Classics The Holiday Special - General Discussion

Information based on the story is- like the names of Chewie's family. Michael Kube-McDowell wanted to do his own thing with Wookiees- like have them as polygamous- but LFL insisted he stick to the outlines established in the Holiday Special.

 

It shows how bad it is if the guy who approved the Ewoks and Jar Jar and Howard the Duck hates it.

 

ROTFL! This special was absolutely horrible, but I was obsessed with getting my hands on a copy of it for years. I could barely remember it a decade after watching it as a kid and thought that I had imagined it until someone mentioned to me that The Star Wars Holiday Special was the first time we really got to see Boba Fett. "Aha!" I thought, "It does exist!" Thus began my journey to get my hands on a copy of the special which finally ended when I found a decent version on ebay complete with commercials that allowed me to reminisce about the toys, food, etc of that era. Most of the special was bloody horrible with too much make-up on Mark Hamill to cover the accident scars, a very high Princess Leia, some funkadelic segments and Wookie's constantly grunting and groaning at each other with no subtitles for explanation. Yet, I cherish my copy of the special and will never part with it.

 

Couldn't they "Special Edition" the heck out of this and at least make it watchable?

You know, fix the video quality (obviously), add some new special effects, put in subtitles for the Wookiee scenes, stuff like that? Maybe edit out the whole Jefferson Starship part and put it in Special Features.

 

Making it "better" wouldn't really make it better. The charm of the SWHS is the wonderful, cheesy, horrible 70s-ness of it all. "Correcting" that would be like paying Weta to redo the goblin effects in Troll 2, or to CGI in some better birds in Birdemic. The WTF-inducing badness of it is what makes it worth watching.

 

I saw the SW Holiday Special as a kid (when it first came out), but remember nothing about it at all, not even the cartoon. I've subsequently tried watching it on Youtube & the quality is so poor that, IMHO, it's unwatchable.

If they ever release Droids & Ewoks cartoons on DVD/Blu-ray, I would like to see the Boba Fett animated section added to these DVD's as a Special Feature - this would make perfect sense since the animation company that did this Boba Fett sequence was also responsible for the Droids/Ewoks cartoons (Nelvana).

 

I feel proud to say that I have never seen this.

 

I vote for a Holiday Special errr Special Edition. Keep all the Han/Chewie, Luke/R2, Leia/3PO, and Imperial scenes. Keep all the Art Carney scenes(since he interacts with the main characters and Imperials), maybe even keep the Bea Arthur Cantina scene(since we see a lot of familiar alien faces). And of course keep the cartoon.

But cut out all the other crap, the acrobatic aliens, Jefferson Starship, the VR sex thing that Itchy does in the living room in front of his family, on what's basically their Christmas day(crazy old people, sheesh). The cooking show can be entertaining, but I won't miss if cut. And trim down a lot of the Wookie whining scenes.

Put it in a set with the 2 Ewok movies, plus the Muppets SW episode, as well as the Sesame Street episodes that 3PO and R2 appear in.

For special features include the Donnie & Marie SW skit, any SW related segments from the 1977 Oscars, old SW toy commercials. The AFI tribute to GL.

I think that should about cover it(along with the Droids and Ewoks seasons sets), I'll be happy.

 

What was your thoughts on this film? I going to wacht it straight though with out stoping!

 

Cinematic masterpiece.

 

One of the worst things to air on TV ever.

 

Utterly audacious, embarrassing, brilliant, mesmerizing, and god-awful all at the same time. Harvey Korman is completely brilliant, Art Carney is wasted, and Bea Arthur basically plays Maude in space. The music video porn scene between Itchy and Diane Carroll is incredibly disturbing, and Fisher's rousing number at the end of the special is cringe worthy. Unfortunately the whole production is weighed down by a story that goes nowhere... it's just boring.

Make sure if you subject yourself to the Holiday Special that you watch the Rifftrax version.

 

I've only seen parts of it. I can never get through the whole thing.

 

Have never been able to watch the whole thing...

 

Never seen it, never will.

 

Horrible. The animated Boba Fett segment isn't half bad, though--not even Lucas thought so, considering it's included as an easter egg on the saga Blu-ray.

 

Agreed regarding about Chewie's family. Wish we could've seen more of them in the EU. We rarely see Lowbacca no and Mallatobuck and Lumpy where only featured in a few books.

 

With Lowie it was due to Lucas deciding between the Young Jedi Knights books and when the NJO and books set in the prequel era started that he did not want Wookie Jedi. That lasted till season 5 of TCW with Gungi. The droid played buy David Tennant in those episodes states Wookie Jedi are extremely rare.

 

Boba Fett segment is worthwhile. Seeing Ford wince his way through the live action segments is kinda compelling.

 

The Holiday Special was awful, I wish I had heeded the warnings, but my curiosity won out....

 

I agree most of the holiday special was poor (I have extremely dim memories of seeing this on broadcast TV in the late '70's, as a little kid).

However, IMHO the short animated Boba Fett sequence is excellent. It's a special feature/easter egg in the 2011 SW Blu-rays, and used the same animation company (Nelvana?!) that later did the animation for Droids & Ewoks. I also like that Luke's outfit in this is what he wore during the ANH end celebration sequence (yellow jacket, etc.). It's probably one of the first examples out there of SW EU (along with the Marvel SW comic & the Splinter of the Mind's Eye novel by ADF). They also cleaned up the picture/sound significantly for the Blu-ray release, so it looks a lot better than what's seen in the holiday special itself...

 

It's horrible...but for anyone that loves retro shows it's worth watching and the fact that it's Star Wars makes it even better.

 

I watched it for the first time with my sister awhile back, and I have to say the wookie porn apparition lady is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

But is it at horrible as it's built up to be? Certainly not. It's not unwatchable thanks to how easy it is to laugh at how bad most of the segments are. Fortunately it falls into the "so bad it's good" category rather than the "not to be viewed by sentient creatures" filing (reserved for "Rubber" and "Jack and Jill").