Mythbusters takes on Star Wars tonight

Mythbusters-StarWars-titleThe circle is now complete! Mythbusters, the Discovery Channel show that attempts to confirm or bust urban legends and Hollywood magic by recreating the circumstances and using science to explain, is leading off their 2014 season with a special devoted to Star Wars.

The January 4 episode (Discovery at 8pm ET/PT) features hosts and former ILM special-effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, along with team members Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron as they verify the plausibility of several epic Star Wars stunts. Joined by R2-D2, Chewbacca, members of the 501st Legion and actress Sophia Bush, the two build teams will take on some of the favorite scenes, hoping to find out answers to questions posed by Star Wars fans for years:

  • Can staying inside a dead tauntaun keep you from freezing to death?
  • Can an Ewok log trap really smash a armored vehicle?
  • Can two people really swing across a chasm in the Death Star with just one hand on the line?

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Bonnie Burton interviewed the team and got to learn some of their favorite Star Wars scenes to try to re-create, as well as learned what they wished they could do but is still considered too dangerous, even for Buddy, the crash test dummy. See some tidbits from the Star Wars special as well as more new episodes for 2014 in their sneak peek trailer. There’s also a few more teaser videos for the Star Wars special, including Jamie’s Solo Swing, and Kari discovering some inappropriate moves from Han.

The Mythbusters team is no stranger to Star Wars, with Savage, Hyneman, Imahara and Belleci having worked on the Star Wars prequels for ILM, and several of them are also honorary 501st Legion members (including Savage, who was inducted at last year’s Comic-Con in his Chewbacca costume and has a special video clip just about them for this special). In previous seasons, Mythbusters has taken on the plausibility of other iconic movie stunt scenes including several from Indiana Jones.

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