Movie Review - Turks in Space

    Well, I'm back. And what better way to return to this blog by reviewing Turks In Space, a movie I've planned on reviewing for a long time. I'm having trouble saving pictures right now, so I'll upload them when my computer is working better.

    Turks in Space is a Turkish science fiction action/comedy. However that's not the proper translation of the Turkish title. In fact, the Turkish title translates to "Son of the man who saved the world." Wait what? What kind of stupid title is that? Who cares about the son of the man who saves the world, why not just call it "The man who saved the world."

    Oh, that's why, there's already a movie called "The man who saved the world." I get it, it's a sequel. Does the original have a more common title? Why yes, it's Turkish Star Wars. Wait...I'm reviewing the official sequel to Turkish Star Wars? The bad movie I found more painful than Garbage Pail Kids? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

    Yeah, I already knew about this movie before I reviewed Turkish Star Wars, but I haven't reviewed this one until now for a good reason - this movie scares me. In fact, of all the bad movies I plan on reviewing, there is only one that scares me more than this one - I'll get to it eventually, but I'm not telling what it is yet. While Turkish Star Wars was painful enough, at least it was trying to be serious. It was fascinatingly bad, and in small parts it can be very entertaining. The plot was pretty simple, even if it was confusing. This movie is trying to spoof movies like Star Wars. Yes, a foreign ripoff/spoof of a movie that's over 30-years-old now.

    Enough delay though, let's get it on. A fair warning though, this review will be confusing. Not because I've lost any skills (I've been writing constantly for school in the last few weeks,) but because this is easily the most confusing movie I've ever seen. Trying to make sense of this pile of mold covered slime makes my brain hurt, so I apologize if you feel the same.

    Anyway, the movie starts out dedicated to someone, but this movie is more of an insult to whoever that is. With a drum heavy intro beat the narrator talks about a number of great victories won by the Turks. At first he talks about a number of battles and military conquests, but then he randomly mentions the UEFA championship in 2000...wait what? The narration ends with "In 2055, we were in space." Oh, so you're using past tense for 49 years in the future (as of this movie's release.) Yey for grammar!

    This movie has the same sound problems as Turkish Star Wars, the entire soundtrack is echoing. This time though, it's far more obnoxious. Even with my speakers turned down, I hear crackling all throughout the CGI opening - pretty sure that's actually the movie. OVERLOADING THE VOLUME TO MAKE THE MOVIE SOUND LOUDER IS A BAD THING, ESPECIALLY IN A PROFESSIONALLY MADE MOVIE. Oh, I forgot to mention how utterly horrendous the CGI is - the average Sega CD FMV game had better CGI graphics than this.

    The movie cuts to some guy talking to a girl on a space ship. Since I can't seem to get a name out of them, I'll call him Joe, and I'll call her Slut. What? That's all her character is anyway. Joe tells Slut to write to his love or something that he's still in space. He's looking for someone whose been lost for eight space years. Is he talking about the main character from the last movie? No idea, because he never had a name that I could decipher and this movie hasn't mentioned that piece of crap yet.

    As Slut is writing stuff down, she sighs in a slightly sexual way - told you that name was appropriate. Also, why does Joe need someone else to write for him. How did he become a ship caption if he can't wright? I'm sure you'd have to fill out reports during your duties to ever get anywhere close to that position.

    The movie cuts to three crew members making fun of Joe, saying that all he ever talks about is...whoever the crap the captain is looking for. One guy's cell phone rings, and he talks to his wife. He makes up a bunch of unfunny joke excuses as to why he's still out in space. By the way, his cell phone looks very 2004 for something that's supposed to take place after 2055. Ugh, none of these scenes have lasted more than one minute, I'm less than 4 minutes in, and I'm already bored out of my mind. Bring back the stolen Star Wars footage please, at least that reminds me of Star Wars.

    Another woman is looking at some weird screen thing and pushes a button to set off an alarm. I don't know her name, so I'll just call her Forgetty Pants...just kidding, I'll call her Jill. Jill runs in toward the other crew members and tells them "an unknown object is coming toward us, quick." It's here that I have to mention that the subtitles are slow. At first they were OK, but they're already 10 seconds behind what's being said. This is going to make this movie even harder to sit through when I have no idea what anyone's talking about.

    Everyone's panicking, trying to find the object that even today's technology could automatically find for you. Some kid then pops in and asks if the game's on yet. Is anything here supposed to be funny? I can't tell, because this movie is stupid.

