The Lighter Side of Star Wars

Happy Star Wars Day. I started the celebrations early this year, by collecting the free build of baby Grogu (not Baby Yoda!) from the Lego Store. I had to queue but was entertained by members of the Saber Guild and the Rebel Legion - people who clearly love Star Wars.

I've been thinking recently about the many send ups and spoofs of Star Wars that I've enjoyed over the years. This was prompted by seeing the  Star Wars episodes of Phineas and Ferb as part of our watch through of the show on Disney Plus. I hadn't seen them before this year and they have quickly become some of my favourite Star Wars homages. 

What makes Phineas and Ferb different, to say, the Family Guy retelling of Star Wars, is that instead of the main characters in the TV show assuming the roles of key characters in the films, they set Phineas and Ferb along with their friends and associates in roles around the original story. So Phineas and Ferb live on the next farm to Luke Skywalker, they meet Isabella the star ship captain in the same cantina where Ben and Luke meet Han Solo and Chewbacca, Perry the Platypus is a rebel agent and so on. In this version of the story, Phineas and Ferb are returning the Death Star plans that R2-D2 accidentally dropped in their landspeeder. 

There were several funny knowing gags in the film. Darth Doofenschmirtz 'flushing' after going to the bathroom setting off the trash compactor is one that made me chuckle. The jump scare Tusken Raider made me laugh out loud. A discussion over who started shooting in the cantina prompted knowing nods. There are also some great songs, full of nerd-level jokes. 

I think it was one of the best, and most enjoyable, retellings of Star Wars, and I'm delighted to have discovered it. It was much better than some of the Lego Star Wars shorts that have been made more recently. Those seemed to have been written for kids rather than old fans like me. 

I've already mentioned the Family Guy trilogy of special episodes. I'm not a fan of Family Guy but they had some clever bits. Half the jokes relate to the Family Guy characters so I felt I was missing some of the humour. It's been years since I watched them, though, and I don't really feel any desire to watch them again. 

When I watched the Family Guy Star Wars, I  was making a direct comparison with the Robot Chicken Star Wars series that came out around the same time. Robot Chicken was a lot funnier; a series of short sketches and gags that jumped around the Star Wars universe, sending up particular scenes from the movies and exploring what was happening off-screen. 

The most widely shared Robot Chicken sketch is probably 'Darth Calls the Emperor', showing the phone call that Vader makes to tell the Emperor that the Death Star has been blown up. "What the hell is an aluminum falcon?!?" still makes me laugh despite seeing it numerous times. Other favourite bits include Admiral Ackbar on a game show, the tragic story of Ponda Baba's ruined career as an architect, Max Rebo's greatest hits album, and Admiral Ackbar (again) out for brunch with Mon Mothma. 

Robot Chicken came out before the Disney sequels and TV series and I'd love to see the team have a go at mocking the Disney era. There would be ample material in just The Mandalorian.

But the grandaddy spoof of them all is the film, Spaceballs. Written and directed by Mel Brooks, it's an older film now, but it still checks out. It's very loosely based on Star Wars, sending up the look of the franchise and its impact more than anything else. The main villain wears an outsized black helmet and is known as Lord Dark Helmet. The wise old master of the Schwartz is a small green character (played by Brooks walking on his knees) called Yogurt. There is a whole sequence making fun of merchandising and how the name of the film gets slapped onto everything - then later in the film characters are using Spaceballs-branded merchandise. Lord Dark Helmet plays with Spaceballs action figures at one point.

My brother and I watched Spaceballs multiple times when we were kids. Recently we introduced by eldest niece and nephew to it as well. They found it hilarious too - a real test of how well made it is considering it's a spoof movie. It helps that the special effects were done by the same people who made Star Wars, with George Lucas's blessing. 

I've said before that the escapism of Star Wars, with its simple good v evil plotting, really helped me when I was a child and adjusting to a very big life change. One reason why some of the newer Disney Star Wars projects leave me cold is they deliberately pursue ambiguity, with characters being morally grey and storylines exploring more complicated approaches to the old good guys versus bad guys trope. (Even if, from a certain point of view, that has always been there.)

Star Wars, to me, was always meant to be a bit simple and silly, and I think that's why I enjoy watching silly spoofs of it. My dad would often sum up a film by saying 'It's not to be taken too seriously'. He was right, and the comedy versions of Star Wars help me do that. 

The day after Star Wars Day: The Revenge of the 5th

I said this a bit on Twitter, but I’ve been reflecting on why Star Wars means so much to me. A lot of it comes down to this: Return of the Jedi was the first film I saw in the cinema after my family came back to this country from Africa.

I didn’t really understand what was going on. I hadn’t seen the first two movies. I knew there were goodies and baddies and I liked the Ewoks beating the Stormtroopers and Jabba the Hutt was disgusting and the fight over the Sarlacc was dangerous and Luke Skywalker was brave and things exploded and spaceships were cool, especially the Millennium Falcon.

And for two hours I forgot that I had left the warm and known environment of Africa behind and been made to come back to this cold, unfriendly place that people said was my home, but wasn’t really.

As a young teenager I saw Empire Strikes Back for the first time and loved it. We taped it off the telly at Christmas and watched it so often we almost wore out the tape. I still remember where the advert breaks were in that recorded copy. (It was a big Christmas premiere for ITV.) I know most of the dialogue off by heart. It edged out Jedi as my favourite film of the trilogy.

It’s kind of fashionable to beat up on Star Wars and the people who love it. They aren’t the coolest films out there. There are clear plot holes and unlikely coincidences and for some reason Stormtroopers can’t shoot straight and their armour doesn’t work against arrows. Yeah, all those things. And I will line up with anyone else to pour scorn on the prequels, although The Phantom Menace probably gets more vitriol than it deserves whereas the third one should be coated in lead and sunk in a very deep hole somewhere.

And, yes, the trilogy is good for jokes and pastiche. I’ve always loved Spaceballs. I really love the Robot Chicken feature length Star Wars episodes. But you can tell Robot Chicken is done with love and affection for the films, not to poke spitefully at the people who love them. (Even if we are all depicted as weedy nerds by the Chickeners.)

I think the reason May the Fourth has taken off in just a few years from geek joke to major Twitter event is down to the attachment people have for the films.  The original trilogy holds such emotional importance for me I turn to them when I’m poorly or feeling low. Return of the Jedi was my first comfort film; the first movie to transport me away from a difficult situation that I was struggling to adjust to. It helped a confused and, I realise now, grieving, little boy to believe the world could be a place where good triumphed in the darkest of circumstances, where evil could be defeated, where heroism would be rewarded, where little people held the fate of the universe in the balance, even if the big people had guns and scout-walkers and speeder-bikes.

Even now I get a lump in my throat when I watch the scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where Luke throws away his lightsaber and tells the Emperor that he won’t turn to the dark side because he is a Jedi. Like his father before him.

Faced with that choice I wanted to be as brave as Luke Skywalker. I wanted to be a Jedi.

I still do.