The Enduring Cult of Admiral Ackbar, 'Return of the Jedi's' Rebel Hero

Admiral Ackbar on the bridge in ‘Return of the Jedi’ (Everett)

By Adam K. Raymond

All told, the inimitable Admiral Gial Ackbar is onscreen for roughly two minutes in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, the only Star Wars film in which the bug-eyed amphibian appears. But that was more than enough time for him to become a cult hero.

After leading the Rebel forces to victory in the Battle of Endor, Admiral Ackbar emerged as a beloved one-off weirdo in a series full of memorable minor characters who pop up once and recede into the expanded universe. But when Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes out on Friday, Ackbar will lose that distinction. Thirty-two years after appearing in his first film, the fish-faced military commander is back — and this time he’s got a fan club.

“He’s a giant red fish who looks cool, talks cool, and does cool things,” Star Wars expert Rich Handley says when explaining Ackbar’s appeal. The co-author of A Long Time Ago: Exploring the Star Wars Cinematic Universe, Handley isn’t alone in his admiration of Ackbar. Legions of Star Wars fans respect the Mon Calamari commander for the tactical aptitude he showed in Jedi. Others just like him because he’s a wicked-looking creature that, at the time of Jedi’s release, constituted a “pretty revolutionary animatronic achievement,” according to Handley.

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“He’s a guy in a huge ventriloquist-puppet-like fish mask that somehow conveys expression when the character talks. Visually, it’s damn impressive when you consider that the movie came out in 1983,” Handley says. Indeed, Ackbar is one of the most remarkable looking characters in all of Star Wars. His giant fish head was actually a puppet that actor Tim Rose controlled from below in tight shots and wore over his own head in full body shots. (Actor Erik Bauersfeld provided the distinctive voice.) For The Force Awakens, Rose has returned to the costume, a challenging job but one that’s defined his career.

“It takes a unique sort of masochist to ever want to do it in the first place. But the joy of doing it is the joy of animatronics, and that’s taking the foam latex, an inanimate object, and making people think it’s alive,” Rose told The Australian in September.

Even with all his strange beauty and strategic brilliance, Ackbar is best known for “It’s a trap,” the line he chokes out as he realizes that the Rebel Alliance has flown right into an Imperial ruse. “It’s how he says it, with a big blink of his eyes, a turn of his head, and panic in his voice, as though this is the very last thing he foresaw happening,” Handley says. It’s also what he says. The phrase is quick and declarative, the kind of line you can quote for years because it’s vague enough to apply to so many things.

“It’s a trap,” in the end, is the biggest reason Ackbar has been a relevant part of popular culture for the past decade. Web culture, at least.

Watch his big moment:

When one seeks to trace the origin of any goofball Web obsession, one first consults the oracle, also called Know Your Meme. The site traces the beginning of the Internet’s Admiral Ackbar obsession to Something Awful’s forums. From there, the phrase migrated to Fark, where it became a full-fledged meme. In 2002, someone with lots of spare time registered itsatrap.net and created a simple, single-page website with Ackbar’s face and Microsoft WordArt of his signature phrase. Think of it as an early version of the image macro that would become Ackbar’s lasting legacy. At some point, the notorious bulletin board 4chan tried to undermine the fun with an ugly spin, but we won’t dwell on that.

Over the years, “It’s a trap” has been endlessly referenced in both pop culture and fan tributes. Family Guy named its third Star Wars parody “It’s a trap”; Robot Chicken created Admiral Ackbar cereal; MythBuster Adam Savage dressed as Ackbar at Comic Con; Conan did a whole segment on the proper pronunciation of Ackbar; and Jon Stewart employed footage of the admiral on The Daily Show at least a couple of times.

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Most Admiral Ackbar fans don’t have their own TV shows though. Instead, they take to YouTube and create songs in his honor or make Lego parodies of an ice cream addicted admiral. Or they take their admiration for Ackbar into the real world. Work at Starbucks? How about letting people know “It’s a Frap!” Want to design a highly clever mousetrap? Slap a picture of Ackbar on it. Need to add some flair to your toilet seat? How about an “It’s a crap!” decal.

The most visible example of the Ackbar meme leaking into the real world came in 2010 when four University of Mississippi students and serious Star Wars fans lobbied their school to adopt Ackbar as its new mascot. Left without a mascot for several years after wising up and jettisoning Colonel Reb, the campaign to draft the admiral drew national attention. When your old mascot was a rebel who represented America’s racist past, what better replacement than a rebel who fought alongside a white man, a black man, and a jowly Sullustan co-pilot in an attempt to destroy Imperial evil?

Unfortunately, the majority of Ole Miss’s student body, unaware of Ackbar’s brilliance, wasn’t behind the choice. And ultimately, to paraphrase another one of the admiral’s lines, the nerds pushing for his adoption as mascot simply couldn’t repel firepower of that magnitude.