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The Star Wars Christmas Special Still Exists
rapturizer noted the critical news that "Fans of "Star Wars" have a chance to see a free screening of the notoriously bad 'Star Wars Holiday Special' next week in Minneapolis."
Nothing brings out the Christmas spirit like watching what may very well be the worst TV ever produced. Sadly however, I'm not sure that this is the worst *Star Wars* merch ever made.
The only thing worse than watching the special, is watching it on VHS.
...and I have to say that if I went to free screening of it, I would demand a full refund.
My KIDS won't even watch it, and that's saying something.
Wonderful article. NOT! No mention of what theater? When? No linky to information that would let people know WHY this is so bad? Pfeh!
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
For those of you awaking in your tauntaun right now on Hoth (aka Minneapolis), here's the link.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
http://xkcd.com/653/
Santa shot first!
http://xkcd.com/653/
For those of you awaking in your tauntaun right now on Hoth (aka Minneapolis), here's the link.
Indeed, from your link:
Film Board director of services Chris Grap is a fan of bad movies. Grap says he "couldn't believe" the "Star Wars Holiday Special" existed. The plot involves Han Solo trying to get Chewbacca the Wookie back to his home planet to celebrate Life Day. The cast includes original "Star Wars" actors as well as Bea Arthur, Art Carney and Harvey Korman.
Keep in mind that this is the birthplace of MST3K and a great time in Minneapolis is a case of beer and one really bad movie with your friends. Slightly offtopic but five episodes of MST3K are on Hulu now.
My work here is dung.
for the notoriously bad prequels
Don't worry, Lucas fixed it up this time. All of the blasters and light-sabers have been replaced by walkie-talkies and Santa shoots first.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcb7VPw59s
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
When I tell people about it, I go on and on and on about how unbelievably bad it is. I insist that it's worse than the worst you can possibly think of and then some. I tell them that it's not one of those things that's so bad that it's good, it's so bad that it's just bad. Really, really, really, really, really bad. Horrible. And not in a way that's funny. It's just bad.
When people I've warned about it end up finally seeing it, they always tell me that my warnings didn't even come close to preparing them for just how bad it actually was.
I'd say that, even if you're a die-hard fan, SWHS is so bad that it's not even worth seeing. I personally can't bring myself to watch it a second time. It's just so freakin' bad.
Do yourself a favour. Stay away from it — far, far away.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
StarWarsHolidaySpecial.com
Fan site about the special...worth checking out for more details on the subject.
For anyone still scratching their heads... here...
For anyone else, congrats on "getting it"
8==8 Bones 8==8
It would be nice if Lucas released a Special Edition of Episode I that had Jar-Jar Binks excised. Or if that's not possible, redub his voice so he sounds normal instead of racist.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Didn't happen...next week? Only a time traveller would get their tenses mixed up like that, therefore:
RODRIGOANDRADE IS A LHC SABOTEUR FROM THE FUTURE! SIEZE HIM!!!
Blank until
Worse than the Kiss movie?
You have no idea. People who say this is the worst TV ever made are NOT exaggerating.
You can't deliberately make something this bad. I don't think you can even accidentally do it again. This is a once in a civilization mass failure that transcends ordinary failure and sets a new standard.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The Star Wars Holiday Special
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
For those of us in the Twin Cities who are more interested in something less... atrociously awful, there's the Klingon Christmas Carol being performed right now at Mixed Blood!
http://www.cbtheatre.org/KCC2009/KCC2009.htm
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Notoriously bad?
I actually kind of liked the Star Wars Holiday Special with the, what was it? The Festival of Life? And the Wookie family. I thought it was pretty neat, personally. I don't know why everyone is so down on it.
Especially in contrast to the new movies.
Not really the new Star Wars movies. Like, Twilight. That had to be, by a wide margin, the worst film I have ever seen. That anyone has ever seen. Acting, directing, writing. All of it was excruciatingly bad. I really don't know why people are so down on this holiday special thing when there are much worse films out there.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
For those of you awaking in your tauntaun right now
As a matter of fact, I was.
Reply to That ||
Whenever I try to share some of my Malla and Lumpy centric Star Wars fanfic with people, they always turn me down and say something like, "The Star Wars Christmas Special doesn't exist, George Lucas even said so," or, "The events of the Christmas Special aren't canonical." Well, who's laughing now, fuckers?
This might be just whats needed to eliminate fans that somehow survived the prequels!
per dolorem ad astra
OK, go find a copy of Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and listen to it 20 times in a row.
