Holiday Special

Let's talk about the Holiday Special.

Chewie's relatives are called "Itchy" and "Lumpy". That sounds like fucking chicken pox. They couldn't have found better names? Itchy and Lumpy?

The various acts. Harvey Korman comes on in drag and does a cookery show, while waving his hips around and saying "whip", "beat". Ooooookaaaay. There's an acrobat show that goes on too long. There's Itchy's fantasy. He watches this thing in which this woman with bad hair appears (judging by the weird hair I'd guess she was a member of the Jedi council) and she says she's his fantasy and that he should enjoy her. And she sings. And it goes on and on and it's fucking painful. And I was thinking "Why am I watching this? I hope nobody knows I'm watching this". Harvey Korman does an act where he's an android that keeps malfunctioning. This too goes on too long. Ok. A band appears and sings, for no apparent reason, and they sure don't seem very Star Wars. Oh god, there's the Tatooine segment. First we have deleted footage from ANH. Cool, interesting to see. But then we go inside the cantina and we have Harvey Korman trying to get into Bea Arthur's pants while pouring drinks into the top of his head. Until I saw the Holiday special I didn't know Harvey Korman could be so disturbing -three fucking roles. Then things get worse, because the empire declares a curfew and Bea Arthur starts singing. I was thinking "If she says 'friend' one more time I'll scream."

There's the cartoon, which is ok. Boba Fett's voice is done very well. But we also have Darth Vader telling us that Boba Fett is the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, which is like saying "Yeah kids, this guy is the coolest!" The beginning of the Boba Fett cult, obviously.

There's a cut clip from ANH of Vader and imperial officer Chief Bast in the death star, and it's cool to see ANH deleted scenes. It's long overdue Lucas put out a dvd with all ANH's deleted scenes. So many movies have tons of deleted scenes on the special features and ANH's deleted scenes include some very significant stuff. They should be on the dvd, not just some of them on a computer disc put out over a decade ago.

I don't mind the wookiees. It's fun to see them going around growling while acting like ordinary people. The little wookiee kid is cute. But the inside of their house is very 20th century American and they have a normal life with all mod cons, and this doesn't fit for wookiees. The films made an effort to make aliens alien, this is failing at that.

Finally we have the wookiees all walking through space (wtf?) to some magical place and Leia sings. What are wookiees wearing clothes for? Why are they walking through space? What's this whole magical thing? Is this Star Wars?

Does anybody have any idea how much Lucas originated the story? I've heard conflicting accounts -that he wrote the original story or that he just gave story ideas. Did he come up with the names Itchy and Lumpy? Was it his idea for the wookiee house interior and life to be so normal 20th century Earth? Who thought up the walking through space bit?

Anyway, it's bizarre and much of it is quite hard to watch. You wonder what they were thinking. I'd really like to hear from all the people behind it what their intentions were. One thing I read is that they thought they had to disguise the fact that they had a story about creatures who don't really talk so they thought they had to put in song and dance etc stuff to disguise it.

New scene added to the BluRay Return of the Jedi special edition:

Luke: Leia, do you remember the Holiday Special, the one from 1978?

Leia: Just memories, it died while I was very young. Everyone seemed so sad when we watched it.

Luke: I have no memory of the Holiday Special.

(George Lucas DVD commentary): Now I don't have to hear crap from the fans about Leia remembering her mother, cause I know I f-d up the whole plot point up in Episode III. Now they are talking about the Holiday Special instead.

SilverWook said:

"Itchy" and "Lumpy" are nicknames, just like "Chewie" is. Look it up!

There wasn't a whole lot of canon on Wookiees back in 1978.  But Chewie isn't a total primitive as originally conceived, and it's silly to assume Wookiees don't have the basic comforts of home.

I don't know of any 20th century dwellings that look like that, and happen to be in the top of giant trees though. (Nor do I know of anyone who had holographic displays, video communications, or virtual reality porn devices in their homes at the time.)

Ralph McQuarrie designed the Wookiee home, so blame him. ;)

The Wookiees all wear red gowns at the end to conceal the fact they only made  new costumes for Chewie's family. In fact, all the extras are wearing modified Don Post Chewie masks!

No major network or studio would shoot a tv special on U-matic in 1978. It was probably one-inch broadcast tape on a reel. U-matic was what colleges and cable access channels once used because it was cheaper than most broadcast gear. Some news broadcasts used it early on for it's portability in the field.