    "It's definitely a KA48," Jill says...at least I think she's the one who says that. Yeah, this movie is refuse - the subtitles are already far enough behind that it's almost impossible to tell whose talking. Then for some reason everyone looks at another screen where a horse race is going on. This isn't funny, it's just stupid. Jill is asking some guy on a screen which button to press to raise the ship's shields. Here's a good question, if she's on that post, WHY DOESN'T SHE ALREADY KNOW? Also, shouldn't they have an automatic system to raise the shields to begin with. Honestly, the women in this movie are completely useless. I'll settle for anything at this point - I'll even watch North again.

    Cut to Joe and Slut from earlier, where Slut is trying to seduce him. Is that all women are useful for in this movie? Being attractive and not knowing which buttons to press? After nobody can help her, as the entire mission control on earth is on vacation (the frick?) Jill starts randomly pushing buttons. The first activates some sprinkler system. Nobody else seems to notice, and yet she has to stick out her hand into the water to know what it is. It wasn't funny to begin with, but that extra bit makes it all the more insulting. For some reason, it also activates the sprinkler system wherever the man on the screen is. What is going on? Why aren't these buttons labeled?

    Jill pushes another button, and it activates a disco ball where Joe and Slut are. More buttons bring out a dress suit, champagne, and a bed in the captain's quarters. Slut gets all excited about this while Joe is confused out of his mind, and I am too. Why aren't those functions inside the captain's quarters instead of the main control console? If the captain wants a private evening with his love, isn't it a bit embarrassing to have to ask the ship's second in command to bring out the wine and music? This is almost as stupid as having your shield generators as giant balls on the outside of your ship, just above the main control deck.

    The kid runs toward Jill and flips a switch beside the buttons, and it activates the shields. What? How the frick did he know about the shields? Do they really need to use a kid to insult Jill's intelligence further? One of the horse-race watchers says that the kid hasn't even been to elementary school yet, even though this kid's at least 13. Must have good parents if he hasn't had any education in 13 years of his life - that's progress for you. Anyway, the asteroid's impact on the shields knocks Joe onto Slut, and she won't let him get back up. Then some robot comes in and they talk about...something (honestly can't figure out what.)

    So let's recap the first 10 minutes. We had a completely pointless intro, we're introduced to the most useless space crew I've ever seen, and the ship's almost destroyed by their incompetence alone.

    Joe, the captain, is obsessed with finding someone, there's a slut that's completely obsessed with him, there's an assistant caption, Jill, who doesn't know anything about the ship, and the rest of the crew is so obsessed with horse races and making fun of the caption that they won't even do their jobs. The 13-year-old kid, who hasn't been schooled a day in his life, is somehow the most competent person on the ship. If it wasn't for the slut or the occasional language, I'd assume this is a kids movie. Instead, we have an insultingly unfunny comedy that, at times, is almost as painful as Baby Geniuses 2, and makes even less sense than that cinematic abomination.

    The movie then cuts to some long-haired freak through an aquarium - with sinister music. That's really how you're going to introduce your villain, by having him watch his fish? That's about as effective as introducing Darth Vader by showing him playing golf while singing along to ABBA. I mean come on, these are just normal fish. Worse yet, we never see these fish again. Anyway, two of his men bring in a barrel of what they call a composition. What do they mean? Is it a combination of oil and burnt shorts? Is it nuclear? What kind of mixture or composition is it? Never explained. The villain's goons say it will take over the world; don't ask, I have no idea what they're talking about. They look inside, and it's some kind of liquid that can show images of people like Hitler and George W. Bush. Yeah, this movie just compared Bush to Hitler. I know this was made in a Muslim country, but comparing Bush, a president who took down the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, to a man who tried to take over the world and wipe out all the Jews, is only slightly insulting. Sure, George Bush wasn't the greatest president of all time, but I certainly have more respect for him than Hitler. Also, how is a screen liquid supposed to take over the world? Of course the worst part of all this is that we will never see or hear of this "composition" again.

    Anyway, why do they want to use it to take over the world? Because "They made jokes about 'Turks in Space.'" Really? I thought simply making it into space and proving them wrong would be enough revenge for that. Oh and by the way, NAME DROP!

    The bad guy asks "who can possibly challenge us?" and then he answers his own question..."The man who saved the world." Prequel Name Drop! "The most fearless creature of any living being who ever breathed!"

    The movie cuts to the man who saved the world, as in the star from the first movie. He's practicing some martial art form in front of a cave. There's no talking here, no sound. Only "heroic" music echoing so loud that even at low volume it's hurting my ears. At this point, I'd rather them rip off music from the wrong George Lucas movie again, like maybe American Graffiti or Howard the Duck. No wait, scratch Howard the Duck, that movie's horrible too.

Cut back to the bad guy, talking more about the prequel's hero. "The man who saved the world wasn't only a soldier, he was a philosopher too." Since when? All he did in the first movie was pull heads off with his metal gloves and chop the film footage in half.

