With Star Wars: The Force Awakens coming out in just a few days, it is important to remember a long time ago in a CBS studio far, far away, when a bunch of variety TV people created the Star Wars Holiday Special . It just might be the worst content ever created for television. Honestly.
The special is so bad that it actually makes some people look fondly upon the Star Wars prequels in comparison. The only somewhat redeeming quality within the entire special is the Boba Fett-centered cartoon, which most Star Wars fans consider at least decent. That is not all that surprising, considering Boba Fett is one of the most popular characters in the entire franchise.
Funny or Die’s hypothetical #StarWars holiday special looks as good as the actual ones: https://t.co/FSYhZH3EDM pic.twitter.com/zvuJXv76Eb
— Vulture (@vulture) December 11, 2015
For many years, the Star Wars Holiday Special has been looked at as the biggest embarrassment of the franchise and has even been criticized by George Lucas. For many years, George Lucas tried to bury the special and make sure it was never released to the public, but by the early 1990s, VHS recordings of the special surfaced just in time for a whole new generation of fans to laugh and cringe at it. George Lucas gets a lot of flack from a lot of hardcore fans for being the creative force behind the CGI-filled Star Wars prequels, but in the case of The Star Wars Holiday Special, he has tried to wipe his hands clean of it. In a May 2005 interview with Static Multimedia , George Lucas did not speak fondly of the special and distanced himself from the project, putting most of it on variety TV people.
“The special from 1978 really didn’t have much to do with us, you know. I can’t remember what network it was on, but it was a thing that they did. We kind of let them do it. It was done by… I can’t even remember who the group was, but they were variety TV guys. We let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences.”
Check out the new #StarWars hypothetical holiday special thanks to @funnyordie : https://t.co/tcDrNXHJfT pic.twitter.com/LXPoBTMeHF
— Nerdist (@nerdist) December 12, 2015
This past Monday night, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a huge red carpet world premiere in Los Angeles and hosted more than 5,000 guests. Many of the fortunate people that went to the premiere came out on social media critically praising the movie, which will probably just make the rest of us that weren’t there want to see the movie that much more. Luckily for us, the gang over at Funny or Die has whet our appetite this holiday season with a Force Awakens parody version of the Star Wars Holiday Special called “The Hypothetical Star Wars Holiday Special.”
In the familiar opening Star Wars title crawl, it is comically listed as “Episode VI.V,” and takes place on Droid Day. The 10-minute short is based on a lot of the internet rumors and speculation surrounding Star Wars: The Force Awakens and even features actors Jason Alexander and Keith David.
So will this parody of the Star Wars Holiday Special hold you over until you can see Star Wars: The Force Awakens this Thursday night? Is that “Droid Day” song by the band Train going to be stuck in your head all week? Do you think the Funny or Die crew did any better than CBS did with the original Star Wars Holiday Special , or do you think they should have just left it alone and let it stay in the 1970s?
[Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images]