"Itchy" and "Lumpy" are nicknames, just like "Chewie" is. Look it up!

I know full well that they're nicknames. So what. That doesn't mitigate the awfulness of them. Also, you have to go outside the Holiday Special to find out that they're nicknames. And you can have one silly nickname like "Chewie" and pass it off as a coincidence (in-universe) that it sounds like a word and that it sounds a bit silly, but when you have a whole dose of them you can't escape the silliness. And "itchy" and "lumpy" sounds like a disease. I don't know WHAT they were thinking. And when all's said and done, we have a Holiday Special in which Chewbacca's relatives are named Itchy and Lumpy.

But Chewie isn't a total primitive as originally conceived, and it's silly to assume Wookiees don't have the basic comforts of home.

I made no "silly" assumptions. It's inappropriate for such a species to be portrayed as having such normal earthlike home life. If they have "comforts of home", let those comforts be a bit more alien in style and in a style more appropriate  for a species that lives in trees, wears no clothes and talks in growls. They made wookiees too much like modern day earth people. Epic fail. Worthy of the prequels, which had all sorts of aliens coming off like they were just humans in costumes/makeup. 

I don't know of any 20th century dwellings that look like that, and happen to be in the top of giant trees though. (Nor do I know of anyone who had holographic displays, video communications, or virtual reality porn devices in their homes at the time.)

I made it clear I was talking about the INTERIOR of the home, not the exterior, so the fact that it's in a giant tree is irrelevant (also, btw, really weak exterior painting, didn't look real at all). And I've seen plenty 20th century homes with interiors just like that. As for holographic displays, vid communications and virtual reality porn devices, well, if the home is going to be portrayed as being up to Star Wars general tech level then you'd expect there to be at least some high tech stuff in it, but the presence of that stuff does not change the overall feel of it being very 20th century American.

Ralph McQuarrie designed the Wookiee home, so blame him. ;)

Did he design the interior?

skyjedi2005 said:

Did you know they spent about a million dollars on the frickin thing and did'nt even shoot it on film as far as i have read.  They shot it on u-matic studio video tape circa 1978. Thats some quality there,lol.

This special is easily the worst thing George Lucas ever created.  Worse than Howard the Duck, Worse than Jar Jar even.  Worse than Pee Wee herman as a droid on star tours.  That and Captain EO are a bit creepy now knowing they were meant for children.

Unless you have a servere case of nostalgia i also would say stay as far away as possible from the ewok movies and the droids and ewok cartoons.  Can you believe this is all we got after jedi back in the day.  The marvel comic was a couple steps above but was at some point later cancelled.

Can you imagine being a kid and wanting sequels to Return of the Jedi and all you get is this garbage.  At least until Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire came out.

Then you wait 16 years and get served up a disney channel movie of the week like the phantom menace.  What an utter disappointment.  Turning off my brain to the next 2 and enjoying their mind numbing stupidity and action was the only was i could deal with it.  I had to tell myself there are not star wars only something using the name themes and characters poorly.  So i saw menace in theaters once and clones and sith twice only for the epic lightsaber duels that were in hindsight laughable.

If you could mute the horrible wooden and uninteresting dialogue and characters basically you have six hours of wall to wall cgi and frantic action.  The plot threads so thin i'm surprised the films work at all.  They work a whole lot better when filled in by EU comics and novels.  So they throw an EU bandaid over plot and continuity vacuum big enough to fly a death star through.

Also the politics now in the EU are very heavy handed.  They dealt with Terrorism and the war on terror with the vong.  They dealt with Bush in the prequels.  And now the last book was about more politics and religion crap.  Something Outcast or something i can't exactly remember.

The originals had politics too but they were not in your face.  It was more your standard revoltionary war style story.

Having Hayden deliver the bushism in Epsiode III made me burst out laughing in the theater.  It was so bad i literally could have been rolling on the floor laughing at Lucas.

This special is easily the worst thing George Lucas ever created.  Worse than Howard the Duck, Worse than Jar Jar even.  Worse than Pee Wee herman as a droid on star tours.  That and Captain EO are a bit creepy now knowing they were meant for children.

I'm not sure it is worse than the prequels, because it's not meant to be taken very seriously, but the prequels are supposed to THE Star Wars backstory and actual star wars films. The Holiday Special didn't ruin Star wars. The prequels (along with the SE) did. If Lucas rejected the prequels as much as he rejected the Holiday Special I'd be very happy. I still think the Holiday Special should be available on dvd. It's just like Lucas to keep it unavailable.

