A long time ago (this month) in a galaxy not so far, far away (YouTube), Star Wars films got reworked into 1950s-style using artificial intelligence.
The effect? Two vintage-looking Star Wars trailers, one for the original movie and the other for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, do a Jedi-like job of capturing the mood and muted color scheme that are frequently found in widescreen films from the 1950s. The music resembles something you might hear in movie theaters when tickets were only 50 cents. And the voiceover, written by ChatGPT, has the strong intonation and calibrated passion familiar to trailers of the late 20th century.
“The Dissident Alliance must confront the might of the Empire and its dangerous troops of Stormtroopers as they fight to free the galaxy from tyranny,” intones a powerful English accent into an aggressive voice. “But, amidst the tumult, hope flickers like a faraway sun, as relationships are forged, friends tested, and the fate of the cosmos hangs in the balance.”
The trailers are from Left Films. They have been posting images to “movies that could have been” on YouTube and Instagram, all of which were created using AI voice and video generating tools like Midjourney and Runway and AI voice and video generating tools like Eleven Labs. The profile states that Photoshop undergoes some updating.
We also get a range of novel-looking Star Wars images, along with AI-generated characters that look a lot like the actors who played them. Luke Skywalker appears in the classic movie trailer looking like a cross between Brad Pitt and Derek Hough, the Dancing with the Stars pro. We can see Darth Vader’s eyes through his helmet (they don’t look all that sinister). Yoda wearing blue goggles might be able to win the cute-celestial-characters category.
In these trailers, the battle is true, and AI tools frequently have a hard time producing practical facial features and body motions. Han Solo’s left eyeball looks like it’s melting, as does Princess Leia’s, the fur on Chewbacca’s face can’t seem to figure out which way the wind is blowing, and people on the bustling streets of Coruscant don’t so much walk through the city as float.
However, those AI quirks are a part of trying out the technology, and they don’t seem to bother Star Wars fans who are praised for the aesthetic of the trailers and the notion of Star Wars being placed alongside I Love Lucy and Leave It To Beaver on the cultural timeline.
“Imagine being a kid in the ’50s and seeing this for a trailer,” one YouTube commenter wrote. “Come on, I’m a grown-ass man in 2024 and I would LOVE to see an entire movie in this format.”
Another commenter remarked, “It resembles some sort of strange dream and an alternate reality. What if George Lucas started making Star Wars films in a different time period before making a decision about what the movies are today? That’s so cool.”
Fans will describe the footage as cozy, a journey back to a long-ago, simpler era, thanks to some of the imagery in the trailers, which resemble Ralph McQuarrie’s early concept art.
“This is like a warm, comforting blanket of sci-fi, and if it was made today in this style, it would be a roaring success,” one wrote.
Abandoned Films, which lists its location in Mexico, has posted a number of other 1950s-style trailers for sci-fi blockbusters. These include Alien, The Matrix, Dune, Tron, The Lord of the Rings, and The Terminator, featuring a Sarah Connor who looks like she just walked out of a sock hop.
