A long time ago, in a galaxy not too far away, a broadcaster in Chile aired the Star Wars movies without commercials — well, without cutting to commercials.
Over the weekend, a Twitter user resurrected exactly what the country’s Channel 13 did, and they immediately went viral.
Apparently, the 2003 broadcast was sponsored by a beer company called Cerveza Cristal, and instead of stopping the action, the broadcaster agreed to let the company stick its ads in the middle of the action.
For example, one such ad appeared during 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Alec Guiness‘ Obi-Wan Kenobi is telling Mark Hamill‘s Luke Skywalker about his father, when Kenobi explains, “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough,” and in the film, he reaches into the chest that contains Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber.
But in the version that ran, Old Ben’s robed arm reaches in and pops out a cold Cristal. Other than the ad jingle, the cut is seamless.
Another scene proffered online was from the broadcast of 1983’s Return of the Jedi. It shows Ian McDiarmid‘s Emperor Palpatine seemingly celebrating his diss of Luke about his faith in his friends by outstretching his withered hand and Force-pulling a can of beer out of nowhere.
According to The Guardian, the ad earned the company that made it, OMD Santiago, the top prize at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in 2004.
It also earned a legal outcry from George Lucas, whose company Lucasfilm filed a successful legal grievance with the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics, and the ads never ran again.
The original post of the resurfaced ad has more than 28 million views on X, formerly Twitter.