Unless you have a servere case of nostalgia i also would say stay as far away as possible from the ewok movies and the droids and ewok cartoons.  Can you believe this is all we got after jedi back in the day.  The marvel comic was a couple steps above but was at some point later cancelled.

The first ewok movie is unbelievable dreadfulness. And Lucas was careful to make it quality unlike the Holiday Special, can you believe. Some quality (as in none). The second movie is pretty lame but significantly better, and Wilford Brimley was great in it. The ewok cartoon is the sort of thing Obama would ban from being used on detainees. It's pure torture. It, along with the ewok book series that predated it, totally warped the ewoks into something they weren't in ROTJ or even the ewok movies. Basically care bears. The droids cartoon was a bit more bearable and had Anthony Daniels' effective talents. The Marvel comics had some pretty dumb stuff, but there was also some good stuff in there too. The Marvel comics are more Star Wars than the 90s/2000s EU.

Turning off my brain to the next 2 and enjoying their mind numbing stupidity and action was the only was i could deal with it. 

I can't say I found much of the action in the later two prequels to be enjoyable. Ok, the Jango-Kenobi fight was ok and the flying car chase had something to it, even if the characters were too blandly unconcerned during it. But otherwise the action in those two films is boring, uninvolving and sometimes really bad. The awful video game droid factory sequence comes to mind. What the FUCK was the point of that? Not to mention the Mustardfart lightsaber battle and the Loony Tunes Emperor-Yoda fight. And the AOTC arena battle was sleep-inducing, other than Windu giving us some relief by chopping Jango's noggin off. 

As for enjoying the stupidity of the films, yeah, that works. I've recently gotten a kick out of watching the films to point and laugh when the lameness hits the screen. Hayden's lines on Mustfart crack me up every time.

Can you imagine being a kid and wanting sequels to Return of the Jedi and all you get is this garbage.  At least until Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire came out.

I wasn't impressed with Dark Empire, though the art in Dark Empire 2 was good. The characterization of the Emperor in the Dark Empire/Empire's End comics was crap. The Emperor just comes off like a dumb cliche villain and looks nothing like himself. The emperor in ROTJ was a cliche villain, but he was a cool and distinctive one, whereas in the Dark Empire comic he was just a totally nondistinctive cliche villain. Heir to Empire was pretty well done, but I have issues with its revisionist take making the empire still be around in significant power after ROTJ. I prefer the Marvel comics even though they're obviously on a lower level. They're more the old tradition, rather than revisionist 90s EU.

Also the politics now in the EU are very heavy handed.  They dealt with Terrorism and the war on terror with the vong.  They dealt with Bush in the prequels.  And now the last book was about more politics and religion crap.  Something Outcast or something i can't exactly remember.

The originals had politics too but they were not in your face.  It was more your standard revoltionary war style story.

Having Hayden deliver the bushism in Epsiode III made me burst out laughing in the theater.  It was so bad i literally could have been rolling on the floor laughing at Lucas

The political stuff in the prequels was idiotic. If Lucas is to be believed, the original trilogy had political stuff in them, but it wasn't heavy-handed. Whereas the prequels' stuff was. It looks to me very like Lucas trying to get points with the critics by doing trendy politics. I bet that political stuff is why ROTS got better reviews. I think Lucas claimed that the political stuff was invented back in the 70s or so and thus wasn't made to refer to modern politics, but the very political lines WERE written in modern times and thus could certainly have been written to refer to modern politics. Plus, whatever story he had way back could have been shifted slightly in writing the films to fit modern politics. 

SilverWook said:

Take heart in the fact that George allegedly hates this as much as some of us hate the Prequels and Special Editions.

So, in a way, it's continued preservation and unauthorized distribution brings balance to the Force. ;)

 If Lucas logged onto and posted on TFN, would they call him a basher since he hates the Holiday Special?:):):)

Well done, grasshopper.

For one cannot truly call themselves a Star Wars fan without staring into the HS abyss at least once.

I stare into the abyss once a year. 

This is going to sound totally off the wall, but I love watching the Holiday Special.  There is no cgi screaming for your attention, minimal EU invasion, and no big attempt to save the galaxy.  Just a small story starring Mark, Harrison, Carrie and supporting cast about the original trilogy heroes trying to help Chewie get home for the holiday.  Exciting and inspiring?  Not really, but despite all the warts (and there are TONS of them), it isn't a bad little waste of an hour every year.