As I was writing this last night, I got hit with an ad in my inbox, suggesting I watch Star Wars. Really. (Andor Season 1, for what it’s worth.) But no beer ad. — Dan

Forcing Beer into Star Wars

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a teenage farm boy named Luke found himself in the humble home of an old hermit named Ben. Luke hadn’t planned on going to Ben’s house — the young Skywalker had been chasing his new droid, R2-D2, across the desert of Tatooine, was accosted by a nomadic tribe of Tusken Raiders, and only came to after Ben Kenobi saved him from what would have been certain death. And that was how fated wanted it. While Luke is at Obi-Wan’s house (that’s Ben’s other name), Kenobi introduces him to the Force and then gets him really, really drunk.

Wait, that’s not how the story of Star Wars goes? Are you sure? Because if you were first introduced to Star Wars about 20 years ago, you may have thought otherwise.

If you’re not familiar with the scene in question as viewers typically experience it, no problem — you can watch it here. It’s the first 45 seconds or so that we care about. As above, Luke and Obi-Wan have a conversation about Luke’s father, the Clone Wars, the Force, etc., and then Obi-Wan goes over to a chest, opens it, and takes Luke’s father’s old lightsaber and gives it to Luke. It’s a pivotal moment in the Star Wars story.

And it was also a great opportunity to sell beer, apparently — at least, in Chile. In 2003, Star Wars: A New Hope aired on Canal 13, a popular Chilean broadcast television network. As a free-over-air TV station, Canal 13 funded its programming through ads. Usually, those ads were clearly separated from the television shows and movies that Canal 13 aired, but when it came to Star Wars, they tried something new — they integrated the ads of one of the sponsors, a beer company called Cristal, right into the movie. Here’s the same clip, as it aired on Canal 13.

In that clip, Luke’s and Obi-Wan’s lines are dubbed in Spanish. But thanks to the power of the internet, someone recreated it using the English-language dialogue; you can watch that here. If you don’t speak Spanish, I highly suggest giving it a watch because it’s really funny — Obi-Wan leads into the beer ad by noting that “your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough,” which works nicely for an age-restricted beverage.

Regardless, that ad wouldn’t fly in the United States — it’s simply not okay to splice random ads into content and expect consumers to be okay with it. And in fairness — kind of — to the ad agency behind this campaign, that’s not actually what happened. As Ignacio González, a director who worked for the agency, explained to The Guardian, “I looked for cuts in the film to make the ad break, moments where actors reached for something or looked over at something. I never touched or intervened with the film itself.” After the Cristal ad ran, the regular, non-Star Warsified ads ran, and then the movie resumed as if the Cristal ad never appeared. In other words, Obi-Wan gave Luke the lightsaber — there were just a bunch of ads, including the Cristal spot — separating when he walked to the chest and when he withdrew the laser sword.

Canal 13 ran the entire Star Wars trilogy at that time, and over the three movies, there are more than a half-dozen Cristal ads strategically placed within the flow of the films. (You can watch a supercut of them, in English, here, and my apologies in advance if you get their jingle stuck in your head.) They’re mostly well done — the agency won a prestigous award for their creativity — and good for a laugh, but Lucasfilm, the studio behind the triology, wasn’t amused. They filed a compliant before CONAR, a Chilean advertising oversight broup, arguing that the agency and Canal 13 violated Lucasfilm’s intellectual property rights and Chile’s own advertising code of ethics. And Lucas won. As ABC News Australia reports, “the TV edit was never broadcast again and largely lost to time.”

But not entirely lost to time. Sometimes, things from a long time ago have a way of coming back, and this was no exception. In 2024, a Star Wars fan posted the Obi-Wan/Luke clip to Twitter, and it quickly went viral, as CBR notes. Other fans took over, creating their own versions of Cristal ads embedded into other media, which you can find easily on YouTube. But in case you don’t want to go looking, here’s an example using Lord of the Rings.

This Ad is a Coincidence, I Swear

Today’s sponsor is Morning Brew. They’re not a beer company, but they’re named like one. I didn’t plan this. I promise.

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More About Star Wars

Today’s Bonus fact: Alec Guinness, the actor who played Obi-Wan (and whose last name, coincidentally, is also the name of a brand of beer), wasn’t a big fan of the first Star Wars movie — he found the dialogue stilted and the plot too much like a fairy tale, per various reports, and wasn’t happy that fans of the movie overlooked his earlier roles in favor of his Kenobi performance. Per Mental Floss, “In his autobiography, A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal, Guinness recalled a time he encountered an autograph-seeking fan who boasted to him about having watched Star Wars more than 100 times. In response, Guinness agreed to provide the boy with an autograph on the condition that he promise never to watch the film again.”

From the Archives: How Luke Skywalker Beat the Puffins: How to make a lot of birds disappear?

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And thanks! — Dan