It's *that* bad.
There is a fan edit which is very well done and does exactly what you are asking for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Edit [wikipedia.org]
People are down on it not because of objective badness, but because of badness tied to a well-loved series.
Most sane people that aren't teenaged girls didn't expect much from Twilight, and it wasn't an established movie series.
Star Wars, however, was an established canon that was well-loved, and the holiday special was awful. It was a disappointment.
That's all it is really.
However, I have no desire to venture past the couple of youtube clips for the Star Wars Christmas Special.
Can it really be worse than Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor?
No, it's not that bad. Those were trying to be serious and lacked in almost every department.
The Star Wars Holiday Special was meant to be a holiday song & dance special, set with Star Wars characters. The plot is reasonable for kids and the acts are amusing. There's even the introduction of Boba Fett, with more characterization of the character than in either ESB or ROJ. There is imagination portrayed in most of the costumes and acts acts and especially the Wookie house set (a 1970's dream home hung a mile high up a tree), but it's certainly targeted at the 4-10 year old audience it was written for (it's designed that way because it's a home they can feel comfortable with).
If you want it to be a serious entry in the Star Wars saga, you'll of course be seriously disappointed. But that would be missing the point entirely - this is the Carol Burnette show set on Kashyyk meant to make kids happy and drive home the point that it's important to be with family on the holidays. If there's no room in your heart for such a use of the Star Wars Universe, then holiday fare from Dickens and Geisel would be recommended viewing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The answer is none. None more bad.
Excerpt from Interview:
MAXIM: "Any plans for a Special Edition of the Holiday Special?"
George Lucas: [hangs head] "Right. That's one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it."
Hehe.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If further reinforcement is needed, I loaned my VHS copy to a coworker. It literally drove him to drink - he was a teetotaler until he'd sat through the Holiday Special.
It is far, far worse than the Ewok movies.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
There are six legitimate installments of Star Wars canon. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Caravan of Courage, The Battle for Endor, and The Star Wars Christmas Special.
That show is touched by darkness, Ambassador.
I see it as a blemish that grew over time.
I could warn you, of course, but you would not listen.
I could kill you, but someone else would watch it in your place.
So, I do the only thing I can. I go.
Oh, if it was a review you wanted? A word or two, about the special itself?
Well, take this, for what little it will profit you.
As I look at you, I see a great hand reaching out of the darkness, trying to blot out the moviescreen.
The hand is your hand.
And I hear sounds--the sounds of billions of people calling your name, telling you "NO!! DON'T LOOK!! CLOSE YOUR EYES!!!"
Although I guess if the point is to emphasize just how bad the Star Wars Holiday Special really was, then that may have helped slightly. Though if it is so bad you aren't willing to give a summary that is worth squat, then why even put it on the front page?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Racist? I didn't realize you could be racist against a fictional species. I mean, I don't think Gungans even have race; they all seem to have the same basic body type and skin color. Jar Jar says "meesa" a lot, but I assumed that was brain damage.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's a trap!
I saw this "live" when first broadcast. I was 6. I had the Star Wars movie soundtrack on LP record which I listened to many, many times, because we had no way of watching the actual movie unless it was playing at a theater.
So the TV show was just a dose of that universe for me at that age, like throwing a puppy a bone. So of course I liked it - I just wanted to see those characters, regardless of what they were doing.
But here's the odd part. Where I was so young when I saw that, and only saw it once, I would have these vague memories about watching Star Wars on TV. I knew that couldn't be, because Star Wars was never on TV, and because there were specific scenes I remembered that weren't even from the movie. Fairly recently (like in the last 5 years or so) I saw a reference to that special (probably here on Slashdot) and then it all fell in place.
And yes, it really sucked bad. Like a bad blend of taking fictional characters and pulling them into a contemporary environment (1978). It totally destroyed the illusion that so many movie exist to create. Like watching R2D2's top removed and see some little guy lifted out.
Better known as 318230.
Are you a performance artist trying to conclusively prove that there is no absolute standard for "bad" in matters of taste? I mean if we can't all agree that the Star Wars Holiday Special is perhaps the most purely horrible, terrible, awful, so awful it sort of transcends itself and can be enjoyed ironically thing in the known universe of culture, then I have little hope for our species.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I've seen it. It's bad. Really bad. I think this is what drove Carrie Fisher to do drugs. She was in it, and she had to say the lines, and the lines were bad even by Lucas standards, and I cringed with every word. It was torture by proxy; what Jabba did to Leia was nothing compared to what Lucas did to Fisher in that special...
