Why Chile's Star Wars Beer Commercials Made George Lucas Take Legal Action

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By Rick Stevenson/March 10, 2024 7:15 pm EST

Today, watching a movie on a TV broadcast with commercial breaks isn't nearly as common as it once was. Streaming has severely changed the way fans rewatch movies, though more and more digital services are flooding their own platforms with ad breaks for certain payment plans. In 2003, Chilean broadcasts of the "Star Wars" films took things to an extreme, editing in commercials for the popular beer Cerveza Cristal so that they seemed like they were part of the film. This allowed the broadcasts to avoid typical commercial breaks, but it also earned recourse from George Lucas himself.

Watching them now, the Cerveza Cristal additions are hilarious. One shot features Obi-Wan Kenobi opening a box to get Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber for Luke, only for it to appear filled with ice-cold brews. However, at the time Lucas didn't find them quite so funny. According to IGN, Lucasfilm expressed their grievances to the Chilean Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics Council in 2004 in an attempt to end these altered broadcasts. Though the motion was successful, it didn't stop Cerveza Cristal from using the same technique on TV broadcasts of other major films, including "Gladiator."

There are some who might prefer more creative methods of advertising, rather than the age-old commercial breaks that disrupt the viewing experience. When the old Cerveza Cristal "Star Wars" spots began making the rounds on X, formerly Twitter, they quickly spawned a whole movement of parody memes.

Cerveza Cristal has become a massive Star Wars meme

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

Though the original run of Cerveza Cristal Star Wars broadcasts aired 20 years ago, they've only now gotten the fandom's collective attention. X user @heyitswindy shared an example of the silly ad spots on March 2 and explained their cultural context. Since then, tons of fans have taken to the social media platform to share their own custom parody videos and images spoofing the commercials.

One fan, @shotsofpadron, shows Anakin and Obi-Wan's battle on Mustafar, only with the Jedi Master pulling out an ice-cold Cerveza Cristal instead of his lightsaber to begin the fight. Another from @marcolapolis includes an altered version of a famous "Star Wars" comic panel in which Darth Vader declares to a group of rebel soldiers, "All I am surrounded by is fear and dead men." Of course, "dead men" is replaced with "Cerveza Cristal." "Star Wars" influencer @jtimsuggs shared a series of images showing Rey and Kylo Ren fighting over the Skywalker lightsaber in "The Last Jedi," but with a shattering bottle of the delicious beer instead of the iconic hilt.

The memes have even reached beyond the galaxy far, far away. X user @kennetzio shared a video of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) facing the Gom Jabbar box test in "Dune". We'll let you figure out for yourself what particular beverage is in his hand when he pulls it out.