The Star Wars Holiday Special

Released: 1978

I’m a more forgiving Star Wars fan than many. The original trilogy was one of the key staples of my childhood, but I enjoyed both the prequel and sequel trilogies, as well as all the TV shows to date. But there are some things even I can’t defend…

For having been a loyal fan for so many years, it took a long time for me to actually get around to watching The Star Wars Holiday Special. I had heard about it many, many times, but it wasn’t until around Fall of 2018 that I finally got around to seeing it. Needless to say, it was quite the experience.

At the time, I found it incredibly baffling. So many weird scenes that made no sense at all. Star Wars has always had a quirky edge, sure, but this was a whole new level of strange.

Fast-forward to Fall of 2021, and I decided to watch it a second time at home to refresh it in my mind and do up a review of it. Let’s dive in, shall we?

The Phantom Physical Release

First of all, as a fun bit of trivia, this holiday special has never been officially released anywhere. In the 40+ years since it premiered, not once has it ever seen any sort of official VHS or DVD printing, and it is nowhere to be found on Disney+ (aside from the Boba Fett animated short). There was just the original TV broadcast back in ’78 and that was it.

I emphasize the word “official,” because there have of course been many fan-made and fan-distributed releases, which is indeed how I was able to watch it. I don’t own a copy of the special myself, but I have a friend who does, and it was at his house when I watched it for the first time, and afterwards he let me borrow it for a while (thanks William!). But before we get into that, I want to show you my DVD copies of the original and prequel trilogies.

And the reason I show you those (aside from the Star Wars fan in me geeking out), is because I wanted to show them off alongside my friend’s DVD copy.

I don’t know who manufactured this DVD, but whoever it was did a bang-up job styling it after the official DVD art of the other films, and it just looks great in general. Sadly, it’s far better than the special itself.

Not quite the Life Day I had in mind

From what I’ve read about the special after the fact, George Lucas helped write the first draft of the script and the story ideas made enough sense, but Lucas had little involvement with the project after that. It was from there that network executives decided to turn it into a variety show. Realizing that this is supposed to represent a variety show does help with my comprehension of it somewhat, but it’s still a pretty ridiculous concept. Something like this had no place in Star Wars.

I mean, maybe if the variety segments were actually good, it could’ve risen above the ridiculous concept and made for something decently enjoyable. But, alas, the segments are not very good. And what it thus ends up being is a bunch of random, nonsensical scenes which are only loosely strung together by a plot. Even on my second viewing, there were still parts where I was like, “What? Huh? What is the meaning of this?”

Which is a shame, because on paper I like the premise. Of Chewbacca and Han Solo running into trouble with the Imperials, and they have to get Chewbacca home in time to celebrate Life Day with his family. Life Day itself is a great concept too. Heck, I even like the idea of seeing Chewbacca’s family. The key word being, I like the idea of it. Not so much the execution.

Which in fact leads to my first major problem right at the beginning when we meet the fam. Chewbacca’s wife, Malla; his son, Lumpy; and his father, Itchy. They all speak their own language and we don’t get any subtitles whatsoever. True, Chewbacca spoke his own language in the mainline films as well, but Han was there to translate, and/or it was still obvious what emotions Chewbacca was communicating.

But here, why did they not provide subtitles? It wouldn’t have been hard to add, surely. With the lack of subtitles, it just leads to a bunch of scenes of obnoxious Wookiee grunting where you can’t even tell what they’re saying to each other. Chewbacca is one of my favourite Star Wars characters, but the scenes with his family are just irritating. And because the family is the focal point of the special, they take up an annoyingly large portion of the screentime.

A treasure trove of randomness

Beyond the initial premise, the plot is pretty bare-bones. You could make a 30-minute short from the story summary above, but this is over 90 minutes total. Aside from the aforementioned scenes of Chewie’s family, most of the rest of the “special” is utterly loaded with the bizarre variety segments. Which have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot, by the way. They occur when one of the characters is watching a TV screen and then something random comes on.

