Topic: Holiday Special

Watch [the Boba Fett cartoon]:
https://www.bobafettfanclub.com/multimedia/video/the-faithful-wookiee/

Discuss the gripes about the segment from 1978:
http://www.bobafettfanclub.com/boards/viewtopic.php?id=3260

Discuss the animatics reel from StarWars.com:
http://www.bobafettfanclub.com/boards/viewtopic.php?id=3148

Check out all of Boba Fett's lines:
https://www.bobafettfanclub.com/fettpedia/star-wars-holiday-special/

Despite your several insults, despite your horrid blasphemies, the lord of hosts is prepared to forgive all, and more, to reward your service.

No talking abou the SWHS, unless you specifically talk about the Boba cartoon.

Of course. This is the Boba Fett Fan Club.

;)

No! You posted this kind of horror here for the innocent to stumble upon??? How could you! :P

The HS is so horrible that everyone must see it at least once. You don't truly know how bad it is till you've seen it. ...just don't watch it a second time, oh the second time is even worse cause you know it DOES get worse with each coming segment, unlike the unwary who's eyes have yet to be burned who sits there going, "No, it can't possibly get any worse than this. OMG it just did!"

The Boba cartoon is the only good part.

Why the F&%K is Boba riding a dinosaur? Is that supposed to be a krayt dragon?

Which is why I only have posted the good part.

Oooh, sorry, I didn't click the link, I just assumed.

It's a Paar's ichthyodont

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ichthyodont

:P

I never realized before that the cartoon actually had a name.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Faithful_Wookiee

Actually, if you read the fine print there, "This creature was first named on the "Holiday Special Boba Fett Character Key" from Acme Archives." That thing came out in 2008 or 2009? Thirty years after the character was made up.

;)

The only thing good that came out of the holiday special was the Fett cartoon!

Hence why we're discussing it lol. Even George Lucas says the only two positive things to come out of the SWHS were the scenery of Kashyyyk (it's how he imagined it and Ralph McQuarrie drew it, and was ultimately used for Episode III) and the Boba Fett cartoon.

How was the Holiday Special version of Kashyyyk anything like the ROTS Kashyyyk? One's clearly a plant of extremely tall trees and the surface is something hidden far, far below where only the best of the warriors go and everyone else is scared to go down there and it's kind of treated like a sacred place where spirits live. .....and in the other they live on the surface of the planet right next to an ocean and the trees aren't really all that tall. If anything at all is the same it's the style of the buildings.

The best thing I've ever seen is that one guy doing the video commentary along with the entire special. It's hilarious.

I like in Weird AL's video white and nerdy. There is a part where he buys the Holiday special from a dealer in an Alley. He pulls it out of the Paper sack I laughed and Laughed.

You wouldn't be talking about Weird Al Yankovic would you? I'll bet he would come up with a way to something like the Holiday Special funny. The one good thing I can say about the Holiday Special is that it introduced all to the Fett. Too bad it couldn't have been better though.

Yeah it was Weird Al Yankovich. If you haven't seen White and nerdy you sould I recomend it.

I recommend it as well, it's very funny.

Yankovic, not Yankovich.  While we're at it, the plural of "Lego" is "Lego" (in joke to Miba)

Yeah, I know that...

I've never seen the entire special, only 'That Guy with the Glasses' review; pretty darn brain warping...  And that was with his comentary to help distract me

I saw the entire holiday special when I was 10 years old. If it were not for Boba Fett and the fact I was an adamant Chewbacca fan at the time, I wouldn't have liked it even as a kid.

Here is a question we've been curious about for some time: Lucas had very little to do with The Holiday Special. He could see the writing on the wall, and he wisely distanced himself. So, this may be common knowledge, so please enlighten me if I've missed this, but who came up with Boba Fett, then? Because our first picture of Fett comes in The Special.

Did Lucas already have concept drawings of Fett in place before the special and the agency who made the cartoon just used those?

Or was the agency in question responsible for the concept of what Boba Fett would look like?

Boba's first appearance was actually in a parade long before that (that spring? summer?), so I would say he had already been in the making by that point. And also remember that the Holiday Special was in fall 1979 and ESB was in summer 1980, in order for that to have happened Boba had to have been invented long before the Holiday Special I would presume. Also, that cartoon segment was originally meant for another cartoon called Heavy Metal, it just ended up in the Holiday Special.

McQuarrie came up with the first concept arts of Boba, I thought, if that was what you meant.

Also, I wasn't aware George didn't have a lot to do with the HS. I never looked into it, though.

Oh yeah, George basically said "You can use this, this, and that" and had nothing else to do with the picture.

Cool, thanks for the clarification Miba. That makes sense. Yeah, Lucas made a wise choice on that one. The HS was a special kind of horrible.

I'm sorry but it makes me smile every time I see it. XD

Oh, I'm with you Fairyblood. I think everyone should watch it at least once. The Happy Life Day sequence alone is worth the time... I think I was speechless!

This. As much as we all hate it, you can't hate it until you've sat through the whole thing.

Well that redeems George in my eyes some, then.

