The first ‘Star Wars’ generation were treated to ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’ which aired exactly once in 1978 before being vanquished forever more… at least that was George Lucas’ wish, as the campy mess of a TV special was an unintentional lampoon of his massive hit movie.  Featuring appearances by Harvey Korman (in drag and blackface!), Bea Arthur and the band Starship, ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’ was an absolute disaster of Death Star proportions.  (Read my review/recap of it here.)

But why should the old folks have all the fun?  On the eve of the opening of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ which should awaken a whole new wave of ‘Star Wars’ mania, it’s only fitting that this new generation have their own crappy special and the folks at Funny or Die have whooshed to the rescue by cobbling together this new clip which is made strictly based on the (lack of) information about the new movie gleaned from teasers, trailers and internet speculation.

Whereas the first special centered on the Wookie celebration of Life Day, the new one is based on Droid Day, with Kylo Ren desperately trying to get new merchandising goldmine BB-8 back home to his droid family.  The parody nails many moments from the original dead on, albeit in a more compact manner.  Just as the original special was filled with long conversations between Wookies growling, the new one has similar “discussions” between the droids that are strictly composed of beeps with no subtitles to clue in the viewer.

And like the original, the new special includes a vague animated segment (the original marked the first appearance by Boba Fett) and an incongruous musical performance.

You can watch for yourself below.  It helps if you’ve actually forced yourself to sit through the awful original special, which is pretty readily available online.  (Much to Lucas’ chagrin, no doubt.)  But even if you haven’t, it’s a pretty funny mockery of the hype over a film that has been so shrouded in secrecy.

The first ‘Holiday Special’ arrived at Christmas time the year after the first movie came out and almost two years before ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, which were both summer movies, so that came at a time when there was a real void in ‘Star Wars’ entertainment.  ‘The Force Awakens’ marks the first time a ‘Star Wars’ movie has come out in the winter, so there’s no justification for a holiday special, but I think that’s part of the joke.

What do you think?  Funny?  Or die?

Source: /Film