Mark Hamill calls on Donald Trump to give The Star Wars Holiday Special a presidential pardon. Released in 1977, the original Star Wars was an unlikely box office sensation, helping usher in the era of the blockbuster. So massive was the film’s cultural impact that the reverberations are still being felt almost 50 years later, as Star Wars continues to reign as one of the biggest brand names in all of entertainment.
Though in hindsight it may look like George Lucas was working a master plan in establishing Star Wars as the mightiest movie franchise of them all, the truth is there were a lot of miscalculations along the way that could have derailed the whole process. And the biggest of those missteps was certainly the release of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. Intended as a kind of old fashioned variety show built around a story set in the Star Wars universe and featuring characters from the original film, the show ended up as a complete ill-conceived disaster that Lucas would later say he wanted to destroy. Unfortunately for Lucas, the special lived on in bootleg form and came to be cherished as a bizarre cult item by Star Wars fans and lovers of terrible television in general.
The undoubtedly weird experience of making The Star Wars Holiday Special was certainly on Luke Skywalker actor Hamill’s mind when he recently took to Twitter to jokingly call on President Trump, who lately has been handing out pardons to a lot of infamous characters, to use his powers and grant clemency to arguably the worst piece of content ever stamped with the Star Wars brand. See Hamill’s tweet in the space below:
Hamill of course has been known to use Twitter to air his political views, and in this case was certainly making a joke in order to call attention to Trump’s controversial use of his pardon powers. But at the same time, Hamill’s tweet also stands as a reminder of how prominent the Holiday Special remains in Star Wars lore, despite the fact that it hasn't been commercially available since it originally aired. Of course, the advent of the internet has only fueled the special’s reputation as an infamous disaster, as it has made it much easier for people to get their hands on a copy (if they’re actually brave enough to want to watch it). Thanks to the internet, a whole new generation has been exposed to the bizarre spectacle of Life Day on Chewbacca’s home world, with its awkward appearances by Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher and bafflingly strange performances by the likes of Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman, Diahann Carroll and The Jefferson Starship.
Of course, for all its awfulness, the special did give the world something positive: its first look at the iconic Boba Fett (albeit in animated form). Indeed, Jon Favreau returned to the Holiday Special for inspiration when conceiving the lead character of The Mandalorian, a character who for all intents and purposes is a good-guy re-casting of Boba. But for the most part, The Star Wars Holiday Special achieved nothing but awkwardness as it attempted to exploit the popularity of Star Wars in the most misbegotten and ridiculous way possible. Sadly, the special would not be not the last time someone tried to make money on the Star Wars name only to mystify and frustrate fans.
Source: Mark Hamill/Twitter