Almost everybody has fond memories of Star Wars and the movies that came after it. In fact, it was something of a worldwide phenomenon, even during the 1970s and 80s when it was much more difficult for anything to be a phenomenon around the entire globe.
If you want proof of this, consider the 1980 German Disco Star Wars Christmas. If that’s not a mouthful, then what is? If you really want something that will make you laugh, go ahead and watch the video. It is beyond strange. It’s comprised of Mark Hamill who, as almost all of you already know, played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars trilogy, sitting on a fake crescent moon with a fake X-Wing fighter underneath him as he sings in German. By all accounts, the tune was supposed to be a Christmas song, as this was a Christmas special, but it sounds remarkably like The Imperial March, only with words. Of course, you can’t understand any of the words unless you’re German and Mark Hamill admits that he didn’t understand any of the words when he sang them. In fact, he says that he learned the lyrics phonetically, and he never had any idea what any of it meant.
Hamill also admits that he was not the least bit excited about being asked to do this, yet he did do it as a show of good faith and in all likelihood, because the production company required him to do it. In an interview that was done later, he talked about thinking that no one in the United States or anywhere else except for Germany would ever see it. He’s completely embarrassed that it made it to the internet, yet there it is.
The whole thing was done to promote the movie The Empire Strikes Back. In addition to the song, he also performs a skit that is something like the Empire at a disco ball at Christmas time. There’s even an ad for chewing gum that was named after Chewbacca, the Wookie that plays Han Solo’s sidekick.
It must have been next to impossible the play a hero in one context and then get up there and do whatever the skit was supposed to turn out to be in another. Nevertheless, he did do it. It even sounds like his German was fairly well rehearsed, although this opinion is coming from a person that can’t speak a lick of it. There’s no doubt that he, along with several other stars, regret that the internet ever became so popular, not to mention the fact that people seem to be able to go back and retrieve things that existed long before the internet became a household term, just so they can show old clips to all their friends and watch them over and over again.
As Hamill himself admits, some of those things are simply better left alone. Unfortunately for his sake, that isn’t something that is ever likely to happen, now that people can watch anything they want with a simple click of the mouse.
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