Last weekend I was reading about old Fantastic Four movie, no not the one with Jessica Alba but the other one. The one that was so bad Marvel took one look at it and buried it underneath two tonnes of unsold comics. While I was reading the article I was reminded of another forgotten fable that was so terrible that the creator has desperately been trying to airbush it from history ever since it was made. The Star war Christmas special.
Created a year after the hugely successful Star Wars movie it was obviously designed to tie people over until the sequel could be made and it certainly succeeded in that, at least before it was shown . It was broadcast in December 1978 to a largely excited audience but after a few minutes most viewers switched channel because, quite frankly a show about watching paint dry would have had a better plot and featured better acting that the ridiculous drivel that was on display here.
Now I was just a nipper in 1978 so I can’t say that I watched it when it was first shown. Not that I would have been able to even if I wanted to. It never made it to the UK In fact the show was never rebroadcast after its initial airing. Largely because George Lucas hated it. Let me break that down for you. This is the man who ok’ed a cartoon about Ewoks and he hated this. That alone should tell you just how bad this thing was.
The plot of this thing centres around the wookie tradition of “life day” a celebration for which Chewbacca is very eager to get to his (never mentioned before and will never be mentioned again) family. The empire is aware of this fact so they send a squad to Chewbacca’s house to be ready to nab him when he gets home. It should come as no surprise to find out that Chewbacca manages to trick the solders and reunite with his family, he also gets to party down with the Star Wars cast at the end.
In between we get a series of skits which depict various stories. First we get to take another look at the cantina from Star Wars, no there is no explanation for why it looks nothing like it did in the movie and no, there is even less explanations for why the clientele is mainly human this time around while in the movie they are mostly alien. This kind of penny pinching really gets my goat. I mean this was only a year after they made the movie, surely the original set was still available?
There are other skits but the most important one is the reason why anyone cares about this mess. The first appearance of Boba Fett. He appears in a cartoon Chewbacca’s son watches while the imperials are preparing their ambush. Thanks to youtube you can watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmoEJ9HOPeY
Just why the original cast agreed to star in this is anyones guess. I would love to know just what was going on there. Answers on a post card to the usual address please.
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