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Star Wars Movies

February 6, 2012 by · Comments Off on Star Wars Movies 

Star Wars Movies, Many of the best-received commercials during Sunday’s Super Bowl referenced movies — they just weren’t for movies heading to the local cineplex any time soon.

Several car ads that sparked some of the biggest interest on Twitter and other social-media platforms during the big game alluded to classic older films. Meanwhile, studio spots for major upcoming releases — including Marvel’s “Avengers,” Universal’s “Battleship,” Disney’s “John Carter” and Paramount’s “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” — passed without any great excitement or anticipation from a large number of online commenters. Companies paid an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot, to be seen by what ratings experts believed would be well over 100 million viewers.

Marketers paid homage to “Star Wars” (Volkswagen) and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (Honda) during the big game, generating strong word-of-mouth before and during the action.

Volkswagen revisited the boy in the Darth Vader mask from its buzzed-about 2011 spot titled “The Force,” bringing the child back to settle an issue in the “Star Wars” cantina. Meanwhile, in a spot directed by Todd Phillips and starring Matthew Broderick, Honda made numerous references to “Bueller” without ever mentioning the 1986 movie’s name. The commercial aired early in the fourth quarter at 60 seconds, truncated from its more than 21/2-minute run-time online last week.

Both the “Bueller” and “Star Wars” commercials played on the nostalgia that those in key thirty- and fortysomething demographics have for those properties.

Fox attempted to make use of that nostalgia more literally with its commercial for “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D,” hoping to kick off a Skywalker revival when the movie opens in 3-D this Friday.

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