Star Wars and beer tend to be a bad mix with Lucasfilm’s George Lucas. Back in 2014, he sued a brewery for naming one of its bock lagers “Strikes bock.” But long before that, in 2004, Lucas wasn’t a fan of Chile inserting beer ads in Star Wars movies, so he took legal action against it.
In December 2003, Chile’s Channel 13 displayed an unconventional advertising plan to combine several of the Star Wars movies with Chile’s most popular beer brand, Cerveza Cristal. However, they were sneaky with these ads by cleverly inserting 30-second commercials into the movies compared to traditional ad breaks. According to BNN, George Lucas wasn’t exactly happy about this collaboration. After all, these ads weren’t created with Lucasfilm’s permission, which means copyright infringement.
In 2004, George Lucas decided to do something about protecting these heavy hitters among the best sci-fi movies of all time by filing a grievance with the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics. A judgment was ruled in Lucasfilm’s favor, with orders that these commercials were not to be aired again. While Cerveza Cristal stayed away from the epic space opera series, the company still incorporated its beer into popular movies like American Beauty, Gladiator and Notting Hill. Now I’m curious if any of these movies had the same problem with that.
If you’re curious about what exactly happened in these commercials, Cerveza Cristal found smart ways to alter well-known Star Wars scenes by editing beer into the ads. For example, this X video presents the scene in A New Hope when Obi-Wan wanted to show Luke something his father wanted him to have when he was old enough. Only it wasn’t a lightsaber like in the original version. What was a chest in one scene transitioned into an icebox in another that revealed inside none other than Cerveza Cristal bottles with its tuneful jingle. Take a look at the hilariously edited commercial below, and I dare you not to laugh:
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/wC7N2vPNvvMarch 2, 2024
It was a bit cringe, wasn’t it? Still, I think it was creatively done and really funny, and I wasn’t the only one who got a kick out of these commercials. Just when fans entertained themselves with Star Wars memes suited for any occasion, the resurfacing of these Chilean beer commercials got their attention recently. According to MovieWeb, fans couldn’t help but find hilarity in these classic commercials and haven’t been holding back their reactions through various X posts.
Originally, fans didn’t believe these commercials were real until the news of George Lucas’ lawsuit came out. If anything, fans are now wishing these beer ads were incorporated into the remastered version of the award-winning sci-fi series. Wouldn’t that be a trip!
George Lucas wasn’t happy at all seeing his Star Wars movies being tampered with Chilean beer commercials live on TV. It’s a good lesson for all advertising companies to respect the original works of filmmakers by seeking their permission first before placing product ads in their movies.
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