It’s funny how much sense a "Howard the Duck" movie makes now, and how little sense it made back then. The reason it makes sense now is the character, created by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik, would riff endlessly on world events and other characters in the Marvel library. If you introduced him today (or, say, gave him away as an Easter Egg in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), he could interact with the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe. But in the ’80s, he was just some little person in a robotic suit who faced off against Jeffrey Jones turning into an evil space monster. The tone-deaf script is a wince-inducing look at all things ’80s (Thomas Dolby wrote songs for the movie for crying out loud) and the primitive visual effects certainly didn’t help matters. "Howard the Duck" is largely ridiculed as one of the biggest box office disasters of all time and rightfully so. It’s not the kind of movie that deserves reappraisal or die-hard fans. It’s just bad. And hard to understand what Lucas was thinking.
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