There’s this weird circus acrobatics show that Lumpy watches on some sort of hologram device. There’s a weird cooking show with a flamboyant alien chef that Malla watches. There’s an especially baffling softcore porn video that Itchy watches. It’s pretty trippy. And then there’s a scene in a cantina with this lovestruck alien man who relentlessly hits on the bartender, and he consumes liquid by… pouring it into a hole on the top of his head. What?!

Oh, and there’s a Jefferson Starship music video too. Which was unironically one of my favourite parts because I’m a classic rock and oldies music fan. It’s a catchy song… but seriously, what the heck is a Jefferson Starship music video doing in Star Wars? Although at least the Imperial officer watching it is clearly having a good time.

The most tedious of all the segments comes when Lumpy is upstairs in his bedroom watching this video instruction cassette teaching him to build a transmitter. Like… why? Why did the writers/editors/etc. feel that we needed to see this entire cassette with this bizarre malfunctioning robot dude giving dry step-by-step instructions on building a transmitter?

More generally, the Holiday Special has a dated atmosphere. It feels uncomfortably dated in a way that A New Hope didn’t. The latter is undoubtedly a timeless classic, but the former just screams “low budget 70s production.” And it’s not low budget in a humble and charming way; there’s a distinctly “cheap” feel to it.

There’s also an animated short. Many people consider this the best part. I wish I could agree, but I just find it odd more than anything. Not at all the most jarring part of the special, but like so much of the rest of it, it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t really mesh with anything else. I can at least appreciate it for having the original trilogy voice actors, as well as introducing Boba Fett.

What makes it even odder is that Lumpy is shown watching the cartoon on his TV screen. The cartoon by itself could’ve simply been its own Star Wars mini-adventure… yet Lumpy is watching it in his living room. As in, he’s watching a cartoon of his own dad and his dad’s friends going on an adventure.

From an in-universe standpoint, how does this even make sense?! Is the confrontation with Boba Fett something that actually happened to the characters, and yet it exists as a cartoon as well? Did the Rebel Alliance hire someone to make an animated short of Chewie and the gang out adventuring, and Chewie managed to obtain a copy of this animated short to give to his son?

So what things did I enjoy?

There’s a few, actually.

A minor thing, but I like seeing all the late-70s computer equipment. Despite my complaints about the datedness above, at the same time the old computers and such are cool in a way. I’ve always found older technology strangely fascinating. It was a different era for sure.

Among the other things I can take at face value is simply seeing the original trilogy actors again. That alone is nostalgic for me. Their roles are too small, but still, it’s great seeing them again at all.

Also Jefferson Starship’s “Light the Sky on Fire”. As strange and random as that part was (noticing a theme here?), the song itself is dope.

On the topic of songs, there’s also “Goodnight, but Not Goodbye”, a catchy and jazzier slowed-down remix of the classic cantina theme from A New Hope.

The action

Normally Star Wars has great action scenes, but the space battles here are pretty lackluster. It’s just footage taken directly from A New Hope. The climax is a complete joke. There’s a short chase as a lone Stormtrooper pursues Lumpy through the house. Then Chewbacca and Han Solo arrive just in time, and Han tricks the Stormtrooper into tripping off the balcony and falling to his death. That’s it. That’s the entire climax.

It ends with the Life Day celebration, and then they just show even more clips from A New Hope, which would only make a person wish they were watching that instead.

Overall?

There are a few laughable moments, and a few scattered fragments that manage to be enjoyable. But the majority of it – the scenes with Chewbacca’s family and most of the variety segments – are incredibly tedious to sit through. And the whole thing is just weird. Oh, and did I mention how bad the action scenes are?

Beyond the few scattered highlights, the only real defense I can give to this is that it was in the franchise’s very early days. From that standpoint, I can understand why they may have been struggling to figure out exactly what Star Wars was supposed to represent. But even then, there’s just so many mind-boggling creative missteps that were made here.

I don’t think I could in good faith recommend this even to casual Star Wars fans. The only people I’d recommend it to are the hardcore SW fans, and fans of “so-bad-it’s-good” media. I fit both of the latter two categories, so I was able to gain a level of enjoyment out of this despite its dreadfulness.

It’s a miracle this didn’t kill the franchise right there and then. Imagine if we’d never gotten The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, and instead we were left with this as the final piece of Star Wars media. What a dark time for the galaxy that would have been.