When it comes to naming the greatest, most popular, and enduring cult classics of all-time, there are a number of entirely valid and fully justified reasons as to why The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension makes almost every single list.
The 1984 sci-fi action thriller is so certifiably insane that it immediately becomes awesome by default, and we’re closing in on 40 years of its army of supporters lamenting the fact it never ended up getting so much as a solitary sequel, never mind the multi-film franchise that was ripe for exploration given the batsh*t events that defined every minute of the one-and-done gem.
Of course, that’s largely down to director W.D. Richter’s bonkers mind-melter crashing and burning catastrophically at the box office after earning just a shade over $6 million from theaters on a $17 million budget, but if you were tasked to engineer a cult classic from the ground up that ticked every single box imaginable, then it’d look a lot like Buckaroo Banzai.
To that end, Redditors have once more been remarking on the outlandish genius on display, with the story dropping viewers right into the thick of a richly-detailed world that comes across as the third or fourth installment in a series, which might be partly why it left crowds so utterly bamboozled the first time around.
Instant adoration is a remarkably hard thing to achieve, though, but it speaks volumes about the phenomenal frolic’s staying power that it’s capable of drumming up warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia in 2023, as well as enrapturing first-time viewers who want to experience the madness they’ve heard so much about for the very first time.
Published: Feb 14, 2023 02:50 am