TVSquad

(S06E01) A long time ago, but somehow in the future . . .

Who would've thunk it? When Family Guy premiered back in 1999(!) many people tossed it away as a pale imitation of The Simpsons and kind of ignored it. Who knew that eight years later, at the start of the show's 6th season, Seth MacFarlane and his crew would be able to get the approval of George Lucas himself to air a spoof of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It shows how far Family Guy has come since it returned to the prime-time airwaves.

Hey, all you Griffinites out there! I just wanted to remind you that the Family Guy tribute to Star Wars, in reality the sixth season premiere, airs tonight at 9 pm. Yes, I'm just as surprised as you that this show, as well as The Simpsons and King of the Hill, are actually airing during the official fall premiere week. Due to previous seasons chocked with baseball, football and American Idol's Tribute to Randy Johnson's Toenails, we usually didn't get to see the season premieres of these shows until election time. Maybe someone over at FOX finally has their head screwed on correctly.

I had a chance to review the episode ahead of time (you'll see my 'very special' post on it this evening) and all I have to say is this: if you like movie spoofs like Airplane and Spaceballs you'll like this Family Guy episode. While it actually sticks to the plot of Star Wars quite well, there are enough silly jokes in there to make the show quite enjoyable. Plus, it's interesting to see how each of the members of the Family Griffin are cast into Star Wars roles.

Details are finally being revealed today about the Robot Chicken: Star Wars special that is coming up on June 17th on Cartoon Network. We first heard about it last fall when Adam interviewed Morel Orel creator Dino Stamatopoulos, who shares a studio with Robot Chicken. The news today is that George Lucas and Mark Hamill are both participating. Lucas will play himself and Hamill will play Luke Skywalker. And, as Adam reported late last year, producers Seth Green and Matthew Senreich are actually working with LucasFilm Ltd. to create the 30-minute parody of the Star Wars series. Senreich says it's a dream come true and "How many people can say that George Lucas let them play with his entire Star Wars universe and do Robot Chicken-like things to it?"

I'm really looking forward to this episode. Green and Senreich have pretty much been obsessed with Star Wars and it has appeared in Robot Chicken many times. But- to be able to recreate the entire series with the blessing of The Godfather? Awesome!

By the way, this will be Mark Hamill's second visit to Robot Chicken. He voiced three characters, one of them was himself, in a 2005 episode. Other celebrity voices in the Star Wars special include Conan O'Brien, James van der Beek, Hulk Hogan, Abraham Benrubi, Breckin Meyer, Joey Fatone, and regular Seth MacFarlane.

Can you survive overnight in a blizzard by gutting a dead animal and getting into its carcass?

Could you survive a 50-foot fall into a snow bank like Luke Skywalker did?

Those are just a couple of the questions the MythBusters attempt to answer in this great piece at starwars.com. Many fans of the MythBusters show already know that at least four of the team worked at the famed Industrial Light & Magic studios before starting the show. I'd always dreamed of working at ILM or the Skywalker sound studios, so it's great to see them talk about old times.

[via Digg]