And I quite agree, everyone has to see the HS at least once. You never truly understand until you've seen it.

I have yet to finish watching the HS, I managed to sit through the first bit until I saw Boba Fett and shortly after that I had to turn it off lol

According to my father, it's, in fact, entirely possible the character of Boba Fett was inspired by the old "Space Hunter" 5 or 6 shot subseries in the Heavy Metal issues of the late 70's.  The character went through parodied versions of sci-fi movies and epics (Buck Rogers and such) and basically screwed over people like "Duke Starhopper" and "Princess Fileta" regularly.  He believes the Boba Fett animation bit in the Holiday special is actually a scene that was axed from the Heavy Metal movie not because they were afraid of being sued by Lucas or anything for the mock characters; but because Nelvana declined being the studio for Heavy Metal.

The original animatic for the Space hunter sequence remained in their vaults and was later recycled into the Holiday Special.

I, for one, don't think Space hunter was a direct inspiration for Boba's personality, but McQuarrie was a semi-regular contributor to Heavy Metal.  According to my father and Corben, McQuarrie designed the Space hunter.  The fact that he re-used an incredibly similar appearance later is of no consequence although debated.

McQuarrie himself disavowed all connection to Heavy Metal when he became a Born-Again a long time ago, so he's sure not answering questions about it.

Somewhere in there lies the truth, but watching the Boba bit again pretty much secures it in my mind: that was definitely part of Nelvana artist's original pitch to management about doing Heavy Metal.  In fact, many of Nelvana's artists 'defected' and worked on Heavy Metal under pseudonyms anyway, so there may have been a more last-second reason why the sequence got canixed and re-used later.

Zivi, I could totally see that. The animation does remind me a lot of Heavy Metal and now I know why. Sweet. ^_^

I had never heard that before.  Very cool info.

The problem is that none of it's written down, I think Corben is DEAD, and McQuarrie isn't talking.  Nobody involved with Heavy Metal had the slightest inkling of the success it would become, and the print we have "restored" to DVD isn't even from the original; that was thrown out.  It's from a theatrical print that someone found in a can.  And this was in an era where movie prints were commonly recycled for elements, so we're lucky it survived at all or we'd be stuck forever with that awful VHS release.

Basically all we have to go on is a man in his 50's who may not even be remembering correctly who was friends with people formerly at Nelvana and Heavy Metal.  So while it is information, it's also unfortunately absolutely unprovable so if this were Snopes, there'd be a Yellow button next to the listing for this.  About the only thing that can be "proven" out of all of the above is that

A) Nelvana internally had a sequence for Heavy Metal, and declined to be involved.

B) Nelvana commonly re-used bits and pieces of incomplete things.

c) Nelvana dropped out of contributing to Heavy Metal at the last minute to do Rock and Rule.

D) Han Solo in the Holiday special Boba cartoon looks a LOT like a parody of Han Solo.

E) Boba looks kinda like the Space Hunter.

You can glean from these details that the above MAY be true, but you can't actually prove anything.. and amongst Star Wars history it's hard to "prove" anything anyway, as Lucas is prone to make attempts at retconning _reality_ when he feels like it.

Remember: In the 80's Lucas used to pretend the Holiday special never existed.  Period.  Anyone who asked him about it, he had no idea what they were talking about.  It wasn't until fans started bootlegging it around that he had to admit that it did, in fact, actually exist.

I was trying to look for pics of "the space hunter" online but I couldn't find any. I don't actually own a copy of Heavy Metal. That would be my dad and it might be a while till I can get my hands on it because he lives all the way across the next state. I haven't seen it in a few years... I think it's time to get my own copy. (Rambling out loud, heh)

And holy crap, Rock and Rule! XD That was such a trippy movie. I saw it for the first time last year(?).

Yeah now we can say real holiday with the special threads to read and innovative..

hey thanx for sharing such information. never heard this before..good to see people still share such kind of topics!

Ah, the Holiday Special, bane of my existence. I watched it and was like, this is the most stupid thing I have ever seen. Then I came to the Boba Fett section and I thought, this awesome, but still stupid. So what do I do after that? I willingly watch it again.

Dinilakeeramud, what didn't you like about Boba Fett's role in SWHS?

This past Christmas morning I watched the rifftrax version of the Star Wars Holiday Special for the very first time and I have to tell you that it wasn't that bad. Now the teenage mutant ninja turtles 1993 holiday special is running-out-of-the-room embarrassing! Just horribly bad!

I love boba fett cartoon

television plays an important role in spreading entertainment among its user being available 24/7.

The holiday Special show cases the...bad and weird side of the Star Wars universe. It’s only redeeming quality is (you guessed it) Boba Fett! Sure the cartoon he appears in isn’t so good but Boba steals the show for his awesome voice and betrayal at the end.

The voice of Boba Fett in the SWHS cartoon segment has been widely and falsely attributed to Don Francks. Francks did voice Fett in The Star Wars: Droids animated Saturday morning cartoon of the 80s. But it was actually actor Gabe Dell who provided the voice in 1978.