After three years of production and more than 10 million trailer views, Kung Fury has been released on the Internet at last. Depending on your mood, this can well be THE best film of all time… or the most stupid. Either way, it’s blasting fun.

The path of this short constitutes the ultimate Cinderella tale. David Sandberg is a Swedish visual effect artist who one good day decided to quit his job to follow his dream of making movies. He sold all his possessions (including his beloved couch and TV), moved back with his mom and began to mastermind what can now be regarded as Kickstarter’s most revered film project ever. He managed to assemble a small team of friends, cast himself as the lead actor and shot the entire project against green screen with a prosumer digital camera in a small office. The resulting 2 minute trailer really set the internet on fire allowing them to raise a whopping 650k and attracting the attention of Hollywood agents and producers. Following the incredible success of the crowdfunding campaign, major talent representation agency WME Entertainment (Adele, Nine Inch Nails, Usher) signed Sandberg and took him to L.A to pitch his Kung Fury as a feature film.

After many meetings, it was Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg (son of Shrek producer Jeffrey Katzenberg) who clicked with David’s ideas and picked up the project.

“Since the dawn of cinema, producers have dreamt of making a movie that combines Kung Fu, dinosaurs, Uzis and Hitler. Every one of those producers has failed, until now. We’re honored to be working with David Sandberg, unquestionably the greatest director of the 1980s.” said Katzenberg and Smith, who are also behind the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel.

“It’s going to be a clean slate, loosely based on the same story,” Sandberg said, “But it’s going to have a lot of new elements, and you’ll get to know the characters more and go more in depth and go even more crazy.”

There are rumors there is going to be a comic book series and a clothing line inspired by the movie, and the Kung Fury video game is already available on Steam.

The plot of Kung Fury is as absurd as it is delicious. An 80’s cop, who happens to be a Kung Fu master, has to travel back in time to kill Adolf Hitler. This is so ridiculous you just have to love it. No deep explorations of the human mind and soul here. The film is comprised of 30 minutes of over the top action sequences and comical gags relentlessly flowing one after the other. Kung Fury never takes itself seriously, the sardonic intention is clear and the execution is flawless.

All its stylistic elements are crafted with utmost care to mimic the experience of B action flicks, continuity errors, banding, and bad lip sync included. The pace is relentless and dictated by a masterfully crafted original score that would seamlessly fit on the shelves of any record store in 1985.

Kung Fury is one of the best products to come out of the crowdfunding model and I don’t think it’s outlandish to say it marks the beginning of the end of the current studio system. New technologies have been rattling the entire movie business for 20 years now, but major Hollywood studios have always managed to keep the higher ground despite the new competition.

Still nobody can rival their financial muscle to attract A-list talent and pull off gargantuan marketing campaigns. The digital revolution has seen independent productions rise, both in quantity and quality, but despite a few box office hits, movies with no studio backing often have to look for alternative distribution arenas like VOD and the internet to flourish. At the time being, it’s almost impossible for an independent production to obtain the revenue numbers of, say, a Marvel film. Until now that is.

When a 30 minute film shot in a room manages to gather more than 10 million views and debuts on the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, that’s a real sign of things to come. A new scenario where funding, production, distribution and exhibition become truly democratic is very near and nobody can know for sure what will happen then.

Hail to Kung Fury and it’s brave creators. Despite Isis and the Kardashians, something like this makes one feel grateful for being alive at this time and age.

You can watch the whole film after the jump.