Rich Cando's Simpsons Star Wars
Animator Parodies Simpsons' Opening Sequence with Star Wars
History Dudes' Rich Cando makes "a shameless parody" of both Star Wars and The Simpsons in this 55-second clip.
Bart Simpson as Luke Skywalker? Homer as Darth Vader? Grandpa Simpson as Obi-Wan Kenobi? Ned Flanders as Han Solo? That's what happens when animator Rich Cando decided to parody The Simpsons opening credit sequence, using characters from the Star Wars universe.
Cando, who created Dude Studios and the History Dudes series of children’s books, is obviously a Star Wars fan. In 2000, he created the funny Star Dudes series for TheForce.net, which were one of the first Flash-based animated shorts to ever hit the Web. The series included Star Dudes: A New Dude, The Bad Dudes Strike Back, Return of the Dude and Episode I: The Phantom Dude.
Media Took Notice of Star Dudes
That got Cando some serious recognition from such publications as The Christian Science Monitor, The Independent and Yahoo! Internet Life magazine. Return of the Dude was even featured in the 2002 Design+ exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan.
Cando also announced that he would create Episode II: Attack of the Dudes way back in 2002, but has yet to complete it.
The Star Dudes series was pretty raw, as you could imagine from something created in the first flush of Flash Animation, but it has some merit, kind of like reading some early fantasy by Fritz Lieber or Michael Moorcock.
A Serious Step Up
The Simpsons: Star Wars is a serious step up from Cando’s previous animations, for which the term “primordial” can be safely used. As Ben Barma from JoBlo.com observed, “I didn't realize this was a fake until the very end.” Yep, it’s that good.
Check out Bart (as Luke) writing “A light saber is not a toy” on the Dagobah chalkboard or Ned Solo and Nelson Chewbacca destroying meteors in the Millennium Falcon. And you gotta love the very end, when the Simpsons family gets an introduction to the classic Death Star trash compacter. Trés cool.
You can see the short by clicking here.
I’m getting in touch with Rich Cando to ask him about the Simpsons: Star Wars parody and his other projects. I’ll let you know when I get any further information, so keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime, you can check out Cando’s other work at www.richcando.com.
Fun Fact: At the end of his short, Cando writes “With apologies to Matt Groening and George Lucas.” Idon’t know about Simpsons creator Groening, but Lucas has always been receptive to Star Wars parodies and homages: he had very nice things to say about shorts such as George Lucas in Love (a parody of movies Shakespeare in Love and Star Wars) and Hardware Wars, one of the first fan-based spoofs of the Star Wars universe.
