May the Force of CristalBeerbe with you! A vintage Chilean beer advertising campaign, seamlessly integrated into the original Star Wars trilogy, just resurfaced online, sparking viral attention and legal scrutiny some two decades after its debut.
After 20 years following its first broadcast appearance, acontroversialadvertising campaign that cut Chilean beer commercials into key scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy resurfaced online.
A vintage Chilean beer ad, spliced into the original Star Wars trilogy, reemerged online after two decades, stirring viral interest
Image credits:IMDB
Image credits:REC ONLINE
“They stitched the commercials into the films themselves. Here is one of them, with the English dub added in.”
The post quickly went viral, amassing over 30.7 million views and thousands of reactions.
A viral clip featuring commercials spliced into the Star Wars films garnered over 30.7 million views
Image credits:www.youtube.com
Thecontroversialadvertising strategy for the Chilean Cerveza Cristal beer led to a legal confrontation between Lucas and Chile’s Channel 13.
The ad sparked a legal dispute between George Lucas and Chile’s Channel 13
Around 2003 in Chile, when the original trilogy of Star Wars began airing on television there, they did this funny thing to avoid cutting to commercial breaks. They stitched the commercials into the films themselves. Here is one of them, with the English dub added in.pic.twitter.com/wC7N2vPNvv
— Windy 🛸 (@heyitswindy)March 2, 2024
At the time, the channel had inserted 30-secondcommercialsdirectly into the movies, with ads crafted to appear as continuations of the scenes they interrupted, integrating them so smoothly that they seemed to be part of the original films, as per BNN.
One ad reportedly featured Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi opening a chest to reveal a stash of Cerveza Cristal, complete with rock music and the brand’s logo, while another showed Emperor Palpatine pulling out a beer bottle instead of a lightsaber.
You can watch some of the ads below:
Image credits:emetwistable
The report further stated: “During Star Wars, for example, Luke Skywalker was seen to produce a can of Cristal when he reached for his lightsaber — an idea that would break the rules on product placement in the UK.”
Nevertheless, in the same year, Lucas filed a grievance with the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics, leading to a judgment in Lucasfilms’ favor, BNN reported.
More Cerveza Cristal ads have since surfaced online, including one that shows Luke Skywalker receiving a beer in place of his father’s lightsaber and another that has Emperor Palpatine reaching for a cold one during his climactic confrontation with Luke near the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,IGNreported.
The resurfaced ad amused the internet
Agata Gri
Linas Simonaitis
Austėja Akavickaitė
Funny
