'They've gone to plaid!'
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austinmey — 11 years ago(July 10, 2014 09:34 PM)
Is this not a reference to Star Wars as well? Being that light speed is straight lines and going to plan it's just a bunch of right angles and plaid patterns.
I don't know, but it's my favorite joke in the entire film. -
ralph_2ndedition — 11 years ago(July 25, 2014 12:21 AM)
Hey, that wasn't half bad!
I always just kind of accepted the 'not supposed to make sense'-thing, but light speed = straight lines vs. plaid = angles thing actually makes sense (out of the senselessness). -
Drevnibor — 11 years ago(September 19, 2014 12:31 PM)
Austinmey is right.
In Star Wars, the stars ''become''
lines
when a ship enters the lightspeed.
But with plaid, you have lines everywhere, indicating that it's a lot faster and weirder than lightspeed.
Hm, hom!
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Badgerman68 — 11 years ago(August 01, 2014 12:54 PM)
I always saw it as a parody of the 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite' part of 2001 a Space Odyssey when Bowman is sucked through a tunnel of coloured lights used to imply great speed. Rather than just random patterns Mel Brooks made it plaid.
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tmeador — 11 years ago(October 15, 2014 09:42 AM)
You don't get it?
When you see the ships go into hyperspace you see a bunch of lines, correct?
Lines or -
stripes
! The screen is filled with
stripes
.
Stripes are common in fashion
(even today)
. So of course, what's one step from stripes but plaid? So you see a bunch of stripes first, and then it goes to plaid.
I suppose after that you could go paisley, whatever is after ludicrous speed.
Plus, a common fashion faux pas
(think old Jewish guy on the golf course in the 80's here)
is to wear plaid with stripes.
It's always been one of my favorite scenes in the movie, but I was already in my late 20's when it came out. -
Ashaod43 — 10 years ago(August 16, 2015 07:58 AM)
You knuckleheads. I always took this as a sight gag, not a speed thing. In every film that has time travel there is always a great visual when someone goes into hyperspace or light speed. Star trek has lines and lights when they go to warp and such.
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Dante8 — 10 years ago(August 16, 2015 02:57 PM)
I always thought it was a reference to the freaky light-sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Apparently, according to wikipedia, that's known as "the Stargate Sequence", but all I remember is a long period of bizarre colored lights and patterns, courtesy of Kubrick).
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cody-87787 — 10 years ago(December 18, 2015 09:50 AM)
in many scifi movies, when a ship is moving at lightspeed (or warp in star trek), there's a striped pattern behind them. and in several star trek movies, this striped pattern is even rainbow colored. going plaid is just going so much faster that your stripes turn plaid instead.
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tyson6633 — 9 years ago(August 06, 2016 04:28 PM)
I've always assumed that the stars with the black background was like polka-dot or something. Meaning, in a fashion sense, Lone Starr had "gone to polka-dot" while the spaceballs had "gone to plaid".
That's my take on it, anyway. I don't know
shrug
Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.