The movie George Lucas called his favourite ‘Star Wars’ rip-off
There are few movie franchises quite like Star Wars, which remains to this day one of the most significant contributions to the world of science fiction cinema. The George Lucas creation has given birth to countless movies, and some of its scenes comprise several of the greatest space-faring moments of film’s rich history.
Given the iconic status of Star Wars, it was a surefire fact that countless parodies and rip-offs would come along to mock the legendary science fiction films and the likes of Seth MacFarlane and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovich have done their best over the years to point fun at Han Solo and Darth Vader.
Of all the parodies, though, there’s one in particular that Lucas himself seems to favour. Just a year after the original Star Wars movie was released, out came the short film Hardware Wars, a 13-minute effort directed by Ernie Fosselius that used a series of inside jokes and visual gags assuming an audience’s knowledge of the film it was based on.
The low-budget, incredibly tacky film made Princess Leia’s home planet a basketball, while Chewbacca was replaced with a new character, Chowchilla the Wookiee Monster, a clear nod to the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. If that weren’t enough of a mick-take, then giving Luke Skywalker an old banged-up car instead of a landspeeder might have been.
Hardware Wars producer Michael Wise once spoke of getting a copy of the film in front of Lucas. He told SF Weekly, “We got it into Industrial Light and Magic and those guys were all cracking up about it, and they told their friends. We sent Lucas a print and he saw it, and was supportive of it, and got me a meeting at 20th Century Fox with the president.”
“We were hoping that they’d show it as a theatrical short with their movies, which they didn’t,” Wise added. “They didn’t think it was so funny.” While 20th Century Fox wasn’t impressed with Hardware Wars, Lucas himself seemed to be a fan, especially when comparing it to some of the other Star Wars parodies.
The book Star Wars FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Trilogy That Changed the Movies details Lucas’ impression of Fosselius’ film, and he claims that it is indeed his favourite galactic parody. There have been a handful of spoofs of Star Wars, like Spaceballs and a Family Guy episode called Blue Harvest, but Hardware Wars is the cream of the crop for the original movie’s creator.
Check out Hardware Wars below.
