Space Truckers

Plot

At a corporate base on Triton, mercenaries defend against an unstoppable cyborg. CEO E.J. Saggs and scientist Dr. Nabel seal themselves in the control room. The cyborg destroys a tank and a helicopter, which crashes into the control room. Nabel deactivates the cyborg with a remote, but Saggs reactivates it and orders it to kill Nabel.

Meanwhile, independent space trucker John Canyon delivers square pigs to a truck stop station and gets into a brawl with company head Keller, who is sucked into space. Canyon, along with passengers Cindy (a waitress who agreed to marry him for a ride to Earth) and Mike (a young trucker), takes a job hauling alleged sex dolls to Earth. Chased by police over Keller's death, Canyon flies into the scum cluster, a pirate region. His rig is damaged and captured by the pirate ship Regalia, commanded by Captain Macanudo.

Cindy agrees to have sex with Macanudo if he releases them. Macanudo is revealed to be Nabel, who rebuilt his body after Saggs' betrayal and became a pirate. The cargo is actually a supply of cyborg warriors Nabel built for Saggs. A cyborg activates, kills most of the crew, and damages the ship.

Canyon, Cindy, and Mike escape in their rig as the Regalia explodes. They find a dying Macanudo in the hold, who reveals the cargo's true nature. Canyon releases Cindy from her marriage promise and tells her and Mike to take an escape pod while he dumps the cargo into the atmosphere to burn up. Cindy and Mike land safely; the rig explodes in the sky, but Canyon escapes before the explosion.

Production

Stuart Gordon had long wanted to direct a space film that adhered to realistic physics in space, noting his irritation that characters in Star Wars moved the same on planets as on spaceships. Gordon worked with writer Ted Mann on the story outline, with Mann writing the script. The film was inspired by Gordon and Mann's childhood love of space exploration and their interest in showing that human colonization of other planets would bring the same corporate greed and corruption left behind on Earth.

Gordon chose a colorful, commercialized look, contrasting with the sterile environments of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He cast Dennis Hopper as John Canyon because Hopper could convey a hardscrabble veteran of life; Hopper welcomed the chance to play a sympathetic character after many villain roles. Gordon credited Hopper with helping get Stephen Dorff cast. To make the character of Cindy less bland, Gordon and Mann admired Debi Mazar and Mann, who had worked with her on Civil Wars, helped cast her.

Ron Houser was initially cast as Captain Macanudo, but Gordon found his performance too over the top. Gordon happened to be staying at the same London hotel as Charles Dance; they met in the lobby and Gordon mentioned the film. Dance asked for the script, called back a week later wanting the role, saying he took it for the sheer fun of it and found it one of the most entertaining scripts he had been offered in years, relishing playing silly material completely straight.