A big-budget Science Fiction musical comedy film from 1930, featuring the most impressive special effects seen up to that time. The animated model of New York City was large enough to fill a zeppelin hangar and cost a quarter million dollars to build — and this during the Great Depression!
Unfortunately, it was a complete flop.
In the distant future of 1980, marriages must be approved by the courts, based on one's value to society. J-21 (John Garrick) can't get permission to wed the beautiful LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan), as his rival, the wealthy and arrogant MT-3 (Kenneth Thomson), is more socially prominent. J-21 appeals the decision and is given six months to distinguish himself. As scientist Z-4 (Hobart Bosworth) has just invented a "Rocket Plane" spacecraft, J-21 volunteers to be the first man to fly it to Mars. His anachronistic friend Single-0 (El Brendel) stows away on the Interplanetary Voyage in order to provide Plucky Comic Relief.
Not related to the comic series by Stan Lee.
Just Imagine provides examples of:
- Aliens Speaking English: Averted, as communication with the Martians is done via pantomime and body language.
- Bureaucratically Arranged Marriage
- Camp Gay: The Martian king."She's not the Queen — he is!"
- Catchphrase: "Give me the good old days!"
- Cold Sleep, Cold Future: Single-0 pines for "the good ol' days" when food didn't come in pills, and babies from coin-operated vending machines.
- Eternal Prohibition: The persistent rumor that Prohibition was going to be repealed 'next year' is spoofed by the fact that it's still going in 1980 (and still rumored to be on the verge of repeal). Prohibition was eventually repealed in 1933.
- Exty Years from Publication: The Big Applesauce, fifty years on.
- Evil Twin: Mars has an entire race of these.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: A man in the present day (e.g. 1930), played by vaudeville comic El Brendel, is killed by lightning on a golf course, and revived by scientists fifty years later purely as an experiment. They give him the name Single-0 (Brendel's standard character was named "Ollie"), then forget about him. Fortunately the kind-hearted J-21 is there to take Single-0 under his wing.
- Flying Car: Everyone has their own personal airplane, all propeller driven.
- Food Pills: Possibly the Trope Maker.
- Future Copter: The personal airplanes that have replaced cars all have vertical propellers mounted inside their wings so they can hover in midair, allowing their occupants to chat or burst into song. Interestingly, this was before any real ducted-fan aircraft had ever been built.
- Good Old Ways
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: The Red Planet is populated by scantily-clad showgirls in glittery outfits doing Busby Berkeley Numbers.
- Love Triangle: J-21 and MT-3 vie for the affections of the comely LN-18.
- No New Fashions in the Future: Women wear reversible clothes and men's suits have only one pocket.
- Punny Name: Most of the character names are puns of real names and words, such as J (Jay), LN (Ellen) and MT (Empty). An explicit joke is made of the name "U-2" being confused for "you, too".
- Retro Rocket: The Rocket Plane.
- Space Clothes:"The Martian costumes could start new fashion trends if this got widely shown. Lightning bolts, spikes and metallic print bikinis mixed with ridiculous wigs and eye make-up are part of the wackiest outfits in film history." (Michael Weldon).
- Take That!: In a jab at Henry Ford's anti-Semitism, all the flying cars are made by Jewish manufacturers.
- Uterine Replicator: In 1980, babies are readily procurable from vending machines.
- Video Phone: They are commonplace in 1980.
- We Will Not Have Pockets in the Future: The only pocket on men's clothing is for their hipflask.
- You Are Number 6: In the future, people have alphanumeric codes instead of names.
- You No Take Candle: This was part of Brendel's comic routine — he billed himself as "The Synthetic Swede".
- Zeerust: New York is the standard Mega City with multi-lane elevated roadways, suspension bridges hung between towering megastructures, and personal aircraft buzzing from building to building. Transoceanic airliners are dirigibles. One prediction they get right is that paper towels will be replaced by hot air dryers.
- Zeppelins from Another World: Subverted. The skies of 1980 are filled with zeppelins, and come off as an example of this trope to modern audiences, but at the time, zeppelins really were used as passenger carriers, so the atmosphere they evoked for contemporary viewers would have been a futuristic one rather than an alternate history.
