Short of the Week: a Francis Ford Coppola sci-fi with Michael Jackson
Over the course of his trailblazing career, Francis Ford Coppola has solidified his status as one of the most important figures of the New Hollywood era through masterpieces like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. He has also worked on some questionable directorial projects, but none of them is as bizarrely hilarious as Captain EO, a strange sci-fi from 1986 starring none other than pop culture icon Michael Jackson.
Written by George Lucas, Captain EO stars Michael Jackson as the titular character who embarks on a campy space mission with completely crazy plot developments. Ranging from a world of decaying metal to incredible transformations, it’s a 17-minute romp that bombards you with whatever whacky idea it can conjure up. During later interviews, Coppola admitted that he had little control over the details of the project, and it ended up becoming a collaborative mess.
The director said: “Some projects, like Captain EO, I didn’t have a hand in creating — I had suggestions. Michael Jackson had an idea, and George Lucas had an idea, and Disney had an idea. [So] the director was more someone who took all the fragments that everyone thought of and did the best they can. It’s a lot different than doing something that comes from your own being; you constantly negotiate. When I first thought about [Captain EO], I didn’t know what sense to make of it.”
Shown at Disney theme parks for more than a decade, the cinematic experience (with in-theatre effects) definitely suited the theme park atmosphere. Due to these special effects, Captain EO had an unreasonably high production budget of almost $30 million, which is just unimaginable for a short film with that runtime. Although the narrative is just incomprehensible, it definitely cashes in on the spectacle through Michael Jackson’s star power.
Coppola revealed: “I knew I wanted the big dance at the end to be more integrated with the story, rather than [the movie] be this short little dumb story and have a music video tacked on the end of it. But Michael Jackson was really wily, and no one knew what the music or song was going to be until the time that they did it. He felt he didn’t want the dance to be integrated within the story. So we shot this little story, and then he came and had the song, and we did it the best we could. [The dance number] was tacked on to the end. I thought it should have been more integrated into it. But I found Michael [to be] very sweet, and I was fond of him. He was like a big kid.”
When compared to Coppola’s other subversive works, Captain EO is an interesting work because it is the perfect example of what happens when the establishment takes creative control. While interest in the film died down after it was removed as a theme park attraction in the late 1990s, it has steadily garnered a cult following due to its availability on the internet.
Watch the film below.
