You broke my space laser!

Best Original Song 2025

Oh you Mad scientists are living up to the name! The balls to go out and film in the snow is SO COOL, and I wish more teams would be keen to take a risk like this. Such great use of genre also, being the only first person film I have seen in 48 Hours. Some parts are a little rough around the edges (such as the hilarious green screen), but I think the team knows that, and it adds to the charm of this retro, space laser, james bond loveletter. Surprisingly GREAT looking fake guns, that also stress me out slightly. I was surprised towards the end where he shoots that lady in the face TWICE (there's probably a funny story behind that) and I loved the song in the credits! Reminds me of a spy thriller movie I made with the homies.

On a serious note, because I love this team and want to see them improve, i'm going to list some stuff that I think needs work. Its all friendly, and I'm sure you can handle the crit.
-The punches and kicks feel soft. Either crank those sound effects up, or do the punches and kicks a few more times. Maybe get a dummy. Maybe cut out some frames and speed it up.
-The muzzle flashes could be bigger with a bit more style, and more bass!
-I would love to see some big splatters of fake blood!
-Lean into the parody a bit more (The space laser stuff is SO good, and it works better when its making fun of the tropes, rather than trying to be overly serious)
-cut down the credits, they are like 1 minute long and run at different speeds!

Keep the same intro! Also GREAT poster!!
Keep it up you madlads. Would love to see a feature! Can't wait to see what you make next!

Two genuinely great lines better than any dialogue in Die Another Day so that must be pretty cool for the Mad Scientists to hear if they ever read this. End credits song better than the Sam Smith song from Spectre. Ski chase significantly worse than the one in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but ya can’t win em all and I understand the filmmakers only had 48 hours in which to make this?

I really loved that space laser!

This a perfectly gratuitous 48HOURS film. I would have loved to see it at the finals. The fact that we won't really speaks to how hard a time the judges are having in Ōtautahi this year, with so many good films to choose from.

Space Laser is a big improvement on team Mad Scientists' 2024 film (in which I had a fun cameo). Well done! It's awesome to see a team always stretching itself and moving on to greater things.

Space Laser starts with a found footage film inside a found footage film. How meta! Although it took a rewatch for me to figure this out.

The zoom out from the found phone footage was flawless. The car running off the road was so cool.

I couldn't believe my eyes as I found myself skiing backwards down a mountain, looking up at my pursuers as I shot them with both hands. I wondered if the arms had been rotoscoped out of a first-person shooter computer game. I now know they were green-screen footage of the same arm, flipped to create two arms. Brilliant! The fact that it looked a bit computer-generated just made the sequence so much more fun.

I'd be fascinated to know when and how you filmed the aerial footage of the mountains.

I'm racking my brains trying to figure out if this film contains this year's only possible blowjob reference.

The true miracle of team Mad Scientists is the way you can rally an entire community behind your mad vision. That is the essence of great film-making and you have it in spades. Thanks to your wide collaboration, we got to enjoy some wonderful characters, insane mountain stunts, and a killer rap.

Hell yeah man! If there's anyone ever asks why it's worth coming to the 48 hours heats, I'm gonna die then this movie. You can tell the whole team had such love for the game and just wants to make a wicked film (mission accomplished). The green screen and gun twirls slap so hard. Thanks guys for giving us this movie.

MAD SCIENTISTS have truly taken their incredibly BONKERS style and taken it to new heights!! The green screen hands going backwards down the mountain was certainly an audience highlight, and this action packed adventure was as wonderful as your previous efforts.

We did get a little lost on how the 'found footage' aspect played into the story (seemed more like just a POV of someone, took a couple watches to take it all in) and while it would have been a worthy shortlist this year it jussstttt got beat out by some films that had a bit more structure and clearer storytelling.

THE BEST THING: Great action, awesome aerial shots and a fun closing credits song.
THE NEXT THING: Mad Scientists has it in them to give us a story about a character that we truly want to root for, I want to connect with and be able to follow a super clear character arc amongst the wacky and wild - if you can pull that off, it'll take you to even newer heights! Bravo.

The song "I really loved that space laser, space laser, space laser..." is still stuck in my head days later.

This movie fixed my space laser ;)

HARDCORE HENRY meets KINGSMEN meets A MASSIVE TIME CONSTRAINT!

I was super satisfied by this; lots of inventive action which is sometimes let down a little by the edit.

Fully committed performances and production design.

I wanna know what makes Michael Adams tick... I want to know more about him!