SHORT FILM REVIEW: Captain EO (1986)
When I was young I was always on the lookout for representation of myself that spoke to my experience as a Black person. Even competent characters that had no equivalent race but were voiced by Black voice actors became Black (see Thundercats’ Panthro, Transformers’ Jazz and Blaster and Soundwave). Thankfully there was Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura and Star Wars’ Lando Calrissian, and I continued to look for other Black people in sci-fi. The world would not get Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lieutenant Worf and Commander Geordi LaForge until the next year but there were still honorable mentions like Larry B. Scott in SpaceCamp and Claude Brooks in Solarbabies, both in 1986. Then I had the opportunity to go to EPCOT and Disney World in the same trip, where I saw a movie called Captain EO starring the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson.
Before he was known as being a pedo and long after being branded “Wacko Jacko” for not behaving like the world thought Black people should act, MJ was on the lookout to do new projects. The Bad album had just wrapped and the success of his Thriller album had not waned in 3 years. Not one to rest, Mike made some calls: next thing you know, he’s working with sci-fi visionary George Lucas (creator of Star Wars), director Francis Ford Coppola (of The Godfather, Megalopolis, and Apocalypse Now fame), and producer Rusty Lemorande (writer responsible for Electric Dreams). Still staying in his wheelhouse, there would be a lot of music and singing and dancing as only MJ could bring it. Since Mike also liked sci-fi, George Lucas’ input on effects and access to the services of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) brought it all together in “4D” — making this the first 3D movie to involve in-theater effects. So how did it all work out?
Captain EO (Michael Jackson, The WIZ [1978], Moonwalker [1988]) is basically a mystical space pirate hero dressed in studded white leather, roaming the space-ways in his bronze craft that leans towards homage to the Millennium Falcon by its greebly exterior. His crew is full of weird aliens that wouldn’t be out of place in the Mos Eisley Cantina or Jabba’s palace. They’re on a special delivery mission to an unnamed planet of metal and steam to deliver a gift to its queen called “The Supreme Leader”, rumored to be a witch. The normally easy-going space captain and his crew are all on their toes, with the alien crew giving more cartoonish performances belying their forms.
They don’t get far before they are captured by men that are half-machine and brought before the Supreme Leader (Anjelica Huston, John Wick 3: Parabellum [2019], The Addams Family [1991], The Royal Tenenbaums [2001]), suspended in a web of greasy black wires and tubes like a mechanical alien spider. She is a being of hate and dark magic, and plans on deploying such horrible fates on all of our heroes for trespassing. It’s at that point our Captain EO does what he came here to do: deliver the gift.
Captain EO busts out the most forceful dance moves and singing I’ve ever seen. He lives up to the mystical part of his nature, the dancing and singing taking over control of the Supreme Leader’s minions. He even transforms some of them into flamboyant and brightly-colored dancers to help with his routines. Singing about how he’s come to change the world, EO produces light from his rainbow-covered shirt, disorienting the Supreme Leader. He works his magic further, breaking the dark curse plaguing the planet. The Supreme leader becomes a pretty lady, all her people become attractive and colorful dancers, and the dark planet of metal and steam becomes a pastoral paradise of green and marble with amazing sunsets. With his work done, Captain EO saunters off through the new gardens to join his motley crew and blast off to new adventures elsewhere.
Clocking in at a nearly nonexistent 17 minutes, the dance routines take up a large portion of the runtime (as they should; I’m not complaining). The science-fantasy scenes do their work and are comparable with the preceding works of the age, even going so far as to do a variation of the Death Star trench run. Special effects were amazing too, but perhaps more time could have been spent on shaping up the compositing for 3D. Set design was off the hook for the younger me, as I had never seen anything like it. Costuming was amazing as well — both for the dancers as they transformed from dark cyborg automatons into colorful agents of beauty, and the practical effects for Captain EO’s alien crew. But let’s focus on the intended focus of the short film, Captain EO.
I cannot believe MJ’s outfit; it’s too fresh. Every time I think about it I know I can’t rock white leather…but I can damn sure rock that rainbow T-shirt underneath. No black biker leather, no down-home blue denim, and only a trace of “toxic” masculinity — but mostly just the light of peace and masculine energy MJ brought to us with every performance while bucking every established fashion trend for heroes (especially what few Black heroes on screen we had)…in a cape. For little Black boys turned on to science and science fiction trying to get away from what the world said we should be and the horrors of the world (the crack epidemic, the Challenger shuttle disaster), this was a godsend.
You could be anything. You could wear a cape like a superhero. You could be the light that changes the world.
CHOICE CUTS:
- The “EO” in Captain EO is from Eos, Greek goddess of the dawn.
- The enemy aliens in this movie are giving off a blend of Star Trek’s Borg and H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph vibes.
- White leather, y’all? You know Mike had to do it to ‘em.
- For years I thought the T-shirt featured an actual image of a rainbow with all the colors in a spectrum. I learned it’s a 3-color wave pattern across the front.
- Hooter reminds me of the blue elephant alien musician Max Rebo from Return of the Jedi. Do you think George Lucas just said to reuse the alien, with minor changes?
- For some reason, folks are saying the Disney+ series “Skeleton Crew” is ripping off Captain EO; will have to return to this review after seeing for myself.
- After lots of searching, I own a Captain EO shirt with the logo on it, not the tricolor rainbow band.
- Michael Jackson would return to science fiction with his music video “Scream” — a 1995 collaboration with his sister Janet Jackson — and his cameo in Men in Black II as an alien that wanted to join the agency and be called “Agent M”.
- This would make an amazing Starfinder or d20 Future adventure.
- CAMEO: Stoner comedian Doug Benson is in this movie as a backup dancer.
- So Michael Jackson is the Lightbringer: emerging out of darkness, turning monstrous beings into beautiful ones at his touch. If we had only known what darkness would come in the decades to follow…
