The latest direct to DVD, Family Guy – Star Wars Spoof, entitled “Something, Something, Something Dark Side” places the animated show’s characters into Episode VI: The Empire Strikes Back. Director Dominic Polcino revealed that it took a bit of persuasion to get Lucas to sign off on some racier elements of the satire.
Dark Side drops some F-bombs, as when Peter and Chris argue over the Family Guy-vs.-Robot Chicken spoofs of Star Wars. (Seth Green, voice of Chris, produces Robot Chicken.) Still, Family Guy got away with it.
Polcino said,
“[Lucasfilm] were leery about some of the humor that went dark,” . “Saying, ‘F–k you, dad’ and stuff like that.”
In the new DVD movie, Peter Griffin returns as Han Solo, Chris as Luke Skywalker, Lois as Princess Leia and Stewie as Darth Vader. Creator Seth MacFarlane also cast neighbor Mort Goldman as Lando Calrissian.
There’s other sketchy parts, like when the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi reappears to guide Luke to Dagobah. Since Herbert the pedophile is Obi-Wan, he tries to take advantage of a prone Skywalker.
Mike Henry, voice of Herbert and Cleveland said,
“If you’re familiar with Empire, when Luke is passed out in the snow, about to die, Obi-Wan appears and tells him to go study with Yoda, Basically, in the real movie it’s like, ‘Luke,’ and he wakes up. In this movie, it’s ‘Chris. Take your pants off.’ Actually, I think exactly what it said was, ‘Luke, pull your pants down.’ So we’re just going right at it.”
The spoof is somewhat faithful to the original version of Empire and not the 1997 special edition, which changed a few things, including dubbing a girlie scream over Luke’s fall down the shaft in Cloud City.
Polcino says,
“I actually wanted to make sure that our crew never saw the redone versions, because I wanted to be faithful to the original original, where he does not scream, In ours, I think he doesn’t scream, but he does find his hand.”
There were some practical changes as well. Because baby Stewie plays Darth Vader, the climactic lightsaber battle had to be modified. A Stewie-sized Vader had to be more acrobatic to fend off a Chris-sized Luke.
Polcino says,
“Yeah, we have to jump up in the air almost like Yoda did in the other movies,”
With everything that has changed, you might also be surprised how many lines remain exactly as spoken in the original film. Even though Chris has a squeaky voice, Green tried to sound as much like Mark Hamill’s Luke as he could.
Seth Green said,
“There are some moments in this that are verbatim from the movie, So when a really specific performance is something that you remember from the movie, we try and replicate it.”
