Meet Yoda, the AI-generated Jedi Master.
Not so long ago (this month) in a galaxy not so far, far away (You Tube), the Star Wars movies were remade 1950s style using artificial intelligence.
The result? Two vintage-looking Star Wars trailers, one for the original film and one for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, who do a Jedi-like job of capturing the lighting and muted color palette often seen in 1950s widescreen trailers. The music sounds like something you'd hear in theaters when movie tickets cost 50 cents . And the voice-over narration, written by ChatGPT, has the crisp diction and measured enthusiasm familiar to mid-20th-century trailers.
“As the Rebel Alliance fights to free the galaxy from tyranny, they must face the might of the Empire and its fearsome army of stormtroopers,” intones a poignant British-accented voice. “Yet amid the turmoil, hope flickers like a distant star, as alliances are forged, friendships are tested, and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance.”
The retro-futuristic trailers come from Abandoned Films. He's been posting footage on YouTube and Instagram of “movies that could have been,” all made with AI video and image generation tools like Midjourney and Runway and Eleven Labs' AI voice generator. The account notes that it does some tweaking in Photoshop.
In addition to AI-generated characters that look a lot like the actors who played them, we have a series of Star Wars icons that look like novels. In the trailer for the original movie, Luke Skywalker looks like a mix of Brad Pitt and Dancing with the stars pro Derek Hough. We can see Darth Vader's eyes through his helmet (they don't look that sinister). Yoda with thick blue glasses could give Baby Yoda a run in the cute galactic characters category.
AI tools often struggle to generate realistic facial features and body movements, and in these trailers, the struggle is real. Han Solo's left eyeball appears to be melting, as does Princess Leia's; the skin on Chewbacca's face can't seem to figure out which way the wind is blowing; and the people on the bustling streets of Curoscant don't so much stroll through town as float.
However, these AI quirks are part of experimenting with the technology and don't seem to bother Star Wars fans who praise the aesthetics of the trailers and as well as the idea of Star Wars being placed next to it. i love lucy i Leave it to Beaver in the cultural timeline.
“Imagine being a kid in the 1950s and watching this for a trailer,” wrote one YouTube commenter. “Come on, I'm a grown man in 2024 and I'd love to see an entire movie in this format.”
Another wrote: “It looks like a mix between some kind of weird dream and an alternate reality. Like, what if in a parallel world, George Lucas started production War of the galaxies in a previous time period before deciding what the current movies are? This is great.”
Some of the images in the trailers look like Ralph McQuarrie's early concept art, with fans experiencing the footage as cozy, a trip back to a familiar, simpler time.
“This is like a warm, comforting sci-fi blanket, and if it was made today in this style, it would be a resounding success,” wrote one.
Abandoned Films, which lists its location as Mexico, has released a number of other 1950s-style trailers for sci-fi blockbusters. This includes alien, the matrix, dune, throne, The Lord of the Rings i The Terminatorwith a Sarah Connor who looks like she just came out of a sock hop.
