Star Wars Wednesday: The Star Wars Holiday Special

The Star Wars Holiday Special

          Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Star Wars Wednesday! And wouldn’t you know it, we’ve reached our first ever new Star Wars movie since I started this series! The Last Jedi is premiering tomorrow night, and I’m just so excited to see it that I’m gonna spend this article looking at old stills from the trailers and talking about what I can’t wait to see in the movie! Let’s go!

          I can’t wait to see this!

          This part looks amazing!

          That’s...from the wrong movie, but I’m excited for that too.

          Ugh, I guess I’ve gotta go through with what I promised last time, don’t I? Well, I’ll have a bit of extra Last Jedi stuff at the end of the article for any of you hoping to hear about that. But for now, in the spirit of the holiday season, let’s take a look at the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

          The Holiday Special is almost universally considered to be the absolute pinnacle of terrible Star Wars stuff, and I’m inclined to agree. Attack of the Clones looks like Shakespeare after witnessing this atrocity. It ranks alongside stuff like The Room and Birdemic in sheer “what the hell were they smoking!?”-ness. The plot flies all over the place, the new characters are awful, the original cast members are barely there, and it goes on for two whole hours. In layman’s terms, it isn’t exactly on par with Empire Strikes Back.

          But before we get started, to truly appreciate the special a little history is needed. The Holiday Special aired on November 17, 1978, just over a year after A New Hope took the world by storm. Because of this, it’s actually the first time the entire original cast ever returned as their characters. And yes, they got everybody roped into this. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and even James Earl Jones all reprised their roles (albeit briefly, as we’ll soon discover) for this Christmas special. In addition to them, several stars from the late 70’s were also included, such as Harvey Korman, Art Carney, the band Jefferson Starship, and even Golden Girls alumni Bea Arthur. With a cast like that, how could this possibly fail?

Since it first aired the special has never returned to TV, nor has it ever been officially released on any form of home entertainment. George Lucas has even gone on record saying that if he had the time and a sledgehammer he’d like to track down every copy of the special and destroy it. Because of this rarity and notoriousness, the special became something of a legend among Star Wars fans in the pre-internet age. Somewhat akin to telling stories of ghosts and Sasquatch around campfires, those who had managed to track down rare copies of the special provided by those lucky enough to have taped the thing on its single airdate would tell tales of just how awful it is. This would in turn pique the curiosity of those who hadn’t seen it, leading them to begin their own hunts for the mythical tapes.

But now that online video sharing is a thing the Holiday Special has been available in various forms on YouTube for years now, daring anyone brave or fool enough to witness the horror in person. So that’s what we’re gonna be looking at today! Here’s a link if you want to watch along, but be forewarned: you’ll never get these two hours back.

Before we go off to see what will hopefully be one of the best Star Wars movies ever, it’s time to take a look at the absolute bottom of the barrel for the franchise. This is the Star Wars Holiday Special.

The special begins with Han and Chewie fleeing from Star Destroyers in the Falcon. Han mentions that they’re on the way to Kashyyyk to celebrate the Wookiee holiday of “Life Day” with Chewie’s family. What’s Life Day? Good question! Despite the special going on for an hour and a half, the holiday is never explained! What’s the history of it? What are some of the traditions? Is it an intergalactic holiday or is it just for the Wookiees? None of it is ever explained! I have to assume it’s similar to Christmas based on the few examples we see throughout the special, but I wouldn’t know.

We leave Han before Harrison Ford has a chance to ask for more money, arriving at a Ralph McQuarrie matte painting of what I can only assume is Chewie’s house. There we meet his family: his wife Malla, his father Itchy, and his son Lumpy. We’ll be spending most of the special with them.

There’s just one teensy-weensy problem with this: THEY’RE ALL WOOKIEES AND THEY HAVE NO SUBTITLES.

Basically the entire first third of the special is just the Wookiee family roaring at each other, and since whoever wrote this thing had the stroke of genius to not include subtitles to understand what they’re saying, a good chunk of the story is attempted to be told through mime and Wookiee sounds. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t really work. You’re just watching walking carpets of various size and colour screaming at each other for what feels like an eternity as the special progresses at a snail’s pace. Aren’t you glad you decided to spend time out of your life to watch this?

Thankfully, we don’t spend all our time with the Wookiees. The other thing people remember the Holiday Special for is how it attempted to be a variety show of sorts. The story often cuts out for random vignettes, sequences or songs, most of them unrelated to the main plot. Again, it doesn’t really work. It feels less like a variety show and more like the special had really bad ADD and forgot to take its pills. It jumps from one random scene completely unrelated to the Life Day story to another with little in ways of transitions, leaving everything feeling disjointed and poorly put together, almost like the segments are more distractions from the main plot instead of additions to it.

Case in point: the first weird segment. Itchy decides to show Lumpy a holovid of space ballet. After the aliens wearing Party City’s finest costumes finish their dance, the segment ends and it’s never mentioned again. Like I said, it feels more like a distraction than anything.

Next, Malla and Itchy decide to contact Luke Skywalker. He responds, looking…

…different.

Anyways, it turns out that Han and Chewie are running late, and the family wants to know if he left on time. We wouldn’t have known this if Luke hadn’t explained it for us, so it’s nice to have some clarity. Luke says he’s sure they just had to make a detour, and then leaves.

