Star Wreck is a series of Finnish Star Trek parody movies started by Samuli Torssonen in 1992. [1] The first movie, simply named Star Wreck, was a simple Star Control -like animation with three ships shooting at each other, but later movies featured CGI-animated characters and, in the latest films, live actors. Often Star Wreck is used to refer to the latest and most popular film Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning .
Star Wreck relates the adventures of James B. Pirk (named after the Star Trek character James T. Kirk), Captain of the starship C.P.P. Potkustartti (English C.P.P. Kickstart). Other characters include Mr. Fukov, Mr. Spook (Finnish: Mr. Spökö), Mr. Dwarf (Wuf), Ensign Shitty and Mr. Info (loosely based, respectively, on Star Trek's Pavel Chekov, Mr. Spock, Worf, Scotty, and Data). The characters speak Finnish; subtitles in various languages, including Klingon, are available.
In 2015, it was announced that two new films were going to be released. [2] The first one will be a short film titled "Star Wreck: Timecrash", set in future Soviet Union, and the second, currently untitled one will be a feature-length film. [3]
All Star Wreck films are available online under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence.
The first five Star Wreck films were re-released on Star Wreck: Legacy DVD in 2006, with original score replacing the Star Trek score, and other changes. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was re-released on an Imperial Edition DVD in 2006, with updated models and effects.
Star Wreck has enjoyed a relatively large niche following among sci-fi fans, but it was only the 2005 movie that really pushed it into the limelight. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was downloaded over 700,000 times during the first week after its release [4] and the current estimates by the hosting service, Magenta sites, are between 3.5 and 4 million downloads, including mirror sites. This has been claimed to make In the Pirkinning the most popular Finnish film of all time, topping the movie theatre viewings for The Unknown Soldier (approx. 2.8 million viewers); the comparison, however, may not be particularly meaningful. Numerous TV and magazine interviews of the film's authors have been published, both in Finland and abroad.
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning has also been shown on Finnish national television, YLE TV2, on the Belgian national television channel Canvas, and Italian TV-channel Jimmy.
A new Imperial Edition DVD has also been released by Universal Pictures in Scandinavia. With the Imperial Edition release, all the space scenes with Star Trek or Babylon 5 ship models were removed and completely remade.
In September 2007, a 1-DVD version of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning – Imperial Edition was released also in Japan by AMG & Medallion Media. The version includes a professional dub for Japanese, as well as new sleeve design and a poster/cue card inside the DVD case.
In 2012, a spin-off called Star Wreck 2π: Full Twist, now! was released. It is made by Swiss film makers, but Samuli Torssonen and Timo Vuorensola have a guest appearance in their respective roles. [5]
There is also a spin-off animated Star Wreck, created by a different author who has no relation to Torssonen's team, called Star Wreck Asskicker which tells the story of the C.P.P. Asskicker.
The Star Wreck Roleplaying Game is an English-language role-playing game (RPG) published in Finland by Energia Productions that is set in the Star Wreck universe. [6] [7] [8] It was first released at Ropecon in 2006. The game is a parody of the numerous Star Trek roleplaying games, but is also playable on its own. Its rule mechanics are built to emulate the setting of the films, with experienced characters becoming more heroically incompetent instead of getting better at their tasks, as is the case in most mainstream games.
In August 2007 the game was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license and made available for free download. [9]
A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book, book, or video game created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the more notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in quality, as well as in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to full-length motion pictures. Fan films are also examples of fan labor and the remix culture. Closely related concepts are fandubs, fansubs and vidding which are reworks of fans on already released film material.
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning is a 2005 parody fan film produced by five friends in a two-room flat in Finland with a small budget and the support of a few hundred fans and several dozen acquaintances. It is the seventh production in the Star Wreck movie series, and the first of professional quality and feature length. It is a dark science fiction comedy about domination of the world and the universe, and a parody of the Star Trek and Babylon 5 franchises.
Samuli Torssonen is a Finnish film writer, director, actor and producer, best known as the creator of the viral Star Wreck sci-fi series.
Karoliina Blackburn is a Finnish actress and Muay Thai fighter. She is mostly known for her appearance in Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a parody scifi fan film, but has also had roles in several big-budget Finnish television series. Karoliina served as the host for Finnish reality TV show Suuri Seikkailu in 2005.
Comet in Moominland is a Dutch-Japanese anime film by Telecable Benelux B.V. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Finnish illustrator and writer Tove Jansson, originally published in Swedish. It was the first full-length Moomin film, and serves as a prequel to the 1990 anime series Moomin, introducing characters that would later appear in the series. It was released in Japan first theatrically on August 8, 1992 as a triple-feature with two unrelated shorter films, and was later released on home video with 10 minutes of extra footage.
Star Wreck may refer to:
Timo Johannes Koivusalo is a Finnish actor, director, writer, composer and musician. His most successful film to date was Rentun Ruusu, released in 2001.
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Timo Vuorensola is a Finnish film director, singer and actor. He has directed Star Wreck movies Star Wreck V: Lost Contact, and Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, created by Samuli Torssonen. Vuorensola plays Lieutenant Dwarf in the films. He also directed the film Iron Sky and its sequel, The Coming Race. He is also the lead vocalist and co-founder of dark industrial band Älymystö. Timo is prepping darkly comic action thriller "Killtown" which is being introduced to the market by Brilliant Pictures.
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Sara Maria Forsberg, formerly known professionally as SAARA, Smo, Smoukahontas, or Smokahontas, is a Finnish singer, songwriter, YouTube personality, and television presenter. As a singer, Forsberg was signed to Capitol Records in 2014 and released her debut single "Ur Cool" in April 2015, which went on to become a top ten hit in her home country of Finland. She left in early 2016 after disagreements with the label and her producer. Forsberg has continued to release music as an independent artist in affiliation with Universal Music Group. As of November 2017, her YouTube channel has more than a million subscribers and over 100 million views.
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Tales from the Loop, subtitled "Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was", is an alternative history science fiction tabletop role-playing game published in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. The game, based on the art of Simon Stålenhag, envisions an alternative world where a group of bored and ignored preteens and teens solves mysteries caused by new technology near their hometown.
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