Pass On What You Have Learned: The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special
Tags: Star Wars, Lego, Movies, Lego Star Wars

In November 1978, a year after the release of Star Wars, Lucasfilm released the Star Wars Holiday Special, a strange TV movie ostensibly about Chewbacca and his family celebrating ‘Life Day’ following the events of that first movie as an attempt to build on the brand’s success. Though the special is not considered good by any means, it is a fascinating artefact of a time when Star Wars was not nearly as established, as a brand or as a sprawling universe.

Unsurprisingly, its position in canon did not last, outside of the introduction of Boba Fett, but it was a clear signal that Lucasfilm had high hopes for Star Wars as far more than just a series of movies and that they had every intention of guiding that potential. In the 42 years since its release, the Star Wars Holiday Special has developed an almost mythological reputation amongst fans though Lucasfilm themselves have understandably avoided highlighting it, until earlier this year. On August 13th of 2020, Lucasfilm announced the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, confirming the return of characters from the sequel trilogy and smartly tying it to the more light-hearted and inherently non-canon Lego Star Wars brand. This understandably excited fans even after the somewhat cold reactions to 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker and a general mounting dislike towards Disney’s handling of the property. The special released in November to the generally positive response Lucasfilm was likely hoping for and when I finally watched it this week I also found it generally charming if a little inconsequential. The reason I found myself drawn to writing about it was not because of any egregious artistic failing but simply an unavoidable sense that it had far more cynical reasons to exist.

The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special feels almost distractingly like a plan of action from Lucasfilm, specifically with regard to how they want the sequel trilogy enshrined in popular culture as we move away from the era they released in. We’ve seen in the last few years how massively public opinion on the prequels shifted as the people who grew up with them came of age and specifically did so online and it’s not farfetched to assume that a company as image conscious as Disney would love to control a similar conversation. There is a concerted attempt within the special to both map out a future reassessment of these movies and seemingly rectify what are widely considered their mistakes.

From the release of The Force Awakens, a movie that while self aware about it unashamedly repeats the story of A New Hope almost to the point of plagiarism, there has been a general criticism of the sequels that these movies do not exist in conversation with what came before but as a blatant repetition of it. Where the originals borrowed from all sorts of genres and mediums, the Star Wars sequels are largely pieced together from images pre-existing within Star Wars. Though the special’s greatest hits time travel narrative might on its surface feel like exactly that, it serves the greater purpose of maintaining the assertion, or lie that these films were meaningly entangled with their predecessors, creating connections and building bonds that for some reason or another were not present in the movies proper. Even through the lens of comedy, seeing Rey on an adventure with Luke or Kylo Ren meaningfully interacting with Darth Vader feels like an attempt at pretending these characters existed in continuity in a way they never really did, but that Disney would like people to remember.

Similarly, one of the greatest examples of wasted potential in the sequel trilogy was the suggestion of Finn becoming a full fledged Jedi. From the Force Awakens’ marketing focus on John Boyega, to Rian Johnson’s seeming disinterest and finally in the Rise of Skywalker’s explicit but entirely last minute confirmation of his force sensitivity, it has been one of the most consistent points of contention over where these films could have, and I think should have gone. The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is very clearly aware of this fact and from the outset chooses to explicitly focus on Finn’s Jedi training, this is a very cool setup and something I hope Lucasfilm commits to if we ever see this story again. But it still feels hollow that such an exciting story beat has only been rendered in Lego and not even in canon. To add insult to injury, Finn is once again sidelined as the special focuses almost entirely on Rey’s journey through Star Wars history while everyone else gets a comedy storyline about preparing for dinner. It feels less like these storytellers are interested in showing us Finn’s Jedi training as it does Disney wanting something to point to when it’s suggested they haven’t already. This feeling of necessity over creativity permeates the entire special.

It is no secret that upon release, the Star Wars prequels were not universally beloved, but it would be equally misguided to suggest that hasn’t changed. In the last 10 years especially as the people who grew up with those films have come of age and perhaps more importantly come online, public opinion has shifted massively to the point where amongst a certain generation it is very likely the majority opinion. This shift, regardless of your personal relationship with those movies happened entirely naturally and represents the perspective that a lot of people will be introduced to Star Wars through and though it is often in response to the sequel trilogy, it is something that has undoubtedly worked out for Disney in the long run, as evidenced by an ever increasing willingness to acknowledge those stories and the era they belong to. Though never to the same extent, the sequel trilogy has been surrounded by controversy and criticism and it is far from unreasonable to imagine that Disney has a plan going forward to respond to that, filling gaps and granting wishes the same way the Clone Wars and the EU at the time tended to do in hopes that these movies will be remembered not for their failings or any arguments caused but as a part of Star Wars as firmly planted as any other.

Ultimately the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special is exactly that, a lighthearted special for kids who like Star Wars and have no interest in twitter discourse, but one day those kids will be adults with firmly held beliefs on the franchise and I don’t believe it’s conspiratorial to suggest Disney would like to have some control over what those are. The special if anything feels like a roadmap, a series of signposts towards the future of the franchise as the sequel era becomes the franchise’s past like the movies that came before it.