Bohemian Rhapsody: Star Wars Edition Reminds Us That Vader’s Just A Poor Boy, He Needs Your Sympathy

By David Wharton | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

The Star Wars saga has nearly 40 years of story and legacy behind it as it enters this new, Disney-fied era. Decades’ worth of Jedi and Sith and droids and bounty hunters and incestual kisses and Wookiees and gold bikinis and roguish smugglers and midi-chlorians and Jar Jar Binkses and holding me like you did by the lake on Naboo and holy crap that got away from me, I should have stopped while I was ahead. With Episode VII and a Disneyfied future looming before us, how should we celebrate that long history? What perfect form can sum up the width and breadth of George Lucas’ fictional universe? Howzabout a bunch of cosplayers singing a Star Wars version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody?”

That lovely video up top is the creation of the students and faculty from the Digital Video Program at University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, Arizona. They enlisted a pack of motley cosplayers (is there any other kind?) to help serve up a musical foray through the saga and some of its more scenic locations, including Tatooine, the Death Star, Coruscant, Cloud City, and…er…feudal Japan for some reason? There’s Boba Fett in a samurai get-up banging a gong with a lighthammer, so some liberties may have been taken. Still, Obi-Wan’s Force ghost sure can shred an axe, can’t he?

The narrative flow of the whole thing is kind of all over the place, but rewriting “Bohemian Rhapsody” for Star Wars is no mean task so allowances have to be made. I’m just assuming this is the story of the movies as recounted in a musical written by Yoda. Here are a few things I enjoyed about this video, in no particular order:

  • Baby Vader
  • ”Now he’s Sith, not a Knight/Lots of dark, little light.”
  • Jabba/Mama
  • Palpatine’s Force lightning guitar solo
  • The Obi-Wan (Obi-Two?) call and response
  • Mama Shmi-a.
  • The headbanging hyperspace jump
  • ”Matters nothing really, see anyone can.”

All that said, this is still only our second-favorite Bohemian Rhapsody video of the year. The first-place award still goes to A Capella Science’s “Bohemian Gravity,” which we include here for your amusement and edification. Now then, where are all the science/science fiction-related covers of “Fat Bottomed Girls?”