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Context Film / BattleBeyondTheSun

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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/battle_beyond_the_sun_1959.jpg]]
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3An American translation of the Soviet sci-fi film ''[[Film/TheSkyIsCalling Nebo Zovyot]]'', produced by Creator/RogerCorman and with a young Creator/FrancisFordCoppola tasked with directing the adaptation. The plot basically involves a space race between two future superstates: North Hemis (originally the USA) and South Hemis (originally the USSR) after a supposed nuclear war, with both nations competing in a top-secret race to be the first to land on the planet Mars.
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5Notable changes to the Soviet original include the obvious removal of any Soviet propaganda which might have not played well to Cold War American audiences - such as the superpowers being replaced by fictitious future ones and names being Anglicized - and the addition by Coppola of a fight between two alien monsters which are supposed to resemble male and female genetalia (come on, this ''is'' supposed to be a BMovie after all...)
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7Not to be confused with Corman's later work, ''Film/BattleBeyondTheStars''.
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9!! Contains examples of:
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11* AfterTheEnd: The future setting is in the wake of a nuclear war, complete with introductory StockFootage of UsefulNotes/TheDeadliestMushroom just so we know.
12* DubNameChange: All of the characters who were originally Soviet have been given Anglicized names; for example the scientists working on the South Hemis project are a husband-and-wife team, Drs. Albert and Ruth Gordon, and the principal astronaut (cosmonaut) is called Craig Mathews. The North Hemis, originally American astronauts also have names changed.
13* GagPenis: One of the two monsters in a filmed insert made by Coppola was supposed to resemble one.
14* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The good guys are in South Hemis and have Anglicized names, yet the dubbed-in accents sound vaguely American or very slightly British on occasion. One might expect them to sound more Antipodean.
15* SpaceFillingEmpire: North Hemis (most of North America, Britain, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia) and South Hemis (everywhere else). Conveniently, this implicitly makes both Americans ''and'' Russians to be the antagonists and means both sides can have Anglicized names.
16* StockFootage:
17** Including the obligatory mushroom cloud and scenes of jubilant crowds from both Soviet and American sources.
18** Corman took a professional Soviet sci-fi movie and added additional scenes so he could make a BMovie with far better special effects than he could normally afford.
19* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Both the Soviet original and this edit use this as their starting point. In the Soviet version, it's the dream of a reporter interviewing a rocket concept designer about his work on future space vehicles; in the American version, we just get a short but tedious mini-documentary showing American concept models (just in case we thought things were too Russian) of future space vehicles, with the inference this could be a possible future for space travel.
20* VaginaDentata: The other monster in Coppola's insert resembles this, naturally.
21* {{Zeerust}}: Since the original film was made in 1959, the film is naturally quite heavy on this for modern viewers.
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