"Of all the special days, this is the one that really means something. Ask yourself—what would life be like with the stars of heaven?"
Today is Spaceship Day
, a 2019 short film with no discernible genre, is the result of a collaboration between a Botnik AI and YouTube user Austin McConnell. Surprisingly, this is not an original concept. McConnell eventually released a children's book with the same story, characters and artstyle.
This show provides examples of:
- '80s Hair: Charlie wears a mullet.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Most of the (supposedly) human characters have realistic skin colors, though Yaxley is green and an extra girl is blue-skinned.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Hagrid the table, who can walk and talk.
- Artificial Brilliance: A few missteps here and there aside, the A.I that wrote the movie is surprisingly coherent. The plot is far more consistent than its spiritual predecessor Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash, featuring things like Call-Back and a few genuinely profound dialogues.Charlie: "The truth is that it was a big thing to eat with you... and it seemed to feel right. I’m full of ordinary sounding words, but when I say them, and you are there to hear them, all is well with everything."
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: The three protagonists simply remove their helmets while on a remote planet that doesn't seem to have an atmosphere, and seem just fine.
- Cool Crown: Yaxley wears some kind of Babylonian crown.
- Deadpan Snarker: Yaxley has a habit of making sarcastic quips."Take care what you say, Harrison and Dexter! People might hear you and take it seriously."
- Death Seeker: Dexter, possibly."This journey will be the death of me," he whispered affectionately.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Quite frequent, as expected from something written by AI."It was a very irritating feeling to be so nervous.""Harrison thought desperately for about twenty minutes, and then finally finished thinking desperately.""She (Charlie) seemed to be rather unhappy to Harrison, so he asked her. "You seem to be rather unhappy?""Dexter nervously flattened himself against the wall to get rid of his anxiety.""The spaceship did its best to do a good job."
- Disproportionate Retribution: Overlapping with Misplaced Retribution, Harrison slaps Dexter in the face after Charlie remarks she's not particularly impressed with space.
- Dope Slap: Harrison gives one of these to Dexter for some reason while annoyed at how unimpressed Charlie was by their voyage to the dark mystery beyond.
- Human Sacrifice: The titular Spaceship Day is implied to be a religious holiday in which this is done, by sending three people into "the dark mystery beyond".
- Green and Mean: Yaxley, the closest thing to a villain in the story, has pale green skin.
- I'm Thinking It Over!: Harrison is lost in thought for 20 minutes.
- Insistent Terminology: Outer space is always referred to "the dark mystery beyond".
- Lack of Empathy: Hagrid the Table does not seem to care about the students in the slightest, having no qualms about sending them into space."Hagrid stood before the crowd and spoke with a finality bordering on indifference to them."
- Nervous Wreck: Dexter is introduced as having a cold wave of sweat. Later, the film constantly mentions his anxiety issues.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Yaxley is instantly beaten with a single slap.
- Plagiarism: A number of lines are lifted directly from the Harry Potter books, with only a word or two being changed.
- The Rival: Yaxley is this to Harrison. When Harrison volunteers for Spaceship Day, Yaxley also takes the chance to volunteer. The two then engage in a Bitch Slap fight to determine who gets to go to the dark mystery beyond.
- Rummage Sale Reject: Charlie wears pink pajamas under Spartan armor.
- Serious Business: Narrator compares the rivalry between Harrison and Yaxley to a "historical disagreement".
- Shout-Out: There are quite plenty of references to the Harry Potter saga. Similar Power Trio dynamics, a table literally named Hagrid, a boy with the last name Longbottom, lines of dialogue being taken straight from the books, and also Yaxley is likely named after Corban Yaxley and behaviour-wise resembles Draco Malfoy.
- Suicide Mission: Apparently, there's no coming back from the dark mystery beyond.
- Tomboyish Name: Charlie is a girl.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Harrison, Dexter and Charlie.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Charlie thinks calling traveling to another planet incredible is a stretch. Also nobody questions the fact that Hagrid is a table.
- Wimp Fight: Yaxley and Harrison have to fight to decide who's going on the spaceship. They fight by giving each other slaps on the cheek.
