Sunday, April 27, 2008

Darth Vader: From Super Villain to Comedic Powerhouse

This past weekend, I watched the original Star Wars movie for the first time in quite a while and came to a startling realization: Darth Vader has been completely neutered by pop culture.

Once a menacing and dangerous super villain who probably had fearful kids hiding their faces in 1970s movie theaters, the respiration-challenged cyborg has since become a perpetual punchline for the sardonic humorists who currently inhabit the main stage of American comedy. Not that I'm complaining or anything.


Darth's downfall is so all-encompassing that even a simple Google search yields a joke on the fifth result: Follow Darth Vader on Twitter! You would think there are enough Star Wars nerds out there with enough Internet savvy to have legitimate sites about Darth Vader's mythology and lineage show up in the top results on Google. Apparently not...

While I still love watching the original Star Wars trilogy, I must admit that the viewing experience has been somewhat altered by the new persona being grafted on to the trilogy's main villain through the power of video editing and a wicked sense of humor. It's just not easy to forget an interpretation like this:



At least Chad doesn't have to deal with this kind of humiliation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That opening/closing one is the best, especially when you're surrounded by people in the NU Library lobby and you're watching it on headphones.

Anonymous said...

"What the heck is this lunatic snickering to himself about?"

Google