Ah, YouTube — the beautiful bounty of millions of weirdos at work. Case in point: A YouTuber named BenjaminApple has released a five-hour cut of Darth Vader’s funeral pyre, looking to beat Nick Offerman’s whiskey and fireplace video as the best Yule Log option to stream at your holiday party this season.
After all, who doesn’t want to hear the crackle and pop of Anakin Skywalker’s slowly-burning androidian corpse humming over their living room speakers for five hours while entertaining family or guests?
The video begins with a section of the actual funeral scene from the movie, complete with of shot Luke’s emotionally ragged face as he initially lights the flames, and the slowly-lulling sounds of John Williams’ iconic funeral score. Then, the video fades to the typical Yule Log fare, with a loud fire noise, and the sounds of slowly-burning wood. There’s some reason this video is especially timely, but for the life of us, we can’t quite place it.
As most Star Wars fans will recall, Darth Vader passed away on the second build of the Death Star after throwing his master, Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine, down a very large hole while the latter was using Force lightning on Luke. Vader then removes his helmet, as you’ll recall, and tells Luke, “You were right. Tell your sister. You were right,” and passes away on the ship. Luke then transports his Father’s body to the forest moon of Endor for the ending scene.
And so, in a way, the five-hour-long version of the ceremony isn’t the celebration of the death of an evil man, it’s the celebration of his coming back to the light — a very positive message that fits right in amongst the seasonal cheer typically associated with a Yule Log.
The Darth Vader Yule Log ends up being an excellent contribution to the all-out Star Wars licensing madness of late, a slow-churning addition to YouTube serves as a great reminder of six films worth of plot in one fire-laden shot.
“Sit back,” it says subconsciously, “And think about what happened to get us here. Preferably while drinking egg nog.”
