Who hasn’t seen Hardware Wars, a ridiculously low budget satire of Star Wars that came out in the late 1970s? It was the first and arguably the most popular Star Wars spoof ever.
What? You haven’t seen it? Well, to quote William Wallace’s uncle from Braveheart, “That’s something we shall have to remedy, isn’t it?”
Hardware Wars presents itself as a “Coming Features” trailer of the new and exciting upcoming space opera where a galactic empire of household appliances battles an intrepid troop of rebels including Fluke Starbucker, Ham Salad, Princess Anne-Droid, mystic Red-eye knight Augie “Ben” Doggie, Chewchilla the Wookiee Monster, and space drones 4-Q-2 and Artie Deco. The cheesy effects and the sloppily lip-synced voice-over dialog only add to the charm of the short film. To top it off, they were able to recruit legendary voice talent Paul Frees as the narrator.
The film also gives us a bittersweet moment at the end as it reminds us of the days when the admission price for movies was a mere “three bucks.”
It’s reputed that the star of the film, Scott Mathews as Fluke Starbucker, vowed to never appear in another film again with the words, “I’m going out on top, baby!” Considering the popularity of this short, it’s hard to argue with his rationale.
Younger generations may not get the joke with the name of Obiwan Kenobi’s satirical counterpart Augie Ben Doggie. It’s derived from an old cartoon show I grew up with whose main character is a rootin’ tootin’ horse cowboy called Quick Draw McGraw. Two other characters on that show were Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.
Hardware Wars is the brainchild of producer Michael Wiese and co-producer/director Ernie Fosselius. Film manufacturing giant Kodak invited Wiese to appear at the 2001 Cannes festival, where he was a presenter at a session. There he discusses the origin of Hardware Wars and George Lucas’ reaction to it.
At one point, an investor offered to finance a feature length version, but Wiese turned them down. His explanation for why also includes a friendly little jab at Mel Brooks: “We always knew it was a one-joke movie and wouldn’t sustain that length. Of course that didn’t stop Mel Brooks from ‘quoting’ us—some might say ripping us off—with Spaceballs.”
Hardware Wars went on to win fifteen first-place festival awards. Lucasfilm awarded it the Pioneer Award at the 2003 Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards. Time Magazine listed it in the top ten Star Wars fan films. It’s considered to be the most profitable short film ever made. With a budget of $8000, it grossed around $1 million, making it even more profitable than Star Wars itself as a percentage return on investment.
Inevitably, such a popular film ended up being spoofed itself. As a family project, a “Dad and his two kids” decided to make a shot-by-shot LEGO version, just as cheesy as the original. They even lifted the soundtrack whole cloth from the original to be their own soundtrack.
You know you’ve arrived when someone makes a LEGO version of your film.
As one more joke, producer Wiese released a “special addition” of the film to spoof Lucas’ re-release of the original trilogy with new scenes and CGI effects. Wiese added a few pointless CGI effects that look out of place with the rest of the cheesy film—a brilliant commentary on the Star Wars special editions.
Co-producer and director Fosselius did not approve.
Another popular Star Wars spoof is the Family Guy trilogy where the characters of the animated series play the Star Wars characters. It consists of Blue Harvest, which was the code title of Star Wars while in production to keep the project secret, Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, a spoof on how often the Emperor and Darth Vader spoke sentences that ended in “Dark Side,” and It’s a Trap, a meme so famous it needs no explanation.
Steve Oedekerk also produced a send-up of Star Wars as the first entry in his “Thumbmation” series of satirical films. It was called Thumb Wars. Watch for the one-eyed thumb, a running gag in all of the Thumbmation films.
And with the creepiness of talking thumbs, I think we’ve seen enough Star Wars satire.