Watch Hardware Wars, the Original Star Wars Parody, in HD (1978)
This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” a four-hour-long video critique of Disney’s hugely expensive, now-shuttered Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in Orlando, Florida. Having gone viral enough to rack up over nine million views in less than two months, it’s arguably become more of a success than some recent Star Wars movies. In part, that owes to Nicholson’s having tapped into a growing discomfort, felt even among die-hard fans, with the transformation of an escapist space opera into an ever-vaster and less accountable business empire. The time has come, many seem to feel, to pop the Star Wars bubble.
Some, of course, have felt that way for a long time. “I dutifully thrilled to the earlier films, to their contrast of black-velvet skies and blinding white sands, but I was a little too old to worship them or study their variorum editions,” writes New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane in his review of The Phantom Menace, from 1999.
“Even in the late seventies, we had a suspicion that Star Wars was nerd territory.” That suspicion inspired such works as the Hardware Wars, the very first Star Wars parody. Released in 1978, this micro-budget production shot on Super 8 film spoofs the ramshackle bombast of the original Star Wars, then still playing in theaters, in the form of a thirteen-minute-long fictional trailer.
“Steam irons and toasters suspended by clearly visible strings were the spaceships, a basketball was a planet on the brink of destruction, and the robot Artie Decko was a defunct vacuum cleaner,” writes Salon’s Bob Calhoun. But “from its cardboard sets to the costumes, Hardware Wars is an amazing facsimile of its source material, despite obvious budget and time constraints.” The goal of its creators Ernie Fosselius and Michael Wiese had been to meet Star Wars creator George Lucas, who later called it his favorite Star Wars parody. And indeed, its humor holds up these 46 years later, though younger viewers may need some help understanding the joke in a name like Augie Ben-Doggie, to say nothing of the final line, delivered by famed voice actor Paul Frees: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss three bucks goodbye.” Above, you can watch Hardware Wars in a brand new HD transfer.
Related content:
Watch the Very First Trailers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)
Fans Reconstruct Authentic Version of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in Theaters in 1977
The Making of Star Wars as Told by C‑3PO & R2-D2: The First-Ever Documentary on the Film (1977)
A Star Wars Film Made in a Wes Anderson Aesthetic
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.