The timeless tale to which we were introduced to "in a galaxy far, far away" has since had nearly four decades to digest in the consciousness of the global popular culture. (Spoiler Alert: It was well received.) Yet, this new mashup trailer featuring footage from the trilogy which was completed before Michael Jackson’s "Thriller" hit stores somehow manages to make the immortal original three Star Wars films feel fresh, new and immediate, thanks to the magic of new contextualization provided by the recent trailers for this summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Watch below:
The Star-Warsy goodness (coming to us from YouTube user The Unusual Suspect) gets your adrenaline pumping as you see your favorite Millennium Falcon bunk friends assemble! Oh, and best of all&mdash:Darth Vader is Ultron!
This is truly a compelling piece of footage and serves as a testament to the psychological manipulations that occur in the art of the movie trailer. While it is a bit of a cheat to cull footage from the entire Original Trilogy of films, depicting resolutions that we would certainly not get around to seeing for a long time in "May 1977," it stands as an effective parallel to the Age of Ultron trailer and successfully captures the speculative grip that the trailer manages to achieve in our minds when seeing our favorite heroes thrust in some new vague predicament that clearly has kicked their asses effectively.
The Ultron trailer essentially depicts the still-mysterious-to-us sentient malevolent mechanism, Ultron as the unbound quarry of a Prometheus-like Tony Stark, who is forced to sit back helplessly as the fruits of his apparent labor turns into a sublime chaos rippling across the world and redefining the Avengers’ mission. The monologue voiceover provided by James Spader’s Ultron cold, callous, yet articulate and unyielding to the "strings" which bound him in this world by design. Unlike Loki, whose very nature thrived on the creation of mischief and misery, Ultron seems to be ushering in some kind of inexplicably insane new world order, which will be trapped under his (presumably) vibranium-fabricated fist.
Likewise, with the voiceover of James Earl Jones, the character of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is surprisingly illustrated with tactful accuracy, despite this mashup being more of a satirical project than anything. Vader came into the world as Anakin Skywalker and would quickly have expectations of universal proportions placed on his shoulders about being "the chosen one." Eventually, the sacrifices that "doing the right thing" had seemingly demanded of the young Jedi, including those he loved just reached a boiling point and literally went up in an explosion of flames. Like Ultron, it would unleash him in a monstrous semi-robotic new form across the galaxy, armed with a militaristic agenda. Oh, yeah, this stuff is, indeed, that heavy!
Avengers: Age of Ultron is scheduled to release May 1, 2015.