The only way Lucas could fix this is by digitally replacing it with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Metropolis was a silent film, there are no "subtitles".
So, at what point did you realize this show wasn't so bad?
I dunno boss, I hosted a screening party for this last week and while the best we could say about it was that it was educational about 70s variety shows, and actually is pretty heavy for little kids, it really doesn't pass muster as "entertainment."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Woosh? Gungans (particularly their Ebonics) showed George Lucas racist sentiments toward uneducated black Americans.
I've never heard of this before. Who came up with that bullshit interpretation?
What's next? Because Yoda doesn't speak with correct grammar he's somehow racist too?
Give me a break.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
And I’m not even sure it’s what’s depicted in this image here: ^^
http://pictureisunrelated.com/2009/09/15/if-i-have-to-live-with-this-image-so-do-you/
(As it says: If I have to live with this image, so do you. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You mean what the term “EPIC FAIL” was invented for, before it was used for every dumb shit? ^^
No wait, I have a new term for a failure of *biblical* proportions:
BIBLIC FAIL! — When something is as bad as *half the world* falling for a fantasy story book, believing it is real, and adjusting their whole lives to it for thousands of years! ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
OMG, yes. Yes it really is worse. I mean, I was able to sit through Ewoks: Battle for Endor all the way through. I couldn't finish watching the Christmas special. I would liken it to being digested in the sarlacc pit (pre-special edition) for thousands of years.
"Battle for Endor" - you mean the second half of "Return of the Jedi"?
Bow-ties are cool.
You can't jeer, you can't make comments - you're too busy laughing. It's that bad.
No, the laughter is false, just intended to cover the noise of the weeping. It's that bad.
Bow-ties are cool.
No I'm not joking. I honestly do not see the racial connection with Jar Jar.
And the fact that I don't see racism everywhere is no reason to try and insult me.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You made me curious. Now, I really have to see it!
I know. That's one of the problems with warning people. It piques their curiosity. Let me try one last time to save you, however. Just because I'm a good person.
You see, there are movies that are bad.
There are movies that are so bad, they're good.
There are movies that are so bad they go past good and are bad again.
There are movies that are so bad they go past good and bad again, and are amazingly awesome (ex. Toxic Avenger).
Then there are movies that are so unbelievably bad they go past bad, good, bad again, and amazingly awesome, landing ultimately on so horrid that no one, no matter how curious, should ever see them.
Now, if you took all of the movies in that last category and ranked them from "best" (for lack of a better word) to worst, SWHS but be dead last.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
As one of those who actually saw the Christmas special when broadcast, I believe I should point out a factor in the show's defense: in 1978, ALL television oriented toward kids was execrable. The golden years of animation were long gone, and Sid and Marty Croft were churning out stuff like "Electra-Woman and Dyna-Girl". And guess what? We kids loved it all. That's why there is such nostalgia for that crap, but it's based on memories of happiness, not of the shows. For most people who say "I LOVED that show when I was a kid!", they haven't seen the show with adult eyes. I once tried watching the original Speed Racer and I couldn't make it 5 minutes.
That's why the Star Wars special has such a bad rap - because it's, well, Star Wars, a lot more people have sought it out to watch it. So it's not that the Christmas Special was any worse or better than its contemporaries, but that so many more people have seen how awful it is and assume it's unique - believe me, it wasn't.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The flying master of Anakin (don't remember his name now) a "troyariam" or something like this, was criticized because racism against jews. (for his nose, and that he always wanted money).
I think racism in this case ir like p0rn, it is in the eye of the observer.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
An Oyveyian.
And the fact that I don't see racism everywhere is no reason to try and insult me."
I agree. I mean, no, I didn't car for JJ either, but, I never saw anything racist about him either. I think some people just go outta their way trying to see racism in everything, and with everyone trying to not see color, I think trying to find it in everything hinders that cause.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I love Slashdot. Where else can the cultural merits of the Star Wars Holiday Special be compared to transcendental truth and the entire hope of a species?
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Luke, be a Jedi toniiiiiight, just be a Jedi toniiiiiight.....
(I know it's not from the SWHS, but I'm sure people on /. will know it)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So this is why the Empire wanted to kill the Rebels.... Shit, I've been rooting for the wrong side the whole damn time!
Sometimes, the answer is to just destroy it all.