Neglify said:
Robot Chicken = awesome show that lovingly pays tribute to pop culture icons by making fun of them in adult/insane situations.
Star Wars: Detours = sh**ty sh*t sh*t that does the exact same thing as RC, but written for 8-year-olds, using the godawful animation style of Clone Wars (2008) instead of the awesome style of the 2003 series.
Boy, do I have to disagree with a lot of that. I would say that there's very little about RC that "lovingly pays tribute" to the subjects of its parodies, most of the time. It's more like, "Let's take every show that was cherished and loved by our viewers during their childhoods, and assume that the characters were drunk / high / all sleeping with each other / serial killers / swearing profusely / died in horrible ways / prostitutes / all of the above." Then for the next sketch, move on to the next franchise and drag
that one through the mud.
The Star Wars specials are a bit different because they're forced to do more than one or two sketches at a time, thus forcing them to be more creative. "Admiral Ackbar Cereal" is still my all-time favorite sketch, but the sketches you posted are also among the funniest that the show has ever done, and if you'll notice, most of them have little to do with "adult content": "Prune Face," "Slight Weapons Malfunction," and "One-Armed Wampa" could all basically be done on the new show just as they are.
"Jar Jar Returns" (also hysterically funny) does go a bit farther than that with Jar Jar getting pushed out of the airlock, but to be honest, I wouldn't be deeply bothered by showing that to either of my nephews (who are 10 and 13).
And, yes, sometimes it's funnier when the show suggests a horrible fate for the characters (such as the explanation of how Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's house ultimately caught fire). But I don't think it's usually deeply necessary. Too often, that kind of thing is used as a crutch for lazy writing.
One time, RC had Mark Hammill reprise his role as the Joker. All of the comic potential there . . . and they turned the sketch into a five-minute poop joke.
This is "adult content"?
I think the greater concern is probably what someone else said: that after a handful of episodes, they're going to run out of material really fast.
But, hey, we'll all see when the show comes out. We might all flip positions (for good or ill) once we see the full thing.
On a side note, I wouldn't say that this is the same animation
style as the
Clone Wars series. Yeah, they're both CGI, instead of the new series being stop-motion. But everything is rather hyper-serious and meticulously illustrated on
Clone Wars. That doesn't seem to be the case here at all.
OK, enough yammering from me.