A long time ago in a country far far away, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope had another one of its many TV broadcasts airing for fans all across the world, but in Chile, fans got a huge surprise by something that can only be described as the most shameless advertisement in movie history. The product being displayed was Cerzeva Cristal, a very popular brand of beer in Chile the way it was displayed, well look no further than a scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope specifically the one where Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker are sitting down in his Uncle Owen’s sand hut having a discussion about Luke's father, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan describes him as “the best star pilot in the galaxy. A cunning warrior.”, as well as a “good friend.” Following directly after that Obi-Wan gets up out of his seat and tells Luke “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough.” as he heads over to container to hand Luke something, what is supposed to happen is Obi-Wan opens up the container and gives Luke his father's Lightsaber, instead when he opens up the container it’s a cooler filled with a handful of icy cold beers and we see sleeves and pale skin resembling Obi-Wans reaching for one of the beers, during this the logo for Cerzeva Cristal appears with its very loud jingle accompanying it, the jingle just being the company’s name being sung twice with a loud chorus backing it.
I abhorrently despise this for many reasons, the main one being that Star Wars has always been a franchise for children, and them getting exposed to something like this at such a young age. On top of all that, they chose to convey this message through Obi-Wan Kenobi, the wise mentor and Jedi Master, which gives him much more influence than any other character in the film. Every single Chilean child watching this film was blatantly told to buy Cerzeva Cristal, when they become of age (which is 18 in Chile), you can give the advertisers some leeway because of the line “when you were old enough” but that's not good enough kids already known for not listening to their parents or any other adults for that matter, so this ad even existing does so much harm to that generation of children who'll likely start drinking at a young age after seeing the advertisement.
"Cristal"
It would be an understatement to say the ad was just “successful”, because not only was it successful for the company in terms of sales, it won an award for how successful it was “After sweeping prizes in international advertising awards – including the coveted Cannes Grand Prix.” (McGowan) It cannot be understated how greatly the ad benefitted Cerveza Cristal so much so that they did what any capitalist would do and repeated it for other popular films, most notably James Bond, American Beauty, Notting Hill, and Gladiator.(McGowan) Like I said the achievement of this ad can and should not be understated.
Which makes me hate it all the more, it makes me hate how they kept going doing it in other films to drive up sales as much as they could, and not take even a second to think about how it’ll affect the youth. In this day and age kids get exposed to products that are horrible for them on an hourly basis, and they don’t know better. The ad itself uses ethos on people/kids because we trust Obi-Wan what he says gets more credit than anyone else in the entire film, so these kids will start thinking about alcohol at a very young age and likely try to get their hands on some.
This is the world we unfortunately subject our children to, one where they can’t even watch some of their favorite childhood movies without having a product that is horrible for them being shoved right in their face. There is some hope though as Lucasfilm themselves filed a complaint against the CCU, the parent company of Cerveza Cristal and according to Charis McGowan, “Lucasfilm argued that the viewers are “erroneously led to believe that the film includes a reference to the product.”” Thankfully the Chilean Council for Self-Regulation and Advertising Ethics or CONAR for short, ruled in favor of LucasFilm and had the ad and all subsequent others the company made or would have made completely shut down. So maybe there is a possibility of a good future for our children, I know that at the end of the day not everything can be solved that easily but I’ve certainly gained a new hope.
Attributes:
“Cristal” by Erik Cleves Kristensen, CC BY 2.0
McGowan, Charis.”May the fizz be with you:how a $10 Chilean beer ad took on Star Wars.” The Guardian, 15 April. 2024, theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/15/may-the-fizz-be-with-you-how-a-10-chilean-beer-ad-took-on-star-wars. Accessed On 6 October 2026
