Final Rating: 4.5/5
Back on May 25th 1977 the world was changed forever. The original Star Wars movie came out (long before it was subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope) and it changed the movie industry monumentally. It would be three years before its follow up, The Empire Strikes Back, was released and people were hungry for more Star Wars content. In what became a lesson in being careful what you wished for, viewers were instead “treated” to the now infamous The Star Wars Holiday Special. What makes it so special is that after a single airing on TV, everyone realized how terrible it was and was never screened again. Star Wars creator George Lucas tried to have all the master copies of it destroyed and refused to speak about it.
A Disturbance in the Force is a new documentary from directors Jeremy Coon (Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made) and Steve Kozak where they manage to interview just about every surviving person that had a hand in the production and use archival interviews to fill in any gaps from people who did not want to appear in the doc or had passed away (Lucas is one person who exists solely due to audio tapes in the film, due to his hatred of the TV special). We get the back story on the conception, the making of and the legacy the special had both in the Star Wars universe and media as a whole.
After the massive success of the first Star Wars film there was a frenzy to gobble up anything and everything. It took a full year for toys to come out as manufacturers were not prepared for the demand. The brand of the Star Wars universe hadn’t fully been formed yet and it was believed that in order to maintain momentum leading up to The Empire Strikes Back release, Star Wars should seize every opportunity to get eyeballs on their IP. This led to Star Wars characters appearing in such iterations like the Bob Hope All Star Christmas Special, The Richard Pryor Show and most famously the Donny & Marie Show.
George Lucas wrote an outline for a holiday special that would focus on Chewbacca and his family on their home planet. It was a way to expand the lore of a character who didn’t have much of a back story. It allowed the leads in Star Wars, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to take a back seat and only partially be in the film while Peter Meyhew who played Chewbacca got more screen time. That was about the extent of Lucas’ involvement in the special as he then left to go back to work on Empire passing the reins off to legendary comic writer Bruce Vilanch, variety show producers Ken and Mitzie Welch, and several other industry veterans.
This led instead of a lighthearted but still serious expansion of the Star Wars universe that the whole family could enjoy to a full on variety show with singing and dancing. This included Princess Leia singing, an extended sequence of Bea Arthur as a bartender at the cantina who sings to Harvey Corman, Art Carney as a Wookie translator, legendary fashion designer Bob Mackie making leotards for gymnasts and Jefferson Starship performing a song with terrible special effects laid over top of them and so much more. It was a disaster of too many cooks in the kitchen and none of them understanding the Stars Wars brand.
The sheer scope this film covers in a little over 90-minutes is spectacular. We get interviews with Vilanch, fellow writer of the doomed project Steve Binder, Mackie, and plenty of celebrities who have had various involvement in the Star Wars universe like Seth Green, Taran Killam, Donny Osmond, Paul Scheer, Kevin Smith, Weird Al and many more in archival footage. Every in-joke or reference gets an accompanying video clip so viewers are never left in the dark. By the end of the film you realize there is a certain segment of Star Wars fandom which is now trying to reclaim the holiday special. Yes they know it isn’t good, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a little bit fun and sometimes that’s good enough. If you are a Star Wars fan or have heard what was dubbed as “The Worst Two Hours of Television, Ever”, then you’ll get a kick out of this movie. Whether or not viewers will want to then actually sit through the special (you can see it in its entirety on YouTube) is a completely different question.
A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened was seen during the 2023 Fantasia Festival. Thank you to the festival for the screener.
