One moment Lucas in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and the next moment he's providing color-commentary to a stupid mockumentary. And Lucas still wants to disown the Holiday special? You've got to decide how you want to treat your creation, seriously or as a punch-line. JRR Tolkien never indulged in self-mockery, for instance. I don't think JK Rowling did either. All you have to do is read some of the scathing reviews of Star Wars in 1977 to understand what kind of uphill battle Lucas had to give what he did some sort of critical respect. You flush that down the toilet by indulging in this sort of thing, IMHO. Remember this is the guy who brought us Jar Jar Binks and Ewoks. He could never completely walk the straight line with his own material even though his fans were trying to treat it as a "serious" modern myth rather than just a popcorn trifle.
All this Joseph Campbell stuff is embellishment after the fact. Star Wars was a popcorn movie. It had no aspirations of being anything more. As a member of the original movie's intended target audience (i.e. someone who was going on 9 when it came out), I think it's ridiculous how self-important, pretentious, and humorless many modern SW fans have gotten. These movies were meant to be fun. Having a sense of humor about yourself is not degrading. Yes, obviously, but as I said, you can't let that matter, and you can't let defensiveness about how you're perceived by others dictate what creative choices you make. Star Wars wouldn't have been any better if it had been shaped solely by some calculated desire to please the critics. Successful works are successful because they're true to themselves, regardless of what the critics say. If they're worthwhile, they'll stand the test of time and the critics will eventually come around. And those fans are being ludicrously pretentious, as I said. Star Wars is something George Lucas made because he couldn't get the movie rights to Flash Gordon. That's all. It's not some sophisticated, intellectual science-fictional allegory that challenges our perceptions about the nature of humanity or the meaning of existence. It's a well-made adventure-serial pastiche. It's an exercise in nostalgia for an earlier era of filmmaking. It works because it gets back to basics. It came along at a time when most cinematic science fiction was somber and intellectual and cold and cynical, and it reminded audiences what it felt like to be a little kid going to the matinee and gaping in awe at the pew-pew spaceships and weird monsters and stalwart heroes rescuing beautiful damsels. Its success was a result of its simplicity and lightness -- and largely a result of its spectacle, since Star Wars revolutionized movie visual effects to a degree that we wouldn't see the like of again until Jurassic Park. It worked because it was fun and lowbrow and uncomplicated and action-driven and everything that the critics derided.
Ask Gary Kurtz and he'll tell you something different about what it was, what it was shaping up to be through Empire, and about how George began to crassly treat it as nothing but a cash-cow.
I don't think that's nearly as bad as the Holiday Special myself, not even close. And what does it permanently destroy your ability to suspend disbelief in? And parody isn't a big deal, certainly not something a film like Star Wars (which was already a huge financial and critical success by the time Hardware Wars was made) needs to worry about. If it weren't such a big deal they probably wouldn't have bothered with the parody. Parodies are more often made out of love/fandom than anything mean-spirited.
Parody and mockumentaries are one thing and not taken seriously. They are suppose to be funny. The Holiday Special wasn't quite a parody, but still silly. The basic problem is that is was just a poorly made concept that fit the times....poorly.
Yeah. The Holiday Special wasn't intended to put down Star Wars, it was intended to capitalize on the success of Star Wars and to support the franchise by keeping in the public eye. It just did so very ineptly. And parodies like Hardware Wars certainly weren't meant as insults, but as affectionate tributes. There absolutely were critics putting the movie down, but they weren't the ones making the parodies.
In today's age, if you could go to the theater and experience "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss three bucks goodbye" there would be lines around the block for weeks. Because today, three bucks is cheap. The soda at the theater might cost you more than that today.
I don't think that, for the life of me, I will ever understand why inflation happens. Why don't prices ever go down again?
I can't remember for sure if I've seen Beneath the Dome, but I love the fact that Lucas and Star Wars are/were actually willing to do stuff like that. I thought it was great that they were willing to work with Family Guy and Robot Chicken for their SW episodes, not a lot of other franchises seem to be willing to do that.
Pricing for anything is based on "what the market can bear" in other words how much a customer can be legally gouged.
I know there's a rule about reviving old threads but since it hasn't been a year yet, I'll take my chances. I just finished it. For the first and only time. It was awful. It could have been somewhat decent if there had been no random segments and a lot less of Chewie's family. But still, I'm glad I watched it. That is all.
I remember watching it when it came out. It's worth the Boba Fett cartoon. That's part of my head canon. Along with Blackstar Warrior, Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell and a Han Solo fan short.
I wonder if Disney owns the Holiday Special? It might be cool to get an official releases as a bonus feature If they ever relies the original 1977 version of star wars on Blu-ray.