The third all-new installment* of the hugely popular Robot Chicken Star Wars parodies airs tonight on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It is an hour long special. I have all of them on my DVR so far. I will be catching up on the past ones while waiting for tonight’s episode.
Yes, there was a 2.5, but it was mostly a compilation of clips from the first two installments.
After watching it last night, I have a nagging silly question…
As Emperor Palapatine is falling down the ‘chute’ to his death - they ‘freeze-frame’ in mid-drop and he begins his narration while (I think) the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” plays in the background - I’m almost certain I’ve seen that concept of bookend narration during a freeze-frame in some movie or another but I just can’t place it - is it a parody of a definite movie scene (well, two scenes, since later he finishes the narration and continues falling)?
I think it’s just a commonly used narration device (could probably find it on TV tropes). I’ve seen it most recently in Megamind but have seen it dozens of other times.
I saw this episode by pure chance, and I’ve never watched Robot Chicken before. Are the other Star Wars episodes a bunch of sketches from all the Star Wars movies, or is just this one like that?
That’s all of Robot Chicken. Quick little sketches acted out in stop motion, usually with action figures.
So yes, all three Star Wars specials are just a complication of quick sketches. The first Robot Chicken Star Wars was really a mix of all Star Wars movies. It included a few sketches they had already done, as well as a lot of new material. The second and third ones focused almost solely on Empire and Jedi, respectively.
Edit: I only caught the last ten minutes or so, but I enjoyed what I saw. I like the excuse that Boba Fett was really drunk at the beginning of Jedi and that’s why he went down like a chump.
Not really–when AB did it, the device was already decades old, plus Kevin Spacey is narrating as a corpse, while Palpatine isn’t (yet). Just having a narrator/flashback device isn’t enough to cite the Mendes film as a specific reference (and the Who song isn’t on that film’s soundtrack).