    So if the man is so powerful, than what's the bad guy's secret weapon, besides the "composition"? The man's son, who the bad guy kidnapped as a baby and raised as his own. The two of them talk about pointless crap for a bit and then pull out lightsaber ripoffs for a practice duel. Yeah, this movie's a bigger rip-off of Star Wars than the movie that's called Turkish Star Wars. Of course the special effects are so bad that the lightsabers become invisible when any bright surface is behind them. The fight choreography is utter crap too. The main villain keeps hopping in place pointlessly and the camera seems to have a habit of letting objects obscure everything. The main bad guy wins the duel, tells his kidnapped son to not even trust his own father (not sure what that's about), and the scene ends.

    We now have a completely pointless scene where Joe has his crew line up. They talk about all sorts of pointless crap that has nothing to do with anything. After that, some guy we've never seen before dresses up in a space suit and leaves the airlock with a Turkish flag. There's nothing around, so why is he doing this? Apparently to "conquer space." Surely he'll run out of air, and heat, before this idiot conquers anything. I really hate this movie.

    The next scene is the most jumbled, confusing mess I've ever seen in any movie. It's on some planet where a council is being heard. They're talking about offering someone named Lunatic a new position on...something. Then the council leader says it makes him sad. Then he turns on some video that shows three guys dancing together, carving hearts into trees, and peeing on rocks. Meanwhile the council is saying random crap like "good people have no evil left," and "Forget about everything else but this is unacceptable." What's unacceptable? What is going on? And then the scene just ends and we never see the council again.

    After a few more confusing, pointless scenes, we see Joe preparing a bottle with a double shot of something and dumping it into space. You know, for a movie made in a Muslim country, there is lots of alcohol (Muslim's aren't supposed to drink any alcohol...ever.) He then talks into some speaker phone, asking the man who saved the world to reply. A speaker phone in space, right...because we all know how well sound travels in space. Then out of no where, we hear someone talking in English.

    "F*** you crazy man, F*** you." Where did that come from?

    Joe starts talking to some woman on the monitor, who keeps mixing up bits of English with whatever the main language is in this movie. They start flirting and talking about how they used to love each other, which sends Slut away crying.

    Next scene shows the evil son of the man who saved the world, sitting in his ship between two girls. I stand corrected, two robot girls with annoyingly synthetic voices. One of the girls, sorry...robots, informs the son of the...I'll just call him bob. One of the robots informs Bob that an unidentified singing object is approaching. A song starts echoing in the background and Bob says "The whole world knows this song." Really? Then why don't I recognize it. No matter how popular a song is, there are going to be many people who never hear it for their entire lives. They decide to blow up the object for no apparent reason, but they wait for the song to end. Then the movie cuts back to the good guys. I'm so glad they kept that completely pointless scene in the movie, it adds so much to the overall plot. Actually, I'm half an hour in and I still have no idea what the plot even is.

    One of the crew members on Joe's ship talks about how he was banished to space because he accidentally sunk a submarine with a pipe leak. What? Firstly, why would they banish him to space for that? Secondly, if he sank a submarine, how is he still alive? Three, why are you trying to make us care about him now? Nobody has had any real character development save for Joe and maybe Slut (as sad as it is,) and now you're developing the random schmuck fixing the pipes. Why would you have him as a space ship mechanic after he sunk a submarine. Know what screw it, I don't care. Moving on.

    Somehow, Joe's ship almost crashes into Bob's ship. Bob immediately beams onto it and starts beating up the good guys. Joe immediately recognizes Bob as his long-lost twin brother. Apparently they're both sons of the man who saved the world, but Bob refuses to believe it and starts attacking the good guys. Somehow, the kid is the only one to hurt Bob, by kicking him in the groin and making him drop his gun. Once again, the uneducated child is the most competent member of the crew - showing us how truly pathetic Turkey's space training program must be.

    Bob kidnaps Slut and leaves - thank you Bob for removing Joe's most annoying crew member. Thus a space chase begins, where they fly across space stations that weren't there before. The two ships are crashing into each other, with music so loud I can't hear what's going on. The good guys have to make an emergency landing onto a nearby planet after they suffer damage, yet the CGI ship model doesn't even have a scratch. The original Rogue Squadron game for the N64 had better looking battles than this.

    Joe offers to beam every member of the crew back to earth (holy crap that thing has a high beaming range), but everyone agrees to stay with him until the mission is over. We're about half way through the movie at this point, and the subtitles are now so delayed that they're often bleeding into the next scene.

