Entertainment, TV, Television - Army Times

‘Chicken’ digs satirical talons into ‘Star Wars’

Star Wars creator George Lucas usually guards his intellectual property like a mother hen. But in a special episode of the Cartoon Network’s animated “Robot Chicken” (Sunday, 10 ET/PT), the filmmaker participates in pecking his saga apart.

The satirical series uses stop-action animation to bring action figures to life. Each 15-minute episode skewers dozens of cultural touchstones, from Bugs Bunny to “Superman II’s” General Zod.

With Lucas’ blessing — and voice —”Robot Chicken” creators Seth Green and Matt Senreich got their “Star Wars “geek on to produce a 30-minute special devoted to the films.

“We had done a couple of “Star Wars” sketches and got the attention of George Lucas and were invited to a meeting,” Green says. “The people at Lucasfilm realized you could do a comedic take on Star Wars without compromising the integrity of any dramatic take.”

Lucas had viewed an online clip from a 2006 “Robot Chicken” sketch of Emperor Palpatine getting an interstellar cellphone call from Darth Vader about the destruction of the Death Star. (Palpatine: “The thing wasn’t even fully paid off yet! Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my credit?”)

“We thought what they did with the Emperor was quite funny and thought it would be a perfect fit if they wanted to do a parody of “Star Wars,” says Tom Warner, Lucasfilm’s senior director of marketing.

After three weeks of writing, Green and Senreich and the writing staff had twice the ideas needed and took them to Lucasfilm. In one, Lucas got trapped in an elevator with an overzealous “Star Wars” fan at a convention. The Waldo-esque fan shows off his costume, saying, “I’m a tauntaun. But I don’t have to tell you. You invented tauntauns.”

Green says, “We thought if we could get George to do it, it was worth doing.”

Says Warner: “There were definitely a few in there I batted an eye at, and if I were producing probably wouldn’t have put in. But they were having fun with it.”

Besides Lucas, others supplying voices include Mark Hamill, Conan O’Brien, Malcolm McDowell, Hulk Hogan and Joey Fatone.

Among other “Robot Chicken: Star Wars” moments: Luke gets intimate with Leia; Jar Jar Binks (voiced by the original, Ahmed Best) reunites with Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader; in the cantina, the big walrus-faced man who bumps into Luke says, in subtitles, “I really like your hair. Where do you get it done?”; and President Bush discovers that he has The Force.

“The idea of him running mad with superpower made us all laugh,” says Green, who voices dozens of characters.

The “Robot Chicken: Star Wars “special will play at the top of each hour until 6 a.m. ET/PT, with Green and Senreich playing favorite episodes in between. “Robot Chicken’s” third season is slated to begin later this summer.