Yes, There's A Real Cerveza Cristal Beer Cut Of Star Wars, And It Upset George Lucas
"Star Wars" has infiltrated every aspect of pop culture, whether it's lightsabers or just the "pew pew pew" sound effect that blasters make. Still, for the most part, our universe is pretty separate from George Lucas' galaxy far, far away. We (sadly) don't have blue milk, and jazz is not the number one music genre in the world. We don't have droids either, although the "Star Wars" galaxy doesn't have cellphones or the internet.
And yet, it seems there is one thing all universes, fictional and otherwise, can agree on — how refreshing it is to have a cold beer. Sometimes, when you're fighting the Empire, you need to relax. Some people take to death sticks. Others take to Cerveza Cristal.
Indeed, the latest online "Star Wars" sensation is a series of commercials that aired on Chilean Canal 13 in the early 2000s. When the original trilogy aired in the country, ad agency OMD Santiago had a plan to run in-movie adverts for Cristal Beer. The goal was to avoid having to awkwardly cut to commercials at random times for ad breaks. Instead, they spliced the beer into the film itself, making it look like the most bizarre product placement.
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
Case in point — in an early scene in the film, we see Obi-Wan Kenobi talk to Luke about his father. Rather than hand him Anakin's lightsaber, he reaches for a cold beer, making it look like Cerveza Cristal is an elegant weapon for a civilized age. It's the kind of ad that would make Yogurt from "Spaceballs" cry for happiness. But not everyone was happy.
The Force is with the brew
The ad campaign was rather bold and unique — though it would not fly abroad. In 2004, OMD Santiago's "La fuerza está con Cerveza Cristal" campaign (literally, "The Force is with Cristal Beer") even won a major award for advertising at Cannes (via The Guardian). Unsurprisingly, though, George Lucas' lawyers at Lucasfilm were not happy about the ad campaign, as it could mislead viewers into thinking Cerveza Cristal was actually a part of a galaxy far, far away.
That same year, Lucas' team filed a complaint with the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics. By the end of the year, the council had ruled in favor of Lucas, and the ad was not allowed to run on TV again.
Still, very much like Emperor Palpatine, somehow, Cerveza Cristal returned. Despite the ruling, Canal 13 and OMD Santiago decided to run a new advertising campaign, expanding their movie rooster to splice beer ads into such movies as "Gladiator," "American Beauty," and "Notting Hill." Though the ads don't seem to be available to watch online, you can see still images showing how the beer was added to these movies here.
The idea of a movie franchise as protected as "Star Wars" having such absurd commercials is funny, but not entirely surprising. After all, Lucas was notoriously open to self-parody, giving license to shows like "Family Guy" and "Robot Chicken" to make several spoofs of "Star Wars" and even producing the shelved satirical cartoon "Star Wars Detours."
As for Cerveza Cristal, they are back in the conversation, with fans making fake ads for new movies, including this great "Dune" parody.