Silver Screen Resolution, Take Two: Lazer Team 2

For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:

1. They must be spec-fic (this has not changed).
2. The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
3. They don’t have to be popular – or even something folks have heard about.

But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. Let’s take one more peek into space – this time, on the lighter side of things.

Beware — all the spoilers ahead!

Lazer Team is a primarily Indiegogo funded movie by the production company Rooster Teeth (and wow, their page still exists!), earning $2.4 million dollars from their fanbase in 2014 to help create the movie. If you’ve been with Speculative Chic for any amount of time, you’ve probably already heard me talk about how much I enjoy Rooster Teeth content. Lazer Team 2 is the follow-up, although by this point Rooster Teeth has grown so much they produced their movie without any added help from the fanbase and instead with only YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) as their partners.

At the end of the first movie, the general in charge of DETIA (Defense Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Agency) announced that the four men who have saved the planet using alien technology (who sort of accidentally started getting called Lazer Team) are going to take the fight to the aliens who started everything, which meant the group was going into space. To be honest, I think most fans didn’t expect an actual Lazer Team set in space, given how that could easily turn into a massive undertaking and Rooster Teeth always already has a lot on their plate. Likewise, the first movie was enjoyable ridiculousness, and personally I was fine with them not making a second movie.

But then we received the announcement that it was indeed being made, and lo and behold, without any of the same fanfare the first movie received, Lazer Team 2 appeared November 2017 on YouTube Premium. To me, that didn’t bode well. The previous film was released throughout the country in theaters using sites like Tugg that allow smaller films access to various theaters. Releasing Lazer Team 2 to a very limited number of theaters (so limited that I originally believed it hadn’t been in theaters at all) and then straight to YouTube felt like when a sequel goes direct to video. And usually those aren’t nearly as good. But I’m a fan, I have a resolution to take care of, and this was the only other space-based movie on the list somehow.

We find out pretty quickly that DETIA’s attempt to get Lazer Team into space hasn’t gone well. The team, which consists of Hagen, Woody, Zach, and Herman, constantly fight and bicker and eventually DETIA’s plans — and the team — fall apart. Each person goes their own separate way with only Woody staying behind. They’re all still stuck with a part of the alien armor from the first film, and since Woody’s helmet makes him uber-intelligent, he continues to work for the government and attempts to develop wormhole technology. However, when he finally does so, an alien drags him through the gateway and he disappears. It’s up to his lab partner, Maggie (Nichole Bloom, Until Dawn), to find the rest of Lazer Team, open a new wormhole, and rescue Woody.

I’m going to just put it out there: this movie is not that good. Granted, that’s what I expected, but there were other elements I didn’t expect that took it down a few more notches. A few of the jokes were on the grosser side, and while normally I don’t mind that, given that the first movie didn’t stray far into that area at all, it didn’t mesh well. At other times the characterization felt off. Hagen is a great example. In the first film he’s a small town cop, the voice of reason throughout the movie, and while he has his dumb moments, is still the smartest in the group (Woody’s enhanced intelligence aside). Here, he’s just as absurd as the rest of the group, adds nothing, and for some reason seems to be jobless, which makes no sense. At least he should have gone back to being a cop given that he has a permanent shield on his arm.

Yes, this is an actual joke about literally eating shit.

There was also the subplot of Zach’s breakup with Hagen’s daughter, Mindy. Again, it was a useless point and only served to get Mindy onto the screen, although she could have been there anyway given that Hagen is her dad. Zach doesn’t seem to learn anything by the end of the film, so there’s no real resolution with that particular plotline.

The real story here should have been Maggie’s. Her goal was to rescue Woody and half the time the other guys were more of a hindrance than help. I do realize that’s what they do and that’s what is supposed to make the film funny, but it became more of a rehash of the first film since, again, the characters have learned nothing. They bicker and argue and act like idiots, and when they’re told entire planets are being destroyed, they decide not to help in any way, which is probably the dumbest decision of all considering Earth would be on that list of planets.

In the end, the group does nothing but the tiniest bit of protecting Maggie and each other near the finale of the movie. Otherwise it’s Maggie that saves the planet. She’s the real hero of this film — not Lazer Team.

At least Woody discovered a button that allowed his helmet to retract. But again, I fully expected that the other team members would also discover buttons that would allow them to remove their armor pieces, or at the very least, have them retract in some fashion so they could use their real hands/legs again. Especially because since this element was brought up as one of the reasons the guys were so miserable at the start of the movie (aside from Herman). However, that never happens either, so in a year or so they may find themselves just as miserable as before. Disappointing.

All of that aside, a fair job was done with the special effects (although why they changed the look of Hagen’s original shield is beyond me), both CGI and practical. The practical effects team has always been on point, so the friendly alien the team meets up with is pretty nifty looking, and the brand new armor they get looks nice and sleek. I also appreciated some of the inside jokes. In particular, I may have giggled more than once at the inclusion of the deadly snail.

I also may have had a small stroke at the part where the group finds themselves in a zoo consisting of all the creatures the aliens have collected from now-dead planets. Mostly because before this movie ever came out, I got bored one day and started scribbling down Lazer Team 2 fanfiction and — no joke — it included a zoo of creatures collected from planets the aliens had destroyed. I even went so far as to send the snippet to Burnie Burns (who co-wrote Lazer Team as well as play Hagen) and his girlfriend Ashley Jenkins since I’d included her in the story. Do I think I helped influence any of what I saw in the film? Absolutely not — I doubt either of them even read it and I’m not the first to even come up with such a concept. But it was still super weird seeing it on the screen.

Unfortunately Lazer Team 2 is a pass for me. I’ll go back and happily watch the first movie again at any time. To borrow a bit from The Blue Brothers, while Maggie was able to get the band back together, it’s a shame that this time they didn’t know how to play.

Sorry guys, not this time.