Justin Long Has Very Strong Feelings About Galaxy Quest 2
This article is more than 2 years old
Despite the fact that he looks like he’s about 15-years-old, Justin Long has had a relatively lengthy, eclectic career. He’s done horror like Drag Me to Hell and Jeepers Creepers, comedy like Accepted and Idiocracy, and even co-starred with Bruce Willis in a freakin’ Die Hard movie. Sure, it was Live Free or Die Hard, but it’s still a Die Hard movie, even if barely. One of our favorite of his 70 credits on IMDb, however, is still his first, 1999’s Galaxy Quest, and it’s one he has fond memories of as well.
Long is currently on the promotion path, stumping for his new film, Kevin Smith’s Tusk, which opens this weekend and sees the perpetually youthful thespian surgically turned into a walrus. (This premise calls to mind two things, one, The Human Centipede, and that episode of South Park where Kyle’s dad is surgically transformed into a dolphin.) As part of his tour, he did an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, and as things tend to do on the Internet, the nerdier component too over, and talk soon turned to Galaxy Quest and the possibility of a Galaxy Quest 2.
Long’s response was immediate and enthusiastic. When asked if he was interested in revisiting his character, he said, “Absolutely! I’d love to see what Brandon Wheeger is up to 15 years later.”
When asked explicitly about the sequel, he said he has heard things, but isn’t sure how “real” any of it is, but he added, “I’d do it in a heartbeat. In the meantime, never give up, never surrender.”
While the enthusiasm is to be commended, and is infectious, it doesn’t sound like we’re any closer to this getting rolling than we were a few months back, when we first encountered rumblings about a sequel to the beloved cult classic. And to be fair, that was just star Tim Allen, and others, mentioning offhand, in a casual manner, that there is actually a finished script floating around out there in the world. As much as we want this to happen, it doesn’t actually appear that anyone in Hollywood is actively working on making this a reality.
Still, it’s nice to know that, if there is ever momentum on Galaxy Quest 2, many of the stars have publicly stated that they’re down. That includes Long, Allen, and Sigourney Weaver, who actually took her costume home with her after production wrapped, that’s how much she enjoyed her time on the bridge of the NSEA-Protector.
I’m not sure how many of you are out there—and if you are, you need to stop whatever you’re doing and rectify this situation immediately—but if you’re unfamiliar with Galaxy Quest, it’s essentially a spoof of the original Star Trek series. (At a recent Star Trek convention, it was voted, by fans, in the middle of the pack of Trek movies, despite not actually being a real Star Trek movie.) The cast of a short-lived sci-fi series have become cult celebrities, going to conventions, fielding intricate questions that only the most die hard, obsessed fans would even think to ask, and that kind of thing. But when an alien race that has based their entire society on reruns of the show, because they think it’s real, needs help, they obviously turn to their TV heroes, and the crew winds up in the middle of a very real space adventure. It’s funny, cute, clever, endearing, and, more than anything, a celebration of rabid fandom. Watch it, watch it right now.
Until this happens, we’ll have to content ourselves with the comic book sequel.
