How not to make a Blaxploitation spoof

[strannik01]

So John Rogers, the head writer for Leverage TV show, posted a story on his blog about a long-lost Blaxploitation version of Star Wars. It almost sounded convincing... Until I saw the trailer.

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Here is the thing. I like Blaxploitation-style movies. I can pretend to believe that a contemporary movie is really a long-lost genuine article. But, if you are going to go that route, can you at least try to make it just a little bit more authentic.

Here are a few issues I had with it right off the bat:

• Blaxpoitation movies were cheap. Like, cheaper than Turkish Star Wars cheap. The "we are going to call the ambulance just to film it come in" cheap. The "we will pay genuine hookers to be extras in our movie because we can't afford to hire real extras" cheap. There is no way they would be able to afford Star Wars style special effects or the costumes of that quality.
• Blaxploitation movies looked their age. As in, the colors were displayed differently. The lighting was different. The sound was different. And no, adding the scratch filter here and there won't help.
• No gratuitous violence/nudity. I know that lots of this stuff got cut out when Blaxploitation films were released on VHS/played on TV, but we have Internet and uncut DVDs now. Look it up.
• The trailers back then didn't look the way trailers did now. Honestly, it isn't that hard to research.
• And finally, on a more nitpicky note, if you are going to have a Foxxy Brown type character, don't cast her as a freaking damsel in distress. Foxxy Brown could get out of a jam just fine all by herself, without any man (or anyone at all) to fall back on, and she made it look cool and bad-ass. Because Pam Grier was just that awesome.

In all seriousness, it sounds like an interesting movie. I just think it could have been presented better.