Looks like the Shape of Things to come is a Maple Leaf Concave Polygon.

The Shape of Things to Come (1979): 3 out of 10: In the wake of Star Wars, the late 1970s saw an absolute explosion of low-budget sci-fi films trying to ride the same hyperspace lane to box-office glory. Studios large and small began cranking out space operas, robot adventures, and cosmic melodramas by the dozen.

Canada, apparently not wanting to be left out of the galactic gold rush, produced 1979’s The Shape of Things to Come, a movie that has very little to do with the original H. G. Wells novel it claims to be inspired by and considerably more to do with cardboard sets, questionable costumes, and the unstoppable gravitational pull of Jack Palance devouring every scrap of scenery within reach.

And thanks to RiffTrax, we now get to enjoy this cosmic oddity with the help of professional mockery.

Plot Synopsis

In the distant future (the Tomorrow after Tomorrow per the opening scroll), Earth has supposedly been “destroyed” in something called the Robot Wars. Humanity now lives on the Moon, governed by a giant AI computer.

Already, we’re off to a questionable start.

Despite Earth allegedly being uninhabitable, a group of characters eventually return to the planet, where it appears to be perfectly fine aside from vague “radiation problems” that apparently require medication produced on another planet.

This medication-producing world is ruled by a benevolent blonde leader (Carol Lynley) who is promptly overthrown by a villain played by Jack Palance, who was previously exiled from the Moon for reasons that appear to boil down to “being Jack Palance.”

Our heroes are a chief scientist (Barry Morse) who rocks a bizarre mutton-chop hairstyle, making him look exactly like Heihachi Mishima. His son (Nicholas Campbell), who is a spectacularly useless character whose crowning achievement is spinning around like a ballerina in zero gravity for absolutely no reason. The son’s girl (Anne-Marie Martin), who is apparently in charge of the space program, brings a very specific 80s-sitcom-star energy to the bridge. (She would later star in Sledge Hammer!) There is also a reprogrammed Kamakazi robot that the girl seems to use for sex rather than ballerina boy.

The Shape of Things to Come also features.

• Feral children wearing identical blonde fright wigs
  
• Teleporting robots
  
• Mining robots that cannot move their arms
  
• Spaceships with inexplicable mahogany paneling and an elevator that just takes forever no matter how many times you hit the button.
  

And eventually a plot that somehow ends with the destruction of an entire planet by pressing a self-destruct button. Because that’s apparently how planets work now.

The Good

Jack Palance

Let’s not kid ourselves: Jack Palance is the movie.

He storms onto the screen wearing a cape with a massive morse for absolutely no discernible reason and proceeds to chew through the scenery with the enthusiasm of a man who suspects the film stock might expire before the next take. Subtlety is not the goal here. Palance plays the villain like a man who was told the scenery is beer flavored. And honestly, it’s wonderful.

The Model Work

The movie uses a lot of practical miniatures. They’re not particularly good, many look suspiciously like the kind of model kits you built as a kid with tube glue and optimism, but they have a certain charm.

In a modern era dominated by CGI, there’s something endearing about watching little plastic spaceships wobble through space.

The film attempts to execute the “lovable robot companion” trope by having the daughter reprogram a killer suicide-bomb robot to be a friendly romance bot. Unfortunately, the prop department failed the script.

The robot cannot climb stairs, cannot move convincingly, and cannot use its arms effectively. To get around this, the filmmakers decided the robot can simply teleport. However, it only teleports when it saves money in the production budget, and notably never teleports when it would actually help the plot.

Furthermore, if the robot’s arms barely function and the actor inside cannot see, how was it ever a highly efficient “mining” robot in the first place? When action scenes occur, they consist mostly of these blind, stiff robots fighting extras who clearly do not know how to choreograph a punch.

The Bad

The Plot

The story raises approximately nine thousand questions.

For example:

Why aren’t people living on Earth if it looks completely normal? Why do the heroes promise radiation medicine to feral children but not give them water or food? Why don’t they take the children with them?

When exactly were the robot wars? It seems that they were generations ago. At one point, a character pulls out a rare hardcover book because Earth is devastated. But then when they have the feral kids from earlier that are claimed to have been sent to the country like some robot war Operation Pied Piper. They could not have been there more than a year or two. 

How does travel between the Moon and another planet happen so quickly? When they have been travelling for a while then decide to go back to Earth instead of the moon from where they took off, does it occur to anyone that the Earth and the moon are right next to each other?

Why does the spaceship have mahogany shelving? Why does the mining operation look like a late seventies Canadian office?

When Jack Palance deploys a sonic weapon, why does it seem to just play Black Eyed Peas music until the victims die of ear bleeding?

There is a scene where Lung Shirt boy starts a jeep and drives to find out where his partner went. The film hilariously (and obviously) speeds up the footage. It is like the last five minutes of Thunderball. Why??????

The film answers none of these questions, presumably because it was too busy designing capes for Jack Palance.

The Ugly

The Costumes

The costumes are extraordinary, and not in a good way. The scientist’s son wears a jumpsuit that appears to have his lungs glued to the outside of the uniform. The radiation suits look like something rejected from a third-grade play about littering.

And Jack Palance’s villain outfit, with its dramatic cape and giant morse raises a number of troubling logistical questions.

For instance: Did he bring the cape with him when he was exiled from the Moon? Is there a dry cleaner on the mining planet? Do they do martinizing?

The Robot Battles

The robot fight scenes are unintentionally hilarious. The extras don’t seem to know how to fight. The robot actors can’t see through their helmets.

And the robots themselves appear incapable of performing the most basic physical movements. Which raises another question: If these robots were mining robots, how exactly did they mine anything?

In Conclusion

The Shape of Things to Come is a fascinating artifact of the post-Star Wars exploitation era. It’s cheap, confusing, oddly bloodless, and frequently baffling. Despite having real actors and a respectable runtime, very little actually happens, and what happens raises far more questions than answers.

But it also contains: A gloriously overacting Jack Palance.
A charming collection of low-budget models
Some of the strangest costumes ever put on film

Which makes it exactly the kind of oddball movie that RiffTrax thrives on.

RiffTrax Review

RiffTrax: The Shape of Things to Come (2020): 8 out of 10: A solid if unremarkable outing by the boys. There are some fun deep cuts and obscure callbacks, though there are significantly less Space Mutiny callbacks than one would expect. (In fairness, you could use Space Mutiny callbacks for half the film with ease.)

The Shape of Things to Come is not a very long film, and as hard as it is to wrap one’s head around this, it really is not a very good film. Space Mutiny is a better film. Not just more entertaining (which it certainly is) but a better film overall. Not just in special effects, etc but in plot. The Shape of Things to Come makes very little sense, even by the remarkably low bar of post Star Wars cash grabs.

While there is some laugh out loud moments, nothing seems to catch on. There are no really good running gags. RiffTrax: The Shape of Things to Come certainly is funny, but it really is not Slab Bulkhead funny.