OK, yes, Old Han Solo and Chewie are back on the Millennium Falcon and Old Luke is bequeathing lightsabers and force powers left and right—it’s great that we elder nerds might finally get the Star Wars sequels that we’ve lusted after since we were kids. But there’s another amazing trailer/music video combo that has been lost among all the wookie-hugging: Kung Fury. And because Ars Managing Editor Eric Bangeman has taken this Friday off, I can write about it. I can write about anything I want.
Filmed piecemeal from across two years by Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg and funded mostly by a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $600,000, Kung Fury is set in one of the most idealized and beautiful visions of the 1980s ever digitally filmed: synth beats fill the hot Miami nights, denim and Power Gloves abound, and a renegade kung fu cop named Kung Fury takes things too far.
After handing in his gun and badge, there’s only one thing left for Kung Fury to do: go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler, the "Kung Führer," the baddest kung fu villain of all time. But even though Fury has the help of a note-perfect '80s computer nerd sidekick, he goes too far back in time, to an era where Vikings and T-rexes roamed the land.
Although the trailer was originally released back at the end of 2013 to coincide with the project's Kickstarter, yesterday saw the release of the short film’s first official music video, "True Survivor," which features iconic '80s icon David Hasselhoff power-ballading his way through a slick minor-key rock tune that I’m thinking of appropriating so I can lay it over my own backyard kung-fu videotapes to make a truly righteous training montage.
According to the official Kung Fury site, the short film is "pretty much finished," and its creators are still locking down all the logistics of the release. Kung Fury’s note-perfect '80s vibe required a tremendous amount of work by its creators, with the official site explaining that the finished 30-minute movie contains 394 visual effects shots (a number more typical of a two-hour Hollywood production). The plan is to release the film for free online between May 22-29, so grab your minigun and your dino-riding harness and cinch down your headband, because Hitler’s gonna pay.
That’s gotta be the coolest sentence I’ve ever written for Ars. Eric should take the day off more often!
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