August 5, 2008
Robot Chicken Star Wars
Blake Matthews READ TIME: 3 MIN.
For the past three seasons Cartoon Network has been airing Robot Chickenas part of their Adult Swim section. The show coming from the warped mind of Seth Green and others takes action figures and animates them using stop motion. "Robot Chicken" pokes fun of pop culture, movies, music, and television nothing is off limits including movies and shows that Green himself have been part of, he's even gotten his friends to do voices. Green and his cohorts are big Star Wars fans and have had skits throughout the series devoted to Star Wars.
They were given permission to do a full episode devoted to "Star Wars" (the series itself only runs 15 minutes with commercials because it's time consuming to animate the figures). The show is very funny, but they've pulled out all the stops here, most skits are 30 seconds to a minute, some sketches are 1-2 minutes, while not every skit is a winner, most are hysterical. The show also boasts an impressive vocal cast including Mark Hamill, Conan O'Brien, Seth MacFarlane, Malcolm McDowell, Hulk Hogan, James Van Der Beek, Robert Smigel, Donald Faison, Abraham Benrubi, Breckin Meyer, Ahmed Best and Star Wars creator himself George Lucas who pokes fun at himself.
While the special itself only runs 23 minutes, there are over 2 hours of bonus materials! There are 7 separate commentaries: 2 for the cast, 2 for the writers, 2 for the animators and the final commentary is by George Lucas's kids which covers "Star Wars" from a POV that you wouldn't have expected. But with 7 commentaries and some talent in 3-4 of them because they don so many hats everyone who wanted to say something about this episode gets their chance.
The final featurette is "On Air Bumps," the night that the "Robot Chicken: Star Wars" aired, Cartoon Network gave the guys at "Robot Chicken" the entire night, which showed not only the special, but their favorite episodes. In between commercial and the episodes themselves the creators did quick little bits that introduced the episodes. Here are many on air bumps, some funny, some not and not all of them originally aired, but you get them all here for your viewing pleasure.
"Robot Chicken: Star Wars" takes the best of "Robot Chicken" and kicks it up a notch, the special was so successful that there will be a second special this November and while it will be tough to top, the creators have already said it will be even better than the first.