The “Star Wars” cast doesn’t like to talk about it. Some of them would prefer it did not exist. But to die-hard fans, it’s a rare collectable.
“The Star Wars Holiday Special” was intended to keep fans interested in the franchise, but it stained the “Star Wars” reputation with critics and left obsessed fans wanting more.
Following the wild success of “Star Wars: A New Hope,” (1977) the franchise hoped to maintain interest in the films during the a three year gap between the first installation and next, “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980). The plan: “Star Wars The Holiday Special.”
The brains behind the TV special intended for the show to garner fan attention and whet children’s appetites for “Star Wars” Christmas toys, per NPR.
Lucas — who has since made his disdain for the special clear — begrudgingly signed off on the special but subsequently turned a blind eye and gave his focus to other projects. His limited involvement is, to many, obvious.
“If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it,” George Lucas once declared, per The Chicago Sun-Times.
But this time of commentary would only fuel collectors, who wanted to get their hands on the increasingly-rare special, which was only shown once on live television.
After airing live on Nov. 17, 1978, the holiday special was nearly wiped from existence. It was never released on VHS and only those who recorded it via home video have access to it — sparking a fan craze and accidentally making copies of the show highly collectable, per The Chicago Sun-Times.
Despite sparking a frenzy among die-hard “Star Wars” fans, the general consensus is that “The Star Wars Holiday Special” was a television nightmare.
“The ‘Star Wars’ special sucked so bad,” the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried quipped, “I was amazed that I wasn’t in it,” per Variety. Gottfried had a reputation for starring in poorly-rated movies such as “Problem Child” and “Look Who’s Talking Too.”
Now, a documentary titled “A Disturbance in the Force” pulls back the curtain on how the “Star Wars” franchise stooped to its all-time low and the special’s cult-following that came after.
What is ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’ about?
In short, it’s a weird “Star-Wars” based variety show.
Chewbacca is heading home to visit his family and the story centers around his son, Lumpy. Throughout musical numbers, skits and an animated episode, you get the sense the filmmakers didn’t have a common understanding of the “Star Wars” universe or what type of movie they’d set out to make. It feels disjointed, low-budget and lacks the appeal of the original trilogy.
The show’s biggest boast is likely its star-stacked cast featuring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman. But even the A-list cast can’t win over critics.
“The costumes are cheap, the makeup even cheaper (Hamill has so much caked on he might as well have just stepped off the stage after playing a pantomime dame), nobody is in charge of the script, and in fact there is no script at all for the first 15 minutes or so as Chewbacca’s family mug around their Wookiee home, speaking entirely in impenetrable grunts with no subtitles,” panned the Guardian.
You should hear what the original star wars cast has to say about it:
- “What an embarrassment,” Harrison Ford remarked on the special, per Yahoo Entertainment.
- “That debate was the worst thing I’ve ever seen & I was in ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special,’” Mark Hamill tweeted in 2020.
- Carrie Fisher once revealed she has one of the coveted copies of the special: “I did the voiceover for some of the Star Wars discs or whatever and I made it a condition that he would give me the Star Wars Christmas special so that I could, you know, have something for parties … when I wanted everyone to leave,” per The New York Times.
Still, the special continues to attract die-hard star war fans due to it’s limited availability. Recorded VHS copies of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” are a collector’s treasure. The TV special only aired once, was never officially released on home video and launched into obscurity — inadvertently making the special a novelty item.
When confronted about the holiday special during an interview with Conan O’Brien, Harrison Ford jokes that it “doesn’t exist.” Despite Ford’s best wishes, the special does exist and has become readily available on YouTube.
A spotlight will be placed on the infamous special once again as a new documentary, “A Disturbance in the Force” investigates how the TV movie and evolved into the cult classic it is today.
Documentary, ‘A Disturbance in the Force,’ dives into the hidden history of ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’
Attempting to uncover how “The Star Wars Holiday Special” made it past the writer’s room, onscreen and into cult-fandom are directors Jeremy Coon (“Napoleon Dynamite”) and Steve Kozak (“The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”).
“This documentary dives into the mystery of how it happened and why 45 years later it has become, much to the chagrin of George Lucas, the ultimate cult classic among Star Wars fans,” per the documentary’s website.
“Star Wars” fan or not, the documentary offers humorous insight that will interest even those with a passing interest in the “Star Wars” galaxy, critics claim.
“‘A Disturbance in the Force’ elicits full-throated guffaws as production personnel and innocent-bystander ‘Star Wars’ fans comment on what is widely considered, rightly or wrongly, as an unmitigated disaster,” writes Variety. “You don’t have to be a “Star Wars” diehard to value the documentary for its tea-spilling and gossip-mongering.”
Commentary from Seth Green, Donny Osmond, Weird Al Yankovic, Kevin Smith, Patton Oswalt and Paul Scheer is featured in the documentary.
Watch: Trailer for ‘A Disturbance in the Force’
“A Disturbance in the Force” is available to stream on Apple TV+, YouTube TV and Vudu. Watch the trailer below.