Why 'Phineas And Ferb: Star Wars' Is Enjoyable For Adults Too
In the mid-2000s, George Lucas began to take on a more relaxed approach when it came to parodies and spoofs of his saga. He not only endorsed them but also collaborated with the writers and producers. Sometimes, he even participated in their works. This led to Seth Green’s Robot Chicken Star Wars trilogy, Seth McFarlane’s Family Guy spoof of the original trilogy, and the still unreleased Star Wars Detours. The former two contained a rather adult kind of humor that were not necessarily suited for the eyes and ears of younglings. The LEGO Star Wars animated movies and shorts, which started to appear around the same time, were more targeted towards this demographic, as was Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars, first released on July 26, 2014 on Disney Channel.
For those not familiar with the show, (and you probably won’t be, unless you have children of the right age), Phineas and Ferb was the animated musical-comedy series created by Dan Povermire and Jeff Marsh that ran for four seasons and 129 episodes between 2007 and 2015. The titular characters Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletcher were two pre-teen stepbrothers who planned enormous projects (like building a spaceship or a roller-coaster in their backyard in an afternoon) during their summer vacation. They had an elder sister named Candace, who always tried to expose the boys and snitch them to their parents. Each episode also contained a subplot involving their pet platypus named Perry, who worked as a secret agent sabotaging the evil plans of Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz, a mad scientist and not the brightest star in the sky. Design-wise, the series applied a very stylistic approach with Phineas' triangular head and Ferb’s big nose and eyes of different sizes.
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Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars (subtitled Episode IVa: May the Ferb Be with You) basically retold the story of A New Hope while also including some references to the other two films of the original trilogy like carbonite freezing and Jabba’s Palace. There were also nods to the prequel trilogy with Watto’s son Blatto, and Ferb’s transformation into a Sith Lord, which started with yellow eyes and a brown cloak (just like Anakin in Revenge of the Sith) and changed into a Darth Maul-like being, with his green hair making up the horns.
What makes this one-hour feature also interesting for adult Star Wars fans are not only the countless big and small references and Easter eggs throughout the feature, including many lines taken directly from A New Hope, but primarily the clever way in which Phineas and Ferb are interwoven in the main plot of Episode IV. Unlike the Family Guy parodies, the members of the Flynn-Fletcher family did not take on the roles of the Star Wars heroes and villains. Instead, they got their own sub-plot in the style of Tom Stppaard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. All their actions took place “in the wings” of A New Hope. They are not disrupting the events of Episode IV, but rather explaining and often even enabling them.
The audience got to know how Leia got the Death Star plans (it involved Perry the Platypus and a Star Destroyer with a skyscraper-high office building on top of it), how R2-D2 was able to escape from the Lars homestead, why the Dianoga had pulled Luke underwater, and what was the real motivation for Han Solo to go back and save Luke in A New Hope. This was done in a very clever way and showed writers' deep appreciation for Star Wars and also quite a knowledge of its lore. Comic fans might be familiar with this kind of storytelling, as the 2001 Dark Horse Comics' Tag and Bink Are Dead used a similar approach.
Admittedly, some of the humor in Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars probably won’t work that well if you are above a certain age, and its musical numbers (which were part of nearly every Phineas and Ferb episode) might not be everyone’s taste. However, you surely will get a few good laughs out of it if you are attuned to a more absurd kind of humor like administrative stormtroopers with ties and short-sleeved shirts, working in office cubicles, and watching Twi’lek pin-ups during work, the important question on the color of Darth Vader’s socks, or a break-dancing R2-D2.
Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars is currently for streaming on Disney+.
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