    Joe prepares to walk out of the ship with his space suit on, but when he steps out the ships oldest crew member is cleaning the outside of the ship already, in her regular clothes. Wow, that joke failed hard. Somehow, because they can breath, they automatically assume that they've discovered life in space. Seeing as how there was a space station nearby, I don't think they've discovered new life, that and there was a scene with human beings watching the ship as it nearly crash landed. I'm sorry, there is no way to make sense of this crap.

    Anyway, Bob visits some friend of his, much to the dismay of the friend's daughter, Maya. Yes, Maya is actually her name in the movie; I only know this because it's repeated 8 times within a 1-minute scene. Bob is set to marry Maya, but she wants nothing of it. While Bob is having supper with Maya's dad, the girl escapes with her robot assistant. She then heads out toward the man who saved the world, and Bob wants to hang the man as an example. The movie took eight minutes to explain that - tells you wonders about the movie's pacing.

    Maya reaches a gas station that's covered in neon lights, and Joe arrives soon after with the boy and the robot from his ship. Joe meets the Maya, and she agrees to bring them to the man who saved the world. While Maya's hair was purely brown earlier, now it's blond with brown highlights. Yeah, Maya's hair colour changes becomes a regular thing during the course of the movie, get used to it. Meanwhile, the rest of Joe's crew is attacked by soldiers with those flashing light guns from the first movie. I guess their special effects have improved though, because now they actually shoot lasers. They are captured and put in a holding cell, which looks more like a waiting room than anything else.

    Anyway, the Joe led to the man who saved the world, whose body is now frozen in ice. The man's soul is somehow outside his body and hasn't returned for years. How did this happen? Why? Never really explained. All that's shown is that he somehow saved the man who was sent out floating in space, and that he beat up a bunch of bad guys with more of his patented neck chops. I'm so confused.

    A bunch of people rally together on the planet, and Joe gives them a very weak motivational speech. Shortly after, Bob's ship arrives and robots beam down to the surface. The robots are shooting at the crowds from point-blank range and can't hit anything. Meanwhile the crowds are throwing rocks...and not hitting anything. One man is shot down, and Joe rushes to his side ignoring all the shooting that's going on.

    Joe leaves the main battle and chases after Bob, whose captured Maya. Joe and Bob have a short confrontation, which somehow convinces Bob that they're brothers. He's still the bad guy though, and knocks Joe down a cliff. Maya agrees to marry Bob as long as he frees the captured earthlings (Joe's crew among others,) and Bob agrees. What ever happened to Bob being evil?

    Joe wakes up at the bottom of the valley, less than a minute after he fell. Way to keep the tension going, movie.

    Now for the wedding ceremony. After Maya says "I do", Joe pops in and objects. He proves that Bob is his twin brother by showing that they both have the same birthmark...what? It's a tattoo on their butts in the shape of a fist. How is that a birthmark, how is that necessary, and how does that prove that they're twins? Anyway, Bob finally realizes that the evil emperor has used him his entire life and challenges him to a lightsaber duel. As they're fighting through the mansion I have one question, why isn't Bob asking his robot assistants to help him? Why isn't Joe helping? Why does it have to be a duel between the villain and Bob?

    Bob wins the fight, but spares the evil overlord. The evil overlord then pulls out a gun, but Joe shoots him in the foot. Somehow, shooting the villain in the foot causes him to melt into a bad CGI effect. The two brothers than hug each other. Maya asks to go with Joe, but he tells her to stay with Bob on the planet. The movie then shows us a lousy love montage that's completely out of place. Joe and Maya two characters had no chemistry and yet we're supposed to believe they're in love. Oh wait - Turkish Star Wars had the exact same problem - never mind.

    Maya stows away on Joe's ship as it leaves as Slut stays behind on the planet. Apparently Slut fell in love with Bob while she was kidnapped. Know what, I don't care - the movie's almost over.

    Out of no where, one of the evil emperor's men fires some weapon at earth. Joe follows the rocket but doesn't know how to stop it. Somehow, the man who saved the world punches out of the ice and appears in front of the crew in ghost form and tells them how to stop it. What's the solution? Activate the shields! Wow, so you're telling me with interplanetary traveling and evil empires waiting to destroy the world, nobody's created a shield to protect the earth yet?

    It gets worse, the shields somehow redirect the projectile and it hits the space station that fired it. As the evil space station blows up, there's confetti inside Joe's ship's cockpit...why? What purpose does this cockpit confetti serve?

    How was it overall. Horrible, absolutely horrible. It wasn't entertaining, it wasn't funny, it made absolutely no sense, there was virtually no character development, and the special effects were painfully bad at times. It's not as painful as I expected it to be, but it was still really, really bad.

Two Word Review - Brain Pain