Star Wars Holiday Special Review
Leia, who for reasons unknown to us, was high for most of the Holiday Special.
The Star Wars Holiday Special has a special place in the hearts of all Star Wars fans. That place must be some mouldy corner, best to be left alone.
The special launched its way onto Television in 1978 and was shown once, only once. After that everyone had had enough, including George Lucas, who tried to have it destroyed. Luckily he did not succeed, so there are copies of the special around for future generations to learn from.
It was essentially a TV movie, however there were random irrelevant cut scenes, such as a Jefferson Starship performance, dotted throughout it. Another one consisted of five minutes of pillow talk between a chair and Chewbacca’s father. Yeah, it was great.
The whole affair had little in the way of a plot. It was pretty much just Han and Chewie being late for a Lifeday (read: Christmas) celebration at Chewie’s house, and the viewers being shown the anguish this put the great Wookiees family in. This anguish was fairly hard to understand, since the Wookiees only speak Shyriiwook, their language of grunts and groans, which most of us humans do not understand.
At no point during the special was any of the cinematic magic which made Star Wars Star Wars exhibited. All in all it was a long, drawn out, collection of skits, which had no entertainment value whatsoever. Most of the spectacle has been erased from Star Wars canon, however some has been for inconceivable reasons referenced in other licensed productions.
This includes Star Wars Galaxies, which made a yearly lifeday celebration which included many of the characters from the special into the game. It even awarded players with some of the items, such as the pillow-talking chair complete with in-game sound effects, as well as paintings of scenes from the Special. Hopefully where the developers of Galaxies couldn’t, those of SWTOR will be able to restrain themselves and not include anything originating from the monstrosity that is the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Overall, the Star Wars Holiday Special earns a 1/10 rating. It is surely a product of the Dark Side of the Force. Its solo point is due to the mildly entertaining cartoon which appears half way through, which is the first time we are introduced to Boba Fett, even though he is riding a dinosaur and wielding a tuning fork.
Following is a video which should save you from watching the special yourself by summing up the whole thing in five minutes:
