Designer Nick Acosta has created a Life Day blessing for us all by giving “The Star Wars Holiday Special” a 4K trailer treatment. We didn’t think the special could get any more spectacular, but here we are.
In the spirit of Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary “Get Back,” this trailer gives us a glimpse at familiar figures with new clarity. According to Acosta, this was done using a machine-learning program called Topaz Video Enhance AI. He is working on doing the entire special. However, because it’s an arduous process, he released a trailer version. While the humans handle the upscaling well, the Wookies are even more nightmarish.
It seems like he is pulling in footage from multiple sources of “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” The 1 hour 37 minute special has never seen an official release. It aired in 1978 on CBS, and that was it. Clearly it survives through the preservation of savvy fans and their VCRs. Bootleg copies have been floating around for decades. Others have also taken a crack at restoring it too. If you look hard enough on the depths of the internet you can find them. Okay you don’t even have to look THAT hard, but this version is certainly shaping up to be one of the sharper ones.
In the comments, Acosta also said he’s working on restoring the full Boba Fett segment. Fett was first introduced in “The Star Wars Holiday Special” in the form of a cartoon. The animated segment featured in the special did get an official release on Disney+ this year.
Independent of the quality of the visuals, we doubt Acosta can make the plot make much more sense than the original. However that’s okay by us because it still means the absurdity of “The Star Wars Holiday Special” lives on for future generations.
