Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)

I foumd this documentary as a new release at the library. It must have
been remastered. IMDb trivia said there were sound problems when first
released, confirmed by user reviews, that the production team had left
the project and post production was rushed. Somebody must have spent
money to fix this as there were no sound problems.

It's so meta, your mind will be blown. After all, Galaxy Quest (1999)
was the ultimate fan experience. The Thermians were the ultimate fans of
the old tv series within the movie amd stsructured their society based
on the "historical documents" received from Hollywood. The nerdiest of
the nerds get to help save the day based on their unlimited knowledge of
trivia, and ultimately, the movie itself was meant to be enjoyed by
audiences young and old who enjoyed good science fiction television.

And this documentary celebrates the fans who love the movie for its
celebration of fandom!

There were clips from interviews with the director and writer, and
interviews with the casting director and producers. The documentary
credits one of the producers -- Mark Johnson -- as being more critical
to putting the right team of people together behind the camera the
executive producer.

There was more discussion of Harold Ramis as director until Tim Allen
was cast, who was chosen by Jeffrey Katzenberg to exploit his Home
Improvement popularity. Ramis didn't want to work with a comedian
although Groundhog Day was brilliant) as he felt that he was the wrong
director for Robin Williams in Club Paradize (1986).

Robert Gordon, the final screenwriter, was hired because producers
didn't like earlier scripts which emphasized the dichotomy between the
Jason character and performing Captain Taggert. Instead, Gordon made
Jason more of an egoist, playing Taggert was the highlight of his
career, who relished the attention. Because of this, Gordon wasn't shown
earlier scripts. Also, Gordon set the main action of the movie in space
rather than on Earth.

Everybody had nice things to say about Alan Rickman, who, despite being
a serious dramatic actor, had a great sense of humor, thought the script
was funny and wanted the role. He didn't appreciate Tim Allen clowning
around before the takes would start but came to accept him. He made fun
of Allen, who was forced to act in the scene in wh8ch Mathesar (Enrico
Colantoni) is tortured, revealing the nature of fiction and storytelling
to the childlike alien. After a number of different takes, Allen was
upset that he didn't like the emotions he was feeling. Rickman
sardonically observed that Allen had just experienced acting.

The fans they chose to interview were wonderful, truly working on their
costumes and doing a nice job performing Thermians. I didn't see anybody
dressed as the enemy reptile.

I'm going to defend the studio's insistence that the movie be less dark
and edited to be released as a family movie. Truly, this movie should
have been seen by parents with their kids. Apparently there was a lot of
swearing initially. It's better as a PG movie. But the obvious loop of
Gwen swearing about the chompers made for a great sight gag.

What the studio did wrong, of course, was marketing the movie to
children to compete for the audience of the Rugrats movie, instead of
marketing it as a family movie. It never found its audience upon initial
release.