Mark Hamill’s only onscreen for 2 minutes at most, and that’s a trend you’ll be seeing for all the main cast. Hamill doesn’t return until the last 5 minutes. Carrie Fisher and Anthony Daniels appear briefly, before following Mark’s example and departing until the end. Harrison Ford has a quick scene that’s essentially a retread of the opening, and then (you guessed it!) doesn’t return until the end. And finally, James Earl Jones is in this so little that you’d be forgiven if you thought he wasn’t in it at all. I guess they all asked for too much money, but when you see the title “Star Wars Holiday Special” and you see the main cast is involved, you expect to see the main cast for more than a small fraction of time!

So we’re back to watching the Wookiees some more, as Malla turns on the TV and watches a cooking show, starring Harvey Korman as the thing that chases you in your nightmares.

After what feels like hours of repeating “Stir, whip, stir, whip, whip, whip, stir!” by Korman, Art Carney shows up to keep the Wookiees company and give them some Life Day presents. Itchy receives a “holographic wow”, which turns out to be a virtual reality helmet that allows him to watch a video of a scantily clad woman seductively telling him about how excited he is.

Yep. For the longest time this special canonized porn into the Star Wars galaxy. I’d go into this further, but I’d like to keep this site as PG-13 as possible.

So after that happens, the Empire arrives in search of Chewie. Carney somehow manages to distract them by playing a Jefferson Starship music video (which we have to watch in full of course), giving Lumpy time to watch a cartoon.

The cartoon is one of the only things widely remembered from the special for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s the only time in the entire special we get to see the main cast actually going on an adventure, albeit with an incredibly stupid story and some of the worst 2-D animation you’ll ever see.

Secondly, the cartoon marks the first ever appearance of Boba Fett in an official Star Wars product. Before Empire Strikes Back or any of the seemingly endless amount of books written about him, Fett got his start here in the Holiday Special. Here he attempts to trap the crew and lead them to the Empire, using Han as bait. The plan doesn’t work, and the cartoon ends. How exciting.

It’s at this point I’m pretty sure the writers had officially run out of ideas for the main Wookiee plot, because from here until the last 5 minutes or so is basically just random vignettes with no significance to the actual plot. Lumpy opens his present from Art Carney, and discovers he has to put it together. Included is an instructional video starring Harvey Korman as a robot…I think, teaching him how to build his toy.

And yes, we get to watch the entire instructional video about how to build a machine that doesn’t actually exist. Believe me, it’s as riveting as it sounds.

Almost immediately after that we cut to “Life on Tatooine”, where we see Bea Arthur as the bartender for a cantina. It turns out the Empire has shut her place down, and she sings a long, cheesy song about how sad she is about it. It’s extremely clunky, annoying, has no bearing on anything that has already happened or will happen after, and is usually the point where most jump ship if they haven’t already.

When the song ends Han and Chewie finally arrive at the house, scaring off the Imperials and reuniting with the family. Han departs to move the Falcon, and the Wookiees begin what I can only assume is a traditional Life Day passage. I wouldn’t know, considering the holiday is never explained. They don red robes, hold snowglobes up in the air, and walk through space into a bright white light.

Sure, why not. This is hardly the strangest thing we’ve seen from this special after all.

They arrive at a gathering of equally red robed Wookiees, and the main cast is all there too. Look how happy Harrison Ford is!

Leia sings a Life Day song to the tune of the Star Wars main theme, and the special finally ends with (what else?) clips from A New Hope, reminding you that you could’ve spent the last 2 hours watching that instead of this travesty.

And that’s thankfully the end of it. Trust me when I say the Star Wars Holiday Special is well deserving of its title as the worst Star Wars product ever created. It’s weird, it’s nonsensical, you can’t even understand most of the dialogue, the main cast is nowhere to be seen 95% of the time, and despite being the same length of the average Star Wars movie, by the time you get to the last third you feel like you’ve been watching it for months.

But just like Christmas with the Stars, I feel that the Holiday Special is something every big Star Wars fan needs to experience at least once. It truly is something that needs to be seen to be believed, and with the advent of the internet, you don’t need to go on a quest of self-discovery to track down a copy anymore. My advice? Grab some friends, put on your favourite ugly holiday sweater and get ready to laugh your heads off. You’ll have a blast.

Happy Life Day, everyone!

THE LAST JEDI

As promised, with The Last Jedi coming out tomorrow, here’s a small tip as well as when you can expect more movie-based content from me!

First of all, considering that this is easily the biggest movie of the year, I’d recommend that if you plan on seeing the movie on opening weekend and really care about not being spoiled, avoid the internet like the plague in the coming days. I’ll be going dark on all social media from now until after I see the movie, and I’d recommend you do the same.

The biggest dangers are comment sections, social media and so on. Trolls are well known for posting spoilers in unrelated threads and hashtags, so I’d recommend just playing it as safe as possible if spoilers are something you really care about.

And secondly, I’ll be doing two Last Jedi themed articles in the coming week. First, Friday morning I’ll be writing and posting a spoiler-free review of the movie, where I’ll go over what I did and didn’t like in the more technical terms of story, visuals, music and so on. Secondly, you’ll be getting a bonus Star Wars Wednesday next week, where I’ll be going over all the major spoilers and plot points, where I think the story’s gonna go from here, and anything else I want to talk about that won’t fit in the review.

As always, don’t get cocky with spoilers, drive safely to the movie theatre, and enjoy the show!