An officially sanctioned Star Wars parody by the guys form Robot Chicken. When I saw them at New York Comic Con a couple of years ago they hinted they were working on this and now it looks like it is coming soon. What isn’t clear to me is if it’s a series, a movie or a direct to dvd thing.
Lucas is going to every single character in this thing into a toy.
Trailer here.
I really don’t like that expression about <such and such> “raped my childhood,” but in this case I think I’m going to make an exception.
As a single-shot parody it’s cute. As a series…yeah, no. I’ll pass.
I’ll be off in the corner watching Episodes 4-6…
Did Lucas learn nothing from the Star Wars Christmas Special?
(I apologize if this is threadshitting…since **Quimby **didn’t offer an opinion one way or another I’m assuming it’s okay to say I think this thing is a train wreck.)
Strange. I thought I recognized Palpy’s voice as the same from Robot Chicken, but this… well, God help me, I’m agreeing with a YouTube commenter: It’s like Robot Chicken without the funny. I’m really surprised to hear that they’re involved.
All opinions are welcome. 
For myself, I am really not sure what to think. My first impression is George okayed this just so he can resell new versions of all the same characters. I am guessing it won’t have as much bite as the Robot Chicken parodies but it could be decent.
For what it’s worth, the Youtube video doesn’t make it clear (I don’t think) but it is by the same guys as Robot Chicken (Seth Green and Matt something or other).
Agreed. I had to force myself to watch the entire preview because it seemed aggressively unfunny. It reminded me of the type of movie targeted at 8- to 10-year-olds where the creators just go for stupid, obvious jokes because they know their target audience has a really unsophisticated sense of humor.
Ouch. Couldn’t even make it through the preview, and I liked the Robot Chicken parodies. It’s like they’re not even trying anymore.
Now that I think about it, what happened to Robot Chicken? They haven’t had a new episode in ages.
I got about halfway through when I figured out what this was reminding me of: Tripping the Rift, which also has a ratio of about one moment of funny to ten moments of stupid.
It is Palpy’s voice, and it is unfunny. It also sounded like Boba Fett was the same voice and overconfident bullshitter personality from Robot Chicken.
But the visual presentation and the fact that it’s ‘official’ really kills any possible humor. It’s not so much sanctioned as it is sanitized, and the graphics are just not interesting. The stop-motion of Robot Chicken did amazing things for the comic timing, and of course not actually being under Lucas’s micromanaging eye helped with the writing.
Nailed it.
It’s a crap(py parody)!
Seriously, I agree with the other posters: Robot Chicken without the funny. I would be OK with it having an unsophisticated sense of humor, as long as there was some humor.
Maybe this is some sort of meta-commentary. They are demonstrating that the prequels were so lame that even a spoof of that property will be as equally lame. They deliberately made it fail at parody in the same way the movies failed at giving us engaging stories or characters. It works on so many levels. Very deep, very deep…
Yeah, it reminded me of the “Blah-blah presents” attempts at corporate humor on the Colbert Report. Painfully unfunny stuff designed to offend nobody and equally unable to entertain anyone.
My guess is that getting Lucas’ permission will hurt the project. He’ll want the parody to be “safe”. So we’ll get funny voices and pop culture references instead of real satire.
No no no. Turn back now. If you go down this path you’ll end up arguing that Showgirls is really a great movie that people don’t get.
Eh. Would it reveal too much about my poor taste to admit that I found some of the trailer, although not exactly funny, at least inoffensively cute? Probably. Maybe it helps if you’ve never much liked Star Wars in the first place.
Well, Showgirls is okay, but it’s no Starship Troopers.
Neither’s a patch on Deathstalker.
Cute’s not a bad thing. Heck, Disney movies are cute and I like Disney movies in a completely non-ironic way.
But there’s a difference between “inoffensive because we want to reach everyone” and “inoffensive because we don’t want to upset the executives”. Fred Rodgers acting normally was great (the man was a genius). Richard Pryor trying to behave himself so he could host a network show was wrong.
We’ve seen Robot Chicken and Family Guy and Titan Maximum - we know what kind of humor Seth Green and Matthew Senreich can do. So if they give us inoffensive cuteness in Detours it’ll be because they were pulling their punches so they wouldn’t upset George Lucas.
Robot Chicken is Adult Swim. Star Wars Detours is regular Cartoon Network. It’s intended for a general audience, so the humour will be less provocative.
I think both Family Guy and Robot Chicken had Lucas’s permission, too. I know the former did, and since the two shows are so incestuous, it would seem odd if the latter didn’t.
Yeah, I’ll rescind my snobbish irritation and instead say it just looks like I’m not in its target audience.
fixed.