You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
The Empire Strikes Back on NBC

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
Per the FCC’s equal time laws, if we air the Rebel propaganda piece that is the original Star Wars, we have to give equal airtime to their political opposition.

I love it when ads for movies and TV shows present themselves as being a video presentation actually made by the characters in the story. It forces the ads to be more creative, and is a fun way to let us spend more time with the characters and their world.

This is a particularly neat one, as they got James Earl Jones back as Darth Vader, doing a bit where the villain of The Empire Strikes Back sells you on the movie as a piece of Imperial propaganda. (Even back in the 80’s, higher ups knew a lot of people liked to root for the Empire to crush the do-goody Rebellion.) It’s also a rare bit of Star Wars media where the characters are aware that Earth exists in a galaxy far away a long time in the future.

Of course, this ad raises the question of how Vader managed to get some of this footage. But I suppose the Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.