I’ve seen Spaceballs many times, and there’s one joke in it that’s always gone over my head. I couldn’t understand why it was in there or what it meant until this past week when it finally dawned on me, and I had a huge “Oooooh!” moment.

Spaceballs cleverly parodies just about everything in the original Star Wars trilogy from Alderaan to Yoda. But there’s one big detail that I used to think it overlooked. There’s a secret, hidden base in the first two movies: Yavin 4 in Star Wars and Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Is there a secret base in Spaceballs? Well, yes, from a certain point of view. You see, there’s a silly scene that used to weird me out as a kid, but that’s because I didn’t understand the joke. Here it is:

It turns out that Princess Vespa hides the fact that she’s a bass, so there is a secret bass in the movie! The pun was right there the whole time, but it was too subtle for my mind to grasp until now. Man, that’s clever writing. It’s also the mark of a great comedy that it’s still able to surprise me and make me laugh all these years later.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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