller killed.
99	* TwoFaced: Captain Macanudo's face is the most scarred on his left side.
100	* UsedFuture: Very much so.
101	* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness:
102	--> '''Saggs:''' If I could, I'd promote you on the spot. But I'm afraid all this has to be deniable. Which means ''you'' have to be deniable.
103	* WeaponizedExhaust: Mike roasts several robots at once, while John lures them to the outside of the ship.
104	* WeCanRebuildHim: The MadScientist that created the killer robots was betrayed by turning his creations against him. Fortunately he was able to rebuild himself, turning into a grotesque mish-mash of man and machine, later taking up a new life as a pirate.
105	* WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture: Zig-Zagged. Credits are a form of currency in this future, as we learn during Canyon's arguing about his payment with Keller. However, Mike mentions at one point that he is both out of money and out of credits, as if they are seperate forms of payment. Also, when Saggs bribes them with hush money, he gives them a big briefcase of bills, which Mike refers to as money. It's possible that credits are some form of scrip that the Company offers to its employees that can be exchanged for goods and services in interplanetary space, since the Company seems to run everything there.
106	* WorldWearyWaitress: Cindy is a younger type. She's stuck with a dead-end job as a waitress of a space diner and accepts to marry Canyon in order to hitch a ride to Earth and visit her hospitalized mother.
107	* XenomorphXerox: The BMW robots resemble tall, heavily armed mechanical Xenomorphs without tail.
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Context Film / SpaceTruckers