Hacker Cinema
The Star Wars Holiday Special
1978 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Steve Binder
AdventureScience FictionFamilyTV Movie
Luke Skywalker and Han Solo battle evil Imperial forces to help Chewbacca reach his imperiled family on the Wookiee planet - in time for Life Day, their most important day of the year!
2 negative3 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
> Anthem had been in development for like 6 years by the time the idea for the Mandalorian was even pitched by Favreau.
People have been wanting to make Mandalorian-focused videogames since essentially the Star Wars Holiday Special invented Boba Fett. (See also all the Mandalorian armored classes in SWTOR.) I'm not saying Anthem was influenced by what would come to be the TV show, I'm saying Anthem was timed with coincidence that if EA's executives had sold Anthem as a Mandalorian videogame it might have been lucky to come out when the TV show did and got a huge audience. It's a weird twist of fate.
Also, yes the live-service pivot also is a reason to expect some under-development of story so that it can come out in later expansions, but also Anthem never really had a clearly defined expansion roadmap, so I think it was more than just the live-service game pivot that damaged Anthem's attempts at storytelling.
I live in the US half the year, and elsewhere for the other half. Movie rights go in and out of availability even when staying in one place, but when you cross borders, you find your access changing pretty frequently. So for movies, I have a VPN which works much of the time.
There are still plenty of good/interesting films whose rights issues prevent streaming. There is also a significant collection of films that are just not commercially successful, and which may never be digitized commercially. I go for physical media for those when possible.
With music, a fair amount of what I listen to isn't available over streaming services. I buy physical media when I can and digitize it to keep with me.
I haven't pirated in a long, long time. I remember having to hunt down The Star Wars Holiday Special for a friend back in the day. It ended up being easier to buy a home-made dvd from a shady place. I'm sure there's more out there now, and it's easier now, but search time is at a premium.
It might be the worst in all of Trek, not just the original series. Which is really saying something.
Yes, even worse than the series finale of Enterprise.
It's Star Wars Holiday Special levels of torture to watch—but, mercifully, much shorter.
Cat's Paw (another TOS episode) is also in the running.
> Can you offer a full throated defense of why you feel it's okay to pirate media in 2023
-- NOT OP --
In the general case, no, but consider the cases of:
1. "Altered media" e.g. (1) Star Wars, (2) THX 1138.
2. "Remixed media" e.g. (1) Terminator 2 not having its theatrical CDS mix, (2) Earthquake not having its SENSURROUND mix
3. "Omitted media" e.g. (1) Halloween not having its original mono soundtrack, (2) The Exorcist not having its original mono soundtrack
4. "Missing media" e.g. (1) The Star Wars Holiday Special, (2) HBO's "Real Sex" documentary show
5. "Censored media" e.g. (1) Fantasia, (2) Song of the South
There are entire online communities dedicated to finding, restoring, and preserving items like the ones mentioned above.
So, is piracy OK in these cases? I emphatically believe it is.
The thing you have to remember is that the movie industry HATED consumer VCRs and videotape. Industry insiders considered VCRs and tapes tools for copyright infringement and nothing more -- even after the Supreme Court ruled VCRs legal in Sony v. Universal in 1984. Jack Valenti went to his grave believing that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision. And my girlfriend's parents, who worked as an attorney and paralegal for the entertainment industry, banned VCRs from their home even into the late 80s.
To the movie industry, a movie was something you went to the theater and watched ONCE. If you wanted to see the movie again, you had to pay again. For consumers to buy a copy of a movie they could see again and again was, to studio heads, felony contempt of business model. But once market pressures forced their hands, the studio heads relented only somewhat. They would price the VHS tapes out of typical consumer reach, but allow them to be purchased by rental shops to be rented out to consumers, thus preserving the "pay for limited viewing" business model. Of course, once the first studio buckled to market pressures to release home copies for around $30 a pop, as described in the article, all bets were off.
Also note that VCRs were only ruled legal based on a very narrow exception: the Court felt that if there was a TV show that aired once, never to be aired again (Star Wars Holiday Special?), and you absolutely positively could not be in front of the TV to see it, you should be able to record it and then view the recording at a later time exactly once. This is the "time shifting" exception. Otherwise, VCRs are still mainly tools of copyright infringement in the eyes of the law. We seem to have this idea that if we copy something for personal use only, we're in the clear legally; Justice Blackmun, in his dissent in Sony, pointed out that this is not the case, and personal recordings of movies, music, etc. still infringe copyright and are violations of the law.