‘South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut’ Was Written as a Finale for the Show
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut hit theaters and instantly became the greatest movie musical (that co-stars a dildo-wielding Saddam Hussein) ever made.
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To commemorate the anniversary, a sing-a-long version of the R-rated cartoon was released in multiplexes this week. And shout out to the folks who had to put up with the muffled sounds of fans belting out “Uncle Fucka” while they were trying to watch Inside Out 2 with their children.
What’s truly remarkable about the movie, in retrospect, is that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone originally intended for it to be a climactic end point for the show — a show that has now been on the air for 27 years. Which would explain why the film’s conclusion, including Kenny’s big face reveal, really does feel like an emotional goodbye to the world of South Park.
With South Park’s popularity seemingly “waning” at the time, Parker and Stone wanted the movie “to serve as the series' swan song.” Following a drop in ratings, some media outlets were actually posing the question: “Are South Park’s 15 minutes up?” Entertainment Weekly proclaimed that the third season premiere’s poor reception was proof that the show wasn’t “the pop-culture behemoth it was last year.”
And the critical and commercial failure of BASEketball, which starred Parker and Stone as slackers-turned-sports stars, likely didn’t help matters. “Universal made the mistake of thinking that people would come see us,” Parker explained shortly after the movie tanked. “They don’t give a shit about us. They care about Cartman and Stan and Kyle.”
On the Blu-ray commentary track for Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Parker described how the apparent cultural disinterest in South Park is what motivated them to make the film so epic. “That’s why we had in our heads, alright well no one’s really going to see this, it’s going to be the end of South Park, so let’s just totally do (the movie) the way we want to do (it) and we’ll leave this town with our heads held high.”
“That energy really helped us,” Stone added, “the fact that the press was all against it.”
Parker echoed this sentiment during a 2022 interview with People. “We felt that the show had been dismissed and we weren’t pulling our weight,” he explained. “So, we said, Let’s just do one big fuck off thing that’s crazy, and then we’re out.”
Of course, they weren’t out. The movie completely turned around the public perception of South Park. It was a hit, not only with audiences, but with critics too, eventually earning an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.
Parker later claimed that the movie alone “bought us years of legitimacy.” Just not enough to tempt fate with a BASEketball sequel, I guess.
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