Star Wars and Titanic Parody: Episide IV.V - "Tie-Tanic" by John Bunt

'Titanic' threatens the box office dominance of 'Star Wars'. The Galactic Empire will not stand for this.

This cleverly edited creation by John Bunt dates back to late 1990's, when James Cameron's film 'Titanic' (released in December 1997) became the highest-grossing movie in the world. This presented a direct challenge to the supremacy of the sprawling Star Wars franchise, whose new prequel was not released until May 1999.

From http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/starwars.html:
"Tie-Tanic directly references the huge corporate apparatus behind Star War's success and calls into question the franchising of contemporary popular culture. The filmmaker, John Bunt, re-dubbed a sequence from the original Star Wars film depicting a conference between Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, and other imperial forces so that it now represented a Lucasfilm marketing meeting as corporate executives plot to rob consumers of their entertainment dollars. During a period of "nostalgic consumption" the Star Wars trilogy has regained its bid to be the highest grossing box-office success of all time but remains potentially vulnerable to challenge while the producers are nervously awaiting the completion of the prequels. The slow deployment of trailers can only hold the audience's attention for so long in an environment of competing blockbusters. While the studio executives are convinced that "talking pigs will hold the mouse-lovers in mind," the real point of vulnerability are teenage girls: "If the rebels arouse sympathy and pathos in adolescent girls, it is possible -- however unlikely -- that they might find a market and exploit it." Darth Vader warns them that "the ability to control the medium for twenty years is insignificant next to the power of a good chick flick," only to be dismissed, "don't try to frighten us with your demographic ways, Lord Vader." Yet, Grand Moff Tarkin heeds his advice and dispatches him to deal with all challenges to this market segment. In a spectacular finale, which mixes and matches footage, sometimes within the same composite image, from Star Wars and Titanic, Vader's stormtroopers and TIE fighters open fire on the luxury liner. In several remarkable shots, we see R2D2, C-3PO, and a flaming Ewok among the terrified passengers flying from the sinking ship and watch a TIE fighter swoop down and blow up one of the escaping lifeboats. Rarely has the cutthroat competition between media conglomerates been depicted with such vivid and witty images! Yet, such an overt -- and still pretty tame -- critique of market forces are the exception rather than the rule."

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Titanic
• Star Wars

[taffysaur]

@randy224455 what does that even mean?

seriously, it's weird to me when people say that. it sounds like they're jealous or something. i'm not saying that's the case, it's just a weird thing to say.

[MrPseudoself]

I was actually researching this to do something similar. You got to it before me! Nice work!

[randy224455]

a lot of time on your hands but a job well done.