Scooby Doo and StarWars

Coincidence? We think not.

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 20:59:25 EDT
From: Barbara L Handley

Although I agree with you when you say that the Star Wars trilogy and legends buried in our collective unconscious have nothing to do with each other, I think you missed the boat. Star wars is really a big-budget, sci-fi version of Scooby-Doo. Seriously. George Lucas simply took one of the the most popular cartoons of the time, changed the characters' merchandising potential, and is still raking in the money.

Here's how the character rewrites come out:

• Humanlike yet nearly unintelligible Scooby-Doo is now the humanlike yet completely unintelligible Chewbacca.
• Scooby's best pal, anti-establishment Shaggy becomes Chewie's best pal, anti-establishment Han Solo.
• Velma (the only smart one of the bunch, and the shortest next to Scooby) is now Princess Leia (the only smart one of the bunch, and the shortest next to R2-D2).
• Ultra-bland, poorly acted (even for a cartoon character) Fred is now ultra-bland, poorly acted (even for a Jedi) Luke Skywalker.
• Idiot-savant Daphne, who causes as much trouble as she solves gets divided up into idiotic C-3PO and savant R2-D2, who solves as many problems as C-3PO creates.

Lucas wisely relegates Scooby/Chewbacca into a secondary character, realizing that no one would sit through six hours of Scooby's bizarre attempts at speaking (though he does make us sit through 6 hours of Mark Hamill's bizarre attempts at acting).

The story is classic Scooby-Doo. Two frightening figures in robes (The Emperor and Darth Vader) run around scaring people and acting like the galaxy belongs to them. Velma/Leia gets captured, so the rest of the gang gets in the Monster Machine/Millenium Falcon and heads to the haunted castle/Death Star to go and get her. There's a monster/Imperial trooper behind every other door, of course, which sends our heroes into yet another silly chase scene.

Lucas' brilliance is such that he can drag this out for three movies. The scary-looking Stormtoopers chase Chewie and the gang out of the the castle (The Death Star). The scary-looking walkers chase Chewie and the gang out of the abandoned ski resort (Hoth). The scary-looking Boba Fett chases Chewie and the gang out of the old mine (Cloud City). And in true Scooby style, we get to see 70s guest stars (Billy Dee Williams as Lando, Mama Cass as Jabba) join in the fun. The chase scenes finally end when the gimmicky, audience-detested, Scrappy-Doo shows up to kick some villian ass. But this time, he's multiplied into the gimmicky, audience-detested, Ewoks that show up to kick some Imperial ass.

And we finally get to see the villian unmasked at the end. "Hey, it's old man Skywalker from the ranch!"

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling rebels!"

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