I'm one of those, err, lucky individuals who watched The Star Wars Holiday Special when it originally aired in 1978, but the only part of it I retained any memory of was the animated segment that introduced Boba Fett. My vague recollection of it was that it was quite bizarre-looking and crude. But nostalgia finally got the best of me and I decided to track it down on YouTube (just the cartoon -- I'd rather not see the rest of the special again, based on the summaries I've read). And I was actually pretty impressed by it. Yes, the character designs were rather odd, especially Han, but to my more experienced eye today, they just seem highly stylized, not that much stranger than the kind of ultra-stylized character designs that are commonplace in TV animation today (including Clone Wars, for an apposite example). And what I vaguely recalled as being weird, bouncy animation was actually surprisingly good animation -- exceptionally fluid for TV, and with lots of dynamic motion and expression. I think the reason I thought it was so bizarre at the time was that I was used to the much more static animation of Saturday morning cartoons. It did have a lot of bounciness and distortion, but that wasn't unusual in feature animation at the time. And the drawing style was a bit sketchy, but again I chalked that up to a deliberate design choice. (My recollection of the character designs was that they were all unnaturally thin and attenuated, kind of like Peter Chung's design style, but that only applies to Han.)
I also found the planet they visited to be quite an imaginative setting -- like a world covered in oceans of red gelatin or mud or something. The design for the city on the planet was pretty interesting too.
The story's a little basic and sketchy, but not bad. It's actually a decent introduction for Boba Fett, showing him as a devious adversary and foreshadowing his role in the two films to follow. He certainly has more characterization in the cartoon than he had in either of the film sequels.
(I have to wonder, though, if there's a continuity problem in light of the prequel trilogy. I have the impression that R2D2's memories of the PT's events were not wiped, so shouldn't he have recognized Boba Fett's name and armor?)
The music is interesting, based on Williams's score for the first movie but paraphrasing and rearranging elements of it rather than just dropping in the prerecorded cues. I wonder who arranged it (as well as wondering about other credits, like who did the designs, storyboards, and such). As for the acting, it was interesting that they got all the original cast, but they didn't all do a very good job; in particular, Anthony Daniels was reciting the lines with none of the emotion or sense of panic you'd expect from C3PO.
All in all, it was worthwhile to see it again. I'm sure it's the only part of the Holiday Special that can be said about.
I also found the planet they visited to be quite an imaginative setting -- like a world covered in oceans of red gelatin or mud or something. The design for the city on the planet was pretty interesting too.
The story's a little basic and sketchy, but not bad. It's actually a decent introduction for Boba Fett, showing him as a devious adversary and foreshadowing his role in the two films to follow. He certainly has more characterization in the cartoon than he had in either of the film sequels.
(I have to wonder, though, if there's a continuity problem in light of the prequel trilogy. I have the impression that R2D2's memories of the PT's events were not wiped, so shouldn't he have recognized Boba Fett's name and armor?)
The music is interesting, based on Williams's score for the first movie but paraphrasing and rearranging elements of it rather than just dropping in the prerecorded cues. I wonder who arranged it (as well as wondering about other credits, like who did the designs, storyboards, and such). As for the acting, it was interesting that they got all the original cast, but they didn't all do a very good job; in particular, Anthony Daniels was reciting the lines with none of the emotion or sense of panic you'd expect from C3PO.
All in all, it was worthwhile to see it again. I'm sure it's the only part of the Holiday Special that can be said about.
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