Before action figures became collectibles that should never, ever be removed from their little plastic bubble packaging boys and girls actually played with them. Sometimes, the adventures that these little characters had were not what they were intended for. In fact, I'm sure that some of these action figures did things that would make a grown man blush.
I'm guessing that Seth Green and Matt Senreich were not too gentle with their action figures. That's a good thing, though, because they were able to take the ideas that they had and put them on television in the form of Robot Chicken, one of the more popular shows on Adult Swim. Then, they did something magical. They took their love of everything Star Wars, combined it with the goings-on at Robot Chicken, got the blessing of George Lucas, and produced a special for the Star Wars hater and lover in all of us.
Boy, what a good job they did! You could tell that this was a labor of love for Green, Senreich, and everyone else who participated in the special. Not only was it a homage to the historic movie serial, but it was also a thanks to the fans who have supported Robot Chicken since it premiered back in 2005.
While most of the scenes featured the characters from the classic trio of movies, there were references to the not-so-classic group of new Star Wars movies as well. I won't go through all of the scenes of the special, because I'm sure you recorded it or watched it every hour it was on Sunday. So, I'll just highlight some of my favorite ones for you, then you can tell me what your favorites were.
Introduction: I had a feeling that they would give this episode of the show a Star Wars intro, and I wasn't disappointed.
Palpatine gets the bad news: 'It wasn't even paid for yet! Do you know what this is going to do to my credit?' Seth MacFarlane as Emperor Palpatine was superb voice casting. It made him sound like a combination of Quagmire and Stewie Griffin.
Your Mama Smackdown: Another good segment with Palpatine and Luke (voiced by Mark Hamill) in a 'Your Mama' contest. Luke's Mama thought a light saber had less calories? I thought it was funny.
Luke and Leia in bed: 'This is so wrong.'
Galactic Empire Orientation: So, Darth Vader didn't really choke anyone; the soldiers just did it to massage his ego. The best part of this was that the Private who had been choked 30-someodd times appeared with Darth in another scene, which was . . .
Darth Vader and JarJar: The least liked character in the Star Wars universe, JarJar makes an appearance on Darth's Star Destroyer. He jumps around, pulls off Darth's helmet, and eventually gets shot out of the airlock. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a Jedi, it seems, and his spirit comes back to be with Darth. He's even annoying in stop-motion animation.
Bad Day: This was probably my favorite scene. All the guy wants to do is work hard to get a promotion. But, his friend talks him into going to the bar, where his arm gets cut off by Obi Wan's lightsaber. What I liked the most about this scene is the way that the Robot Chicken crew reproduced the bar scene from the first Star Wars film.
Finally . . .
George Lucas in the elevator: Nerd: 'And that was the greatest day of my life.'; Nerd Son: 'What about when I was born'; Nerd: 'Not even close.'
That's it for me. Now it's your turn.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-18-2007 @ 11:40PM
Gary said...
I just watched it earlier and it was the best. I couldn't stop laughing.
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6-18-2007 @ 11:40PM
Scott K said...
Pretty good stuff. I usually don't make a point to watch Robot Chicken, but I'm sure I've seen the George W Bush fighting Abe Lincoln thing before. I was a little disappointed they re-used something I'd seen already.
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6-19-2007 @ 12:10AM
Bill said...
I think it was at least 1/3 old content. But since a normal episode is 15 minutes (with commercials) and this one was 30, that means we got maybe a little more new stuff than in a normal episode.
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6-19-2007 @ 12:16AM
Zach said...
I thought the whole thing was great.
One thing I liked a lot was the guest voices, especially the talk show host voiced by Conan O'Brien talking to the image of the emperor with cutout mouth voiced by Robert Smigel. And George Lucas playing himself was a nice surprise.
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6-19-2007 @ 12:29AM
John said...
I think the 'What happened to Jar Jar' scene(s) was also up there in greatness (and made me wonder what really did happen to him... must dig out the books).
And I think the Lobot Disco Star Wars will go down as a prime example of under-appreciated genius.
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6-19-2007 @ 12:31AM
John said...
Forgot to add: And I thought the Empire on Ice suffered from extremely poor audio. Could barely hear the lyrics....
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6-19-2007 @ 12:42AM
LordPaul said...
Wow, your commentary made it way unfunnier than it actually was!
It was brilliant, but the scary thing is, I've got video footage that me & my friend shot about 15 years ago where we used actual starwars toys to recreate scenes from the films & had a disco scene but ours had Lando breakdancing
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6-19-2007 @ 4:20AM
Bash said...
I think it was especially funny when to try and find out who was voice acting for which character during the episode. I first noticed that the instructor for "how to act as if you are choking" lesson was voiced by Malcolm McDowell and then tried to find out who did whom during the whole episode.
I also thought that the amount of recycled material was disappointing, especially the "Collect call from Darth Vader" scene - which was the best part, the introductory part,the longest part - and again, a recycled one. Fairly disappointing if you ask me because the rest was so-so.
The Jar-Jar bit was funny, sure, but it more reminded me of the fact how much that character sucked in the first place. I totally removed him from my memory to be honest complete with Episode I which IMHO, looking back, especially sucked because of Jar Jar, young Annie, the rest of the Gungangs etc. etc.
That's what made another, much shorter piece, that much more funny.
"I am your father!"
"The force is just a sort of bacteria called midichlorians"
"Look if you're not taking this seriously I might as well just go"
Short. Precise. Funny :-)
Though I also laughed at Jar Jar getting killed and return as a Jedi. And that he calles the robo-annie (Vader) Annie ^^; Which reminds me of "What's her name again? Padamame.... Panda Bear or whatever" - "Oh my god... he's ... he's crying"
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6-19-2007 @ 5:53AM
Jeff said...
Loved the "Shall we get some Chinese instead?" bit with them worms. Especially for the accents :D
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6-19-2007 @ 8:47AM
CaptKahunah said...
Am I the only one who thought that the janitor guy sweeping up the various "corpses dropped from a great height" from each movie was hysterical?
"Man, I need a transfer to Coruscant...."
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6-19-2007 @ 8:55AM
Mariah said...
I'm a huge scifi geek, but not really a big Star Wars fan, but when I saw the Darth Vader phoning the Emporer bit a year or so ago, it was one of the most hilarious Robot Chicken moments. I knew this would kick ass.
My favorite random moment was the Luke and Leia in bed quote: 'This is so wrong.'
Off to stream this for my office mates...
http://thecourier.typepad.com/popgoestheculture
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6-19-2007 @ 10:10AM
Galley said...
A co-worker told me about this. I wonder f it's available in the iTunes Store?
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6-19-2007 @ 10:15AM
beanspants said...
i also loved the retread of the "if you're not gonna take this seriously, then i'm out" skit.
it captured the total tack-on job and huge plot holes not even addressed, and does it with applomb. even if the whole rest had sucked (like 30 minutes of star wars on ice) that skit would have made the whole thing worthwhile.
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6-19-2007 @ 10:22AM
mj said...
Admiral Ackbar Cereal!!
Also a reuse... but it was hysterical. It did seem like there were quite a few reused segments. Still all good... but it would've been nice if it had been all new.
--mj
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6-19-2007 @ 10:53AM
Akbar Fazil said...
I did not have any problem with the reused material (except for the Dubya one, that one is crap) All of the new stuff ranged from acceptable to awesome. The other perspective of Mos Eisley and the Cantina was great.
The "lite" saber yo mama was funny but not as good as
"Yo Mama so dumb she spent all day saying 'Am Not' to 'R2!'"
and
"Yo Mama so dumb, she went to Bankok to get a Tie-Fighter"
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6-19-2007 @ 11:39AM
Chet said...
The recurring corpse-sweep bits just slayed me.
And I don't care if it's a recycled bit, I'll never get tired of "what the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
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6-19-2007 @ 11:42AM
Fabrice said...
ok. Is that the same show we are talking about ?
I stopped half way and watched a rerun of South Park. Sorry, dudes, this ones for nerds only.
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6-19-2007 @ 12:30PM
Karen said...
Maybe so, Fabrice; maybe so. But then I'm proud to be a nerd!
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6-19-2007 @ 1:26PM
DeJuan said...
Since I sporadically watch Robot Chicken, the whole episode was fresh for me. I loved the janitor guy and the choking class. I also thought the light saber falling through the floors was pretty funny.
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6-19-2007 @ 3:16PM
Lampbane said...
The amount of recycled material just kind of ruined it for me, especially when the old stuff was better than the new skits they prepared.
It's not hard to come up with jokes about Star Wars. Heck, they pretty much ignored the prequel trilogy, which still has lots of untold jokes.
I don't know... it's just that after all that hype, we should have gotten something better.
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