The LucasFilm Empire Strikes Back Against Greenpeace

Earlier this week, a new video by Greenpeace made the rounds, aping Volkswagen’s Star Wars-themed commercial, the hit of the Super Bowl:

[flashvideo file=http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/files/2011/06/Greenpeace_volkswagen_star_wars_6-30-11.flv image=http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/files/2011/06/greenpeace_star_wars_vw_deathstar_6-30-11-2.jpg /]

As Jim Treacher quipped yesterday:

Allahpundit calls this “the greatest climate-change ad ever,” which tells you something about the genre.

I dunno… If you’re trying to scare kids into turning on their parents for living in the 21st Century, shouldn’t you go all the way with it?

Jim links to the infamous “No Pressure” clip from last year, which featured kids and adults who commit crimethink on global warming being killed by Green Supremacists, with blood and gore flying everywhere in the video. Presumably not before they also had numbers tattooed on their arms, although that practice may currently only be limited to Australia.

But at the end of his post, Jim asked:

Spoiler! In Part 2 of Greenpeace Slaps Back, they save the planet by hanging a big banner on the Volkswagen Death Star that says “Save Your Planet.” The little Star Wars kids cheer and do a funny dance. The End. So… that’s… Yeah. Something tells me George Lucas won’t pull a Tom Petty on these guys, though.

Astonishingly enough, he has — or at least his lawyers have — if you click on the YouTube link in Treacher’s post, it now says this:

Autoweek notes, “Some in the office (and in the comments) were wondering how Greenpeace got permission to use Lucasfilm footage in their parody. It appears they didn’t, and the video has been pulled from YouTube due to claims of copyright infringement. We’ll post an edited version when and if it becomes available.”

Given Lucas’s long-held and publicly stated far-left beliefs, presumably he’s doing this to protect his brand, not because he disagrees with Greenpeace.

At least when it comes to Volkswagen. But when will environmentalists aim their hothouse rhetoric directly at the film industry? Don’t they need to, in order to not appear as hypocrites?

I mean